Rupavahini and 'Black July'
Henry Jayasena column
THEATRE: As I said earlier I joined the Rupavahini Corporation
in February 1983. We were getting along well and doing good work. We
even did our very first tele serial - a script written by Dharmasiri
Gamage titled 'Eka Mavakage Daruvo', on location at Horana.
The serial, which consisted around 15 episodes, was directed by
Lucien Bulathsinhala. We had Sriyani Amarasena, Sathischandra
Edirisinghe, Buddhi Wickrema, Gothami Pathiraja, Gamini Samarakoon and
the two sisters Geetakanthi and Ratnalalani Jayakody in the cast. Wimal
Perera was the cameraman.
Being our very first tele serial it must have been a very nice and
rather serious experience for all concerned. We were all new to this
experience. Dharmasiri Gamage did not give us a completed script. He
sent his weekly episodes more or less a day or two before the shooting -
very often just the night before! The script was in his handwriting in
scraps of paper. How Lucien managed to put it together, direct his cast
and keep the narrative in line, I cannot imagine.
The play became popular and led to a series of tele serials by
Rupavahini. I will come to some of them later. One of the first things
that M. J. Perera and I did was to recruit some new hands as Production
Assistants - 23 of them in all, to be exact.
They formed the nucleus for a new batch of dedicated young men and
women who were very keen on learning the techniques of TV productions.
We deployed them to the various Units under the guidance of the Asst.
Directors of each unit.
Some of them were to become quite famous in later years. Hema Nalin
Karunaratne [no longer with Rupavahini], Sudath Devapriya [also no
longer with Rupavahini], Sudath Senaratne [who passed away recently],
Atula Ransirilal [now in charge of the Dubbing Unit, trained by Titus
Thotawatte], Shirley Anil de Silva [who became an ace news reporter],
Erin Jayasekera, Ajith Jayaweera [presently in charge of the Music
Unit], Suramya Mapitiya are some of the men and women we recruited in
1983. Some of them have turned out to be veteran producers and directors
for TV.
Mayhem
Then came Black July 1983 and we were all shaken to the bones. The
ugly event took the whole country by surprise. Fortunately I had
reported for work early that 5th July morning.
There were urgent calls for blood and we were asked by the Blood Bank
to make an urgent appeal. Unfortunately none of the announcers were
present to make that announcement. They may have been held up on the way
- with all the mayhem going on.
There was no time for delay. So I took it upon myself to make that
urgent appeal for blood in Sinhala and English and our Administrative
Officer - Mr. A.M. Ubeydullah made the same appeal in Tamil. Both of us
saved the day that morning for Rupavahini. Later, M.J. Perera, our
Chairman, thanked us for that initiative.
Around 10 in the morning I got a frantic call from Manel. In the
melee, school children were stranded and so was our son, at D.S.
Senanayake Vidyalaya, Borella.
Manel wanted me to somehow get there and take Sudaraka back home. I
got permission from the Chairman to take a Rupavahini vehicle, go to
Borella and take the boy home. As I was getting into the vehicle a girl
from the Administrative Branch came running and desperately wanted me to
give her a lift to St. Joseph's College, Maradana, for the same purpose
as mine.
I could not refuse her. So we managed to scrape through burning
vehicles and a lot of mayhem and reach Maradana. I dropped her there and
made a similar journey to Borella and managed to locate my son. I was
taking him home to Nugegoda through Nawala when a group of men wielding
batton like clubs - all of the same size and length - stopped our car.
They wanted petrol from our car to burn houses belonging to Tamils.
They were in an extremely belligerent mood. They even lectured to us -
that is to me, my driver Somapala and to 13-year-old Sudaraka - about
the need of the hour and that they were carrying out a patriotic duty!
I had to use ALL my powers of persuasion to explain to the mob that I
am 'on duty' and the vehicle was Govt. property and that this was
certainly NOT a patriotic duty as far as I was concerned. I must admit
that I did not press the point too much considering our own safety and
that I had two other lives on my hand! We barely managed to escape them.
