Intensely vivid, deeply spiritual

A Time for My Singing - witness of a life
Author: Nalini Jayasuriya

I must arise and spill my colour into the world
Or from long use my soul will grow
Dull and prosaic as my wooden desk
And my thin lead pencil..

The girl who wrote that at the age of 13 had made her retreat in the family's 'great Tulip tree', alone and afraid and lost after the passing of her father, her 'only friend.' And she had wondered:

Would there ever come a time for my singing? 'I sat in my tree for long hours and wondered,' Nalini writes of that time, Neither seeing nor knowing; nor understanding... So how could I have guessed that the future I had not dared to hope for was already a point of light in the darkness?

Nalini in her seventies calls this book A Time for My Singing. But though she wrote that line 'would there ever come a time for my singing?' in doubt and even fear, that time had already begun in those early teens.

It was already a singing not merely of words but of the soul, and the sense of powerful yet unseen presence was already strong within her:

You are the finished dream and the dream to be:

Unmoving, unread

You are the shadow in the water

And I cannot gather you with my hand...

Miracles

And so the miracles began as she struggled with herself and with her family's steady impoverishment after her father's passing away.

Doomed, as seemed definite, to a marriage of convenience she was rescued as by a miracle and not long afterwards there was another totally unexpected piece of good fortune - the invitation from Canon de Saram to teach at S. Thomas'.

There were other such momentous stages - the British Council scholarship that gave her a year in the UK, the years at Yale at the Overseas Ministries Study Centre with their deeply energizing encounters with religious art, the Luce Moore professorship in religious art which also gave her opportunities for research and led to many fruitful years of fulfilment.

There have also been the intensely spiritual experiences in several religious traditions that Nalini renders so movingly in a poetry of more than words, for the words take us with her to sympathetic participation, to vibration with the deeply lived experiences she describes - the Nayh, Syambonath, plainsong in the Sistine Chapel...

The Nayh

Then, very quietly a beautiful sound like a deep contralto grew and moved - it was the voice of the Nayh, a Turkish woodwind... and then the old man on the dais began to sing in a deep rich voice.

The audience listened, spellbound by the voice of the singer and the voice of the Nayh.

The chanting at Syambonath:

Then, as if from the heart of the mountains, one voice chanted the recitative, and the single sound became many. They then came in, one by one, the hundred voices chanting in overtones; a sound sublime infinite timeless - gathering the silence of all life to witness the celebration of the enlightened knowledge of an Enlightened Being: the Buddha who revealed the truth of both Reality and Unreality.

Magnetism

In this sacred space, entranced and captured by the experience of such profound and moveless witness. I sank to the cold stone floor, deeply grateful to have heard such sound and silence...

Plainsong in the Sistine Chapel:

.... that day, when I heard the chant of plainsong by a myriad voices in the sistine Chapel, I can only describe it as a cosmic experience.

Miracles to the eye and heart of faith. But they were also, surely, either evoked or discovered by the magnetism of the vibrant person with an enormous zest for outer as well as inner experience we know as Nalini Jayasuriya.

That force and that zest have been felt by all those to whom she has given the gifts of her friendship and her art.

And that is the great joy of this book. With its free-flowing form, its words no less than its sequence of enriching images of a scriptural journey, it organizes for us the wonderful range of Nalini's personality and is truly the witness of a life that has already enriched us.

This book has a beautifully creative form that Nalini has intuitively evolved to gather together experiences and illuminations of a lifetime. The selection, the choices and the transitions are themselves a triumph of creative art, however intuitive the process might have been.

In an appreciation which is inevitably a matter of words, words, words it is impossible to do justice to the visual delights of the paintings. Prof. John W. Cook, Professor or Religious Art at the Yale Divinity School, has described his own response to them in relation to three categories.

What they have in common is Radiance. There is a distinct personal idiom which recreates for us the unique spiritual reality of Nalini's world: the paintings, the writing, the life itself. Every image is quietly, intensely alive with a muted incandescence that makes each in itself a deeply satisfying spiritual experience.

Thank you Nalini, for this book, this whole beautiful poem. It is such a marvellous way of bringing into focus both the extraordinary richness and the complete integration of your art and your life, together pointing inwards through wonder to a core of illumination, of total spiritual being. Like your art, it is a gift of healing, of wonder, of dream-heavy peace.

- Ashley Halpe.

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Breast-feeding is the best

Paalar Paraamarippu
Author: K. Vaitheeswaran
Pages: 146
Price: Rs. 180

"A mother, out of the abundance of love, she remembers to feed her child" the words live in the hearts of old and young lovers of Thiruvasagam by Saint Manickavasagar. It called to my mind while I was reading the Thamil book entitled "Paalar Paraamarippu" (Child care) written by K. Vaitheeswaran. This is his fourth book.

Mr. Vaitheeswaran is a retired Health educator who had served in many parts of Sri Lanka. He had visited countries like India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand on health education tours under scholarship schemes of the World Health Organisation. Thereby he has gained a sound knowledge that helped him to write four books on health education.

A mother puts up with a lot of pain, suffering and sacrifice in order to bring up her child. Sometimes she may go hungry herself, but she feeds her child.

"The first Goddess worthy of worship is a mother", a great sage has said. There are 16 chapters in the book. The author elaborates the importance of breastfeeding and its usefulness in the first three chapters.

Breastfeeding is the best, it's known to all. Breastfeeding is extremely beneficial for the child. Breast milk alone is the best possible nourishment for the first four to six months of a baby life, giving it good health.

It helps protect the baby against many illnesses. In the next three chapters, he deals with the supplementary feeding, primary education and the growth of the child.

"Habits contracted in the cradle cling to one till one goes to the funeral pyre", is a proverb widely spoken by thamil people. Children learn good behaviour by encouragement, direction and suggestion by parents, teachers, respectable and impressive elders etc.

Ethical and spiritual education help promote good behaviour. Inclusion of this would have enhanced the beauty of this book. Chapters nine to twelve embody matters relating to injuries caused to children due to small accidents and the treatment for them, dental care, and other common diseases like fever, cold, phlegm etc.

Primary education, responsibilities of the primary school teachers and the child care centres are described in the next three chapters. It is said to bathe the child with words by way of speaking, relating folk stories and singing songs.

In the past, grandparents, granduncles and aunts who lived in the same home or as close neighbours were the teachers of human values for the children. They conveyed these values through stories, parables, songs etc.

The last chapter is about child abuse. According to information, the child abuse increases daily. Time and again news appears in the local dailies about child abuse. It is made known that guardians, relatives and close friends are those involved in most cases of child abuse.

The author has mentioned about the consequences of child abuse and suggested the ways and means to overcome it in such situations.

Today's children are tomorrow's leaders and they should be carefully nurtured and this book no doubt gives the necessary advice and guidance. It is useful especially to mothers and primary school teachers.

- K.K. Arumainayagam.