Fine study of Indian superstar and popular cinema concept

Raj Kapoor Cinemava

Sankathanayange Anuksharithava

Author: Senaratne Weerasinghe

Prabha Publishers, 174/28, Veyangoda

259PP price Rs. 1,000

Raj Kapoor Cinemava Sankathanayange Anuksharithava is the authentic Sinhala translation of Porf. Wimal Dissanayake and Malathi Sahai's Raj Kapoor's Films Harmony and Discourses. The book has been written with two purposes in mind.

One is to examine the remarkable popularity of Raj Kapoor who is one of the most popular film actors and directors that India has produced. The other is to examine his mass appeal from different thematic angles. In other words this is a study of popular cinema.

The book has been well structured giving the reader what he wants to know about this legendary actor. For instance, the opening chapter traces the emergence of Raj Kapoor against the background of Indian cinema.

The second chapter discusses Raj Kapoor's early Romantic films. This is followed by a graphic account of his social films made in his middle period. Then the authors concentrate on Raj Kapoor's commercially successful films. Chapter five introduces Raj Kapoor's comedies which were responsible for his huge popularity. The succeeding chapters throw light on his grasp of narrative and spectacle.

The authors have not forgotten to include another chapter on tradition and modernity which had a great influence on his films.

The authors believe that Raj Kappor's is cinema of security.

"He creates this sense of security by balancing, by harmonising various discourses; Indian and Western humour, realism and fantasy, narration and spectacle, tradition and modernity, social protest and maintenance of status. " The whole book invites the reader to understand that Raj Kapoor's films appeal to a basic human urge, that of security.

Film fans of Sri Lanka are quite familiar with Raj Kappor's films screened in the '60s onwards. I have vivid memories of Shri 420, Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai, Mera Nam Joker and Sangam. Most of these films became popular even in China and the USSR.

The secret of his films was his vigorous exploitation of the audience's penchant of romanticism and music. But he did not stop there. He combined them with a social message which underlined the importance of tradition. Local film makers have much to learn from him.

Senaratne Weerasinghe has captured the essence of the original work and rendered it into readable Sinhala. After reading this monumental work, the reader will remember that Raj Kapoor achieved his phenomenal discourses; realism and fantasy, narrative and spectacle, social protest and the maintenance of the status quo.

The book is essential reading for all film artistes, directors and producers. They have so much to learn from Raj Kapoor's approach to cinema and his philosophy of film making.

- R. S. Karunaratne

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Fervent appeal to begin process of advancement in Sri Lanka

A Call for National Reawakening

Author: C. G. Weeramantry

Stamford Lake publishers

Dr. Weeramantry claims that this book has been hastily put together in a space of around three weeks. One gathers that the manuscript was completed around September 2005. The author further states that it contains only a few random thoughts and is not by any means a studied examination of the problem.

It is not difficult to disagree with the author's modesty, as a full reading of the book reveals the profound wisdom of an enlightened mind. It is also difficult to believe that the book has been hastily put together as it obviously is a monograph that has been carefully thought out and well structured.

However, in view of the author's demonstrated capacity to produce work of high quality prolifically, one is impelled to accept the claim. The book reflects many years of intellectual power acquired and applied with wisdom to the problems of society by a penetrating mind that faces issues squarely in the face.

This is evident in the startling focus on Sri Lanka and the problems of its people, which has been structured and presented to flow logically, and which adds much value and relevance to all Sri Lankans.

My first reactions after a first reading of the book were twofold. Firstly that this is not just the work of a brilliant legal mind nor an eminent international personality and prolific writer, all of which are qualities that the author is abundantly endowed with and can lay claims to.

Rather, that this is the work of a down to earth sage, who is uniquely placed to buttress his reasoning with personal experiences gained at the helm of international recognition; Secondly, that this book must be translated into Sinhala and should be recognized as prescribed reading for students at high schools in Sri Lanka. The book should also be commended to public administration officials and politicians.

One of the many compelling thrusts of the book lies in Chapter 5 which addresses the issue of a single Sri Lankan State and underscores the need to establish a culture of peace if Sri Lanka were to ensure safety and security for its citizens.

The author, in characteristically simple and highly readable style, brings to bear the collective international wisdom of the United Nations seen through UN General Assembly Resolution A/52/13, adopted in 1997.

This Resolution emphasized the importance of a culture of peace that should permeate values, attitudes and conduct and impel the parties concerned to reject violence and attempt to solve problems through consultation, negotiation and consensus.

