Episodes of memoirs on creative living
G A Mathupema, an experienced school teacher, who had been in the profession over a period of forty years, and in the field of writing novels, short stories, and books, especially on psychology, has presented his remembrances of the past recollecting some of his life episodes. This has gone into the moulding of a self-made scholar who had struggled to make his existence more creative and resourceful in many aspects. This author teacher, G A Matupema has compiled, in a creative narrative form, his experiences in the Sinhala book titled Guruvarayakuge Vurtantaya. The legend of a Teacher]. From the very inception, the author lays down the background of his childhood which had been highly influenced by his grandfather and grandmother, whose ancestral land and house had paved the way for him to know more vicissitudes about the life styles of humans as well as beasts and birds. This inspiration had been his guiding light, which had inspired him to know more about the world. Having laid this background as a prologue, he proceeds to present various episodes of his entry into a wider world, first as a school boy, then as a widely-read scholar entering a training school, where he graduates to become a qualified teacher of English; and at times he acts as a revolutionary and a free thinker as well as a poet and an aesthete, a critic and above all a self made scholar in psychology. He underlines with great interest how he was admitted to a high school in Ratnapura, where he begins to be an avid reader of both Sinhala and English classics, which is marked as another turning point. This makes him a scholar of a special type admired by the teachers of the time once again and becomes a student of an unconventional type interested in leftist politics and creative literature, engaged in discussions and bringing out school newspapers and periodicals over and above the conventional type of study-mindedness. This shift of interest makes him involved in contributing poems and feature articles to various Sinhala newspapers and magazines; here he comes to know editors and journalists of the day. Psychology seems to be his specialty, as an interesting episode is recorded. It is on the day while he was following a lecture at the Colombo University , as a teacher-student reading for the Diploma in Education, an added requirement for the schoolteachers. The particular lecturer happened to cite the title of a book written by the same author Matupema as one of the pioneer writers of psychology in Sinhala, and recommended his first book; this event was a total surprise to him, Matupema. The most interesting point is that nobody, inclusive of the lecturer, was aware that the very author had been in the classroom following that particular lecture in psychology at the spur of the moment. Many an episode of this type abound the pages of this book. A series of bitter and happy experiences are recorded with actual situations making the book more readable than a mere commentarial record of events. The writer who becomes a teacher depicts the life full of injustice, crime, misgivings and corruption that surrounded him, which at times dissuade him from engaging in any fruitful work for society. He makes the reader feel that he is more of a peace loving person all throughout his career with a vision to change society, where he is shown sometimes as a failure. Nevertheless he is forced to take decisions of his own as a result of his self- asserted studies in psychology and religion. According to these memoirs, all throughout his life the author-teacher Matupema had not been swayed by any sensual entices and miscalculated sexualities nor in opportunistic measures. He attributes this factor to his good social intimacies with selected individuals forming a nucleus of socio spiritual upbringing, which he deems as a necessity to the welfare and protection of the human personality. His unquenched thirst for reading habit cultivated over the years had culminated in a certain degree of profitable isolation, which, he believes, had enabled him to overcome the problems pertaining to life. One of the most striking episodes is his desire for music and painting, which, according to him, had resulted in bestowing more pleasure than anything else. His life had been shuttling from the self-study process when he wants to be a full fledged scholar studying for the London University examinations. The period that marks his recollections span, could be marked as from the beginning of the post-world-war II period up to our country’s post-independent period. This book, in certain ways, records some of the historical events pertaining to this period. He notes, with nostalgia, the aspects of events such as rag sessions in the universities [about which he had done a study and published in a certain periodical], love, sex, marriage, morals, social values, suicide, education, insurrections, politics etc. There are occasional jottings, which may bring a sense of fear to one’s mind. One example is that he says that he is his own doctor for he diagnoses his own sicknesses and prescribes his own medicine without going to see a medical practitioner [see p95] Thus he shows himself as an uncommon human being who is a self seeker, dedicated to the writing process and thinking process and sometimes finds himself in a peculiar state of bodily ailments for which he has his own solutions. There are copious accounts of the books he had read, plays and films he had seen, and about things he had been thinking about. As the last word in these recollections, he states that he had not wasted time, but spent it resourcefully as a reader, thinker, writer and a dedicated teacher. The book is designed into short paragraphs with short sentences and dialogues. The tone is more of a cathartic expression that comes from the bottom of the heart. It is said that writers do not write only about pleasant things. Not all stories have happy endings. Not all clouds have silver linings. Sometimes the most vivid and long lasting memories of people are those that involve unhappiness or suffering. They remember occasions when something painful happened to them. They remember a lesson that they had to learn the hard way. When people think back over their earlier experiences, they often remember the doubts and pains of growing up. And growing up means discovering that the world around us is not always what we hoped it would be. This is a book about the growing up in many ways. |
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LITERATURE: Many writers present their memoirs in the form of
factual details, autobiographies, reminiscences of things past, and in
numerous forms of fact and fiction intermixed narratives that make good
reading material for all times. 
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