If I had allowed them to draw petrol from the vehicle, even through
fear, I knew I would have had much difficulty in explaining that act to
a 13 year old boy - not to mention what opinion he would have made of
his father's conduct! I must say we escaped through the skin of our
teeth. Perhaps my face helped too. Because I remember some of the
mobsters saying - "Yanda arimu, yanda arimu, apey mahattayek.!"
Private journey
Somehow we managed to deposit the boy at home and headed back to
office. The roads were almost impossible to pass. We saw some houses
burning and people were running all over the place. Several cars were
burning in the middle of the road.
Whenever we had to slow down men and women running away from work or
through fear were pleading for lifts. I was a very broken man that day.
My conscience told me that what was happening was a nasty and
unpardonable thing! But I could do very little about it except to save
the vehicle and get back to office. After all I had done a wrong thing
to take an official vehicle and go on a private journey, however urgent
it was.
I could have put my Chairman in trouble too. But under the
circumstances there was very little else I could do. Private taxis had
stopped running that day. I could never have got a taxi to take my boy
home.
Fortunately, after going through by-lanes and several 'hiding' stops
on the way, we managed to get back to office in one piece. I thanked my
stars and immediately got back to work. When Mr. Perera saw me he said
"My God, I am glad you are back. I was worried about you!" I told him I
was sorry for all the worry I gave him.
He smiled and said. "What else could you do? I would have done the
same thing if I were you!" We all stayed in office and did whatever we
could - reading out Govt. announcements and preparing contingency plans.
I cannot even remember when I got back home that night.
The Engineering section run by Rukmin Wijemanne, Shanthi Fonseka,
Upali Arambewela and a host of other dedicated men too were almost on 24
hour duty ready to face any contingency.
The Production Services section under Sanath Liyanage would have had
a very tough time trying their best to cover the scenes of destruction
and mayhem as best as they could, with the limited equipment they had.
The News Room was on a 24 hour alert.
A Competent Authority had sprung overnight and all News had to
undergo the scrutiny of the Competent Authority. That July is a July I
will never forget. The dastardly thing happened just a day before my
53rd birthday. I think we are still paying back for the black deeds of
some misguided people that miserable day!
The violence subsided as quickly as it came up but its aftermath
remained for a long time. That is history and it needs no repetition. We
at Rupavahini were in a very vulnerable position. According to our
tenets Rupavahini had to be a 'Sathyvahini' too.
I am not sure whether we were able to do so hundred percent. Under
M.J. Perera we did our very best to do so. From July onwards, it was
'war' and we had to report news of the war. The people - and perhaps the
Govt. too - thought it was going to be a 'short' war.
After all the LTTE was a rag tag band at that time. The people did
not or rather refused to realize that it was difficult to wage a war
with a hit and run outfit. So it dragged on and on.
The curious thing is that whenever there was a reversal for our
troupes in the conflict zones, it was we - meaning Rupavahini - that the
viewers found fault with. They telephoned and scolded us - often in not
very gentle language - for reporting reversals!
One would have thought that we and not the army conducted the war!
Scholarship
We were disliked so much we could hardly take any vehicle with the
Rupavahini logo out. The people abused us in raw language and were ready
even to attack us. This situation worsened when one of our vehicles
which had gone to the North to record a Tamil program under a producer
by the name of Vigneswaran was burnt and five of our crew were killed.
Vigneswaran came back alive to report the incident.
I had not approved that program. Vigneswaran may have got the
approval of a lady by the name of Mrs. Ratinam who was in charge of
Tamil Programs, or, most likely he may have gone on his own. In any case
he was proven to be a nasty egg. He was sent on some scholarship to
Canada, and there he was seen leading demonstrations for the LTTE.
He never came back.
The relatives of the dead men were rightfully angry that we had sent
a Sinhala crew to Jaffna at that particular time. We had to take the bad
news personally to each home. I too had to visit one home to report the
death of our sound recordist and I will never forget that visit.
Compensation was of course paid, but we had sacrificed five men.
It was with great difficulty we survived that situation. Production
of tele dramas too suffered during this time because it was difficult to
take our vehicles out. To compensate for that we improved our Studio
productions considerably.
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