Practical handbook

A Call for National Reawakening is also an eminently practical handbook, in which the author balances the strengths as well as weaknesses of the Sri Lankan people and their practices and beliefs.

He gives eight great strengths that typically characterize Sri Lanka and its people and recognizes them as being blessed. A bonus, added as the ninth virtue, on the intrinsic togetherness of the Sri Lankan family, is one of the most endearing qualities of our people.

The author succeeds in establishing the fact that Sri Lanka has been blessed by mother nature and is composed of a multi cultural, multi ethnic society, and that its people are highly educated and conduct themselves with respect and kindness to others.

The book takes the reader through five chapters of pure reasoning. Chapter one focuses on the need for self-examination through the strengths and weaknesses of Sri Lankan conduct, viewed through a comforting net of hope, skilfully woven to reassure the reader that there is much good in a country rich with natural resources, beautiful landscapes, culture and values among its people.

Chapter 2 speaks mainly of weaknesses 17 of them in fact which serve as an unobtrusively gentle wake up call to a nation which may not be conscious that some of those weaknesses may have inveigled themselves into a society that is often preoccupied with family superiority and an inexplicable tendency to compare social strata that are no longer of relevance to an educated society. Granted, some of the weaknesses, such as lack of transparency, political rhetoric and tamashas, bribery and corruption are not unique to Sri Lanka.

The author does not say they are but merely points out these compelling weaknesses. However, such weaknesses as inability to run institutions without factionalism, envy of success of others, cringing before superiors and fawning over foreigners are truly rare qualities in most countries outside the region in which Sri Lanka is situated.

These are incontrovertible truths and no one can refute them as not being applicable to Sri Lanka. Speaking from personal experience, I remember the jealousy of most so called friends and colleagues when I secured a senior position in the United Nations. I have since not come across such rampant jealousy at my present place of work in my promotions and other awards which I have earned.

Culture of peace

In Chapter three the author makes several well reasoned suggestions regarding the current administrative scene in the country and draws attention to the importance of diplomacy, the foreign service and above all the significance of being aware of international law, international relations and practice.

The author is seemingly emphasizing that the international obligations of a government and its society also play a significant part in the progress of a nation, in particular in bringing about an awareness of the need for a culture of peace in a country.

For those who are acquainted with the author's numerous books and his unique style of addressing issues of technology and the future, Chapter four should be a treat. Weeramantry is arguably the only Sri Lankan writer who has consistently, throughout a distinguished career in many roles and as a prolific writer, addressed the future with vision and insight.

In this book, he continues his remarkable journey with the reader into the realm of danger and points out various areas of activity that Sri Lanka should avoid. Of these, nuclear reactors both in India and Sri Lanka, arms and drugs, deforestation and dumping are but a few valid examples.

Finally, Weeramantry closes this excellent treatise in Chapter five by justifying conduct that could lead to a unified Sri Lanka to the satisfaction of all concerned. The author's focus on the importance international law and policy should be applauded. He details four frameworks for solution, based on morality, religion, education on peace, domestic and international legal framework, all of which, taken together form a credible formula for peace.

In addition to its educative and instructive content, the book's wisdom can be subsumed in the author's statement in page 2 that the first step towards reform is an understanding of our errors and failings and in doing so it is a great help to be able to see ourselves as others see us.

In the following page he makes a plea to the best elements in the country for a concerted effort to do what lies in their power whether as individuals or as members of groups to halt this decline and initiate a process of advancement.

When such a well reasoned and sincere appeal is made, how could one look the other way?

- Dr. Ruwantissa Abeyratne, Coordinator, Air Transport Programmes International Civil Aviation Organization 999 University Street Montreal H3C 5H7

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A life's odyssey of replenishment from master craftsman

The Famished Waterfall

Author: Jean Arasanayagam

Jean Arasanayagam, standing tall among Sri Lanka's foremost writers and poets, has this facility to make of life a starburst of many colours and shades. Some may be of a sombre grey; some of sensitive to the eye as a fleeting wisp of feathery gold, some as iridescent as a congress of suns around which purpling planets fashion their own paths.

Life, to Jean, is a voyage, and on its frail barque, peril, pleasure, promise and passion take turns at the tiller. Its steering mechanism is fate, and far out in the unknown lies the harbour of destiny. In her book The Famished Waterfall (S. Godage & Sons, Colombo, 2004) Jean tells of such a voyage. Her narrator is a woman of an outlying Kandyan village - a child who grows to savour the joys of her years.

There is such a soft, yearning touch, memory, age, nostalgia. Dipping into the first chapter I thought of Umberto Eco's fifth novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana a book packed to bursting with the author's return to childhood. In The Famished Waterfall, Jean takes her narrator step by step, from "a childhood free of strife and friction" - who tells us: "I want to remember, I want to recollect that past.

I let it vanish for so long a time, and now I want to recapture the happy moments I once had." Jean lays the end of her tale upon the beginning of memory ... and this device is so fitting. It is as if the mind of the narrator must find a new equilibrium, "happy in this haven", basking in an atmosphere that conveys the long thoughts of the past to repopulate it, making of it an in-reaching reverie.

And, into this mental medley Jean herself comes to visit. Oh yes ! I have little doubt that Jean has shared this nostalgia and I wonder: is this 'Elephant Bath House' another version of the delightful home she also remembers from years past ? No, I don't look for clues, but every sensitive stroke of the pen tells of a most intimate connection.

Body and soul

"This house once belonged to a Dutch Burgher family" ... and there was Miss Joan of that family who would come to visit. Did Jean become Miss Joan ? I have always asked myself: 'How much of our lives do we resurrect in the books we write ?' Actually, we are absorbed into our own pages, body and soul, and disguise is but a flimsy robe.

Her narrator says: "Now everything that belonged to that past no longer exists. (Miss Joan) was still so much at home here .... She would recollect those memories ..." and there is one determination that is so typically Jean, when Miss Joan says: "There are still unfulfilled journeys I have to make." I knew then, oh, how I knew. Tell me true, Jean, you are Miss Joan, are you not ?

The first chapter, "The House at Elephant Bath" lays the tale before us just as a celebrity chef will position all his ingredients within reach. We learn that the narrator had also made her different journeys and nods when Miss Joan says: "You need a lot of courage to move away. You, too, must have felt so lonely, you must have missed your family so much you went to Kuwait."

We see the narrator for what she had become - weathered by the turns and tosses of life, grown and matured, age-marinated, mother and grandmother, the victim of a drunkard husband; divorced, using her will, her determination, to survive. Now her body is as a tabernacle of memories.

Jean's treatment is so inspiring. She wanders along roads that take us into the narrator's future, then swings back to her childhood, giving the reader a bubbly sense of the pops of champagne corks. This is where the waterfall also becomes a symbol of life that must be lived with fierce hope.

The chapters "Growing Up in the Village", "Attaining Age", "Fatal Attraction", and "Marriage" give us a veritable perahera of head-on motion - from innocence to the runnels of awareness that defile and cause a child's world to crumble.

New emotions, thoughts, rosy dreams and plans are stirred with infusions of vinegar and gall. From somewhere in the underbelly of life there rises a foulness that sours the mind, pummels the heart, drenches the soul with the acid of confusion and bitterness. Let the narrator say it:

Security

"There was nothing to mar those early days .... There was so much security in (my) home with my parents, brothers and sisters ... One day I fell critically ill ... I always felt a great thirst engulfing me .... I wanted to stand beneath the veils of water that gushed from the secret waterfall that was impressed in my mind and imagination ... Until I discovered that waterfall and shed my old skin ...felt I would never recover completely.

Whenever I felt that overwhelming desire for regeneration and renewal, I would think of that waterfall in my dreams, pure, pure streams of water...."

You see how well the symbol is employed. The waterfall becomes the return to childhood purity. It must hold the rainbow of heavenly promise. It dispels fear, renews hope, takes the ill-used, corrupt adult back to the age of innocence. The symbol also mirrors the "washing away of sin" - a new baptism.

To go on: "After I attained age, life changed for me. Puberty meant.... that I had a preordained role in life.....a sacred duty to be both mother and wife... I saw myself bursting out of the chrysalis of childhood.... One day, another man, a stranger, would come into my life. Would I resist, oppose or accept and submit.... I was still to know what to expect of life."

"Fatal Attraction" tells of sexual temptation, of "being drawn into a web" and bowing to emotional blackmail. She, Erandathi, marries Saman, and she says: "This was only the beginning of what turned out to be one of the biggest nightmares of my young life." Jean does not pull punches, nor does she try to gild this particular prickly-thorn flower.

There is the fierce awareness of being bedded by a drunkard husband, the torture, the brutality that is grimly recorded. And the narrator says: "Yet, I submitted to him. My body began to feel weary, used.... my body was bruised with his blows."

Divorce

Divorce brought an end to misery and her three children forced her into a new role. "I denied them nothing. I deprived myself of much. I made sacrifices. My children and their education and well-being would always be as the forefront of my life."

Jean tells us something we may not gladly entertain. What is this cheap trick we call life? Is it humankind's destiny to come on stage, pure, unsullied, then become victims? Why do we mass together, each to corrupt the other, spread our seed, expel the fruit of our wombs to ripen, rot, become the food of maggots? What is this macabre dance and who is the choreographer?

The narrator has to break free. "I had to depend on my own resources, my inner strength and whatever skills I had, to even offer myself for employment in the Middle East.... I didn't stop to think of what would happen to my small family.

We would live in different worlds. I was now... taking over my husband's role, but in a home that would be devoid of my presence... I never thought of the loneliness my children would feel without me... Parting, departure, estrangement were part of my entering a new life."

How many philosophies does Jean resort to in this book! We are suddenly made aware that none of us live one life, but many. We are the chameleons of creation, ever in search of new ways, new destinations, blending into strange new environments, even battling our own human state - now rampant, now defeated, finding few answers to what is tossed at us.

Erandathi becomes a housemaid in Kuwait, learns to speak Arabic, returns home on holiday to find her children growing away from her. Then it is back to her work from dawn to eleven at night and her fevered needs: "I had no man to give me love and affection... no one to embrace and caress me.

Emptiness. Empty days. No child of my own to fondle and cuddle."

Her dreams were violated by the sinister images of her ex-husband. Thank God she had not to endure the violence and abuse of the strangers she worked for, yet so many like her had been raped, murdered - and where was her life-changing waterfall? Now in a desert land, the sand would cascade, sweep and gather itself into ochre dunes, each autographed over and over by the hot wind. Any semblance of gushing, purifying water lay in the gently lapping oasis she would visit with the Kuwaiti family.

Vicious plunge

The book takes a vicious plunge - and we are taken to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait: the flames, terror, intensity of war... and there is just this one-way ticket to come home, empty-handed, penniless. "I never imagined it would be my last trip back from Kuwait. I returned like an exile... in a state of shock..."

Now to the waterfall. Survival. Her sons had grown up, worked away from home. Her waterfall would no more be a famished trickle that told her of her own spiritual drought. The story ends with this new hope, with the courage to withstand all life's bruising and buffets that is the mark of the true woman. Now would all hunger and thirst be assuaged, quenched. Now she would search for and find the waterfall of her childhood dreams, her desert dreams, never to go back to that land of burning oil.

I have yet to read a story so beautifully constructed. It has a jewel-like quality that can only have been brought to life in the hands of a master of her craft - which is what Jean Arasanayagam truly is.

- Carl Muller

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Success story of Sri Lanka Freedom Party

PROFESSOR WISWA Warnapala, the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs who has emerged as a dynamic political figure on the Sri Lankan political stage, has contributed another brilliant thesis to the nation by presenting another illustrious volume on the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which runs up to 423 pages.

This analytical book on political affairs which relates the success story of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party from its inception in 1952 is useful to the Parliamentarians, senior politicians, statesmen, researchers, journalists and students of politics alike.

This profound study comprises seven chapters focusing on the achievements and failures of the party during the last 50 years, discussing the main aspects of its evolution as one of the major democratic political formations in the country.

Professor Warnapala who is regarded as an eminent political scientist in Asia, entered the active political field in 1960s as a lecturer in the Department of Economics of the Peradeniya University. Later he held the Chair of Political Science of the Peradeniya University for several decades.

In the People's Alliance Government led by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, he was the Deputy Minister of Education and Higher Education.

As the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs he used his energy and talents to strengthen the image of Sri Lanka on the international political platform and has met distinguished leaders of the world on so many occasions.

During the period of the tsunami and post-tsunami period, his untiring efforts brought valuable assistance to the country.

He has published more than seventeen books on Economic Affairs and Political Science during the past two decades and has contributed hundred of articles to learned journals here and abroad.

The latest thesis on the Sri Lanka Freedom Party - A Political Profile, has been published by Godage International Publishers (Pvt) Ltd. and is priced at Rs. 1,750.