Journalists of Ananda - an addendum

[Memoirs - VI Ananda College years ]

Continued from last week

Premil Ratnayake

S Pathiravithana - Tarzie's brother-in-law - was the mirthful journalist and a decent human being whom we were privileged to work with in the Daily News after a long lapse of time - he was our Editor. Pathi as we fondly called him, was unobtrusive and understood our failings and forgave us though he knew that our idiosyncrasies will recur. We were rioters wavered and therefore reprimanded and warned but what appealed to us was Pathi's recurrent laughter - he could laugh all day. The laughter injected into us some mysterious sense of pleasure.

You could never be bitter with a man who could laugh like he did. There was a time when Pathi, Nihal Ratnaike and I worked together in the Island newspaper.

Pathi was deputy to Fred de Silva then Editor of the Daily News when the notorious "Dress Sense" article appeared making irreverent remarks on the dress etiquette the Crimina Justice Commission imposed on all who had to appear before it. The Commission found Fred guilty of contempt of court though Pathi was the author of the Column. Pathi was not the kind of individual who would have crossed swords with a Court of law. Fred had written the piece and he was sent to jail, reprieved later. On Fred's demise, Pathi became the Editor of Daily News.

Of all Ananda journalists, the most colourful and the most interesting was Meemana Prematilleke, super Sinhala poet who later became the Editor of Silumina. Silumina was almost a one man show of Meemana - he wrote, edited and even proof read the Sunday edition. It was once claimed to have the largest circulation in South Asia. Like Oscar Wilde, Meemana loved the good things in life (I am still in possession of a book on Oscar Wilde Meemana gifted to me).

He was an epicurean and a dillentate - a poet of rare brilliance, he wrote many books of poetry and also historical novels based on the Portuguese reign in Ceylon. The poems he wrote to his wife when they were courting, he published later as a book titled Pem Pandura," Gift of Love".

Meemana wrote some erotic poems and it was said the renowned author and novelist Martin Wickeremesinghe who was then the Editor of Dinamina called him and advised him to only concentrate on good writing and eschew cheap lewd literature. I am not sure if the tall dark and handsome poet took the advice of the veteran writer who was his senior colleague but Meemana was once drawn into a poets' battle to decide whether a woman was basically pure or vile.

John Rajadasa who was editing a poetry magazine "Meewadaya" had got poet H S Kudaligama (also of Lake House) to contribute a set of verses extolling the beauty of a woman and also her virtues. Meemana was asked to reply him. Meemana the worshiper of the pulchritudinous of the female species did a turnabout and some fine verses castigated women as treacherous and villainous.

Kudaligama had been hailed as Sinhala Shelley - Meemana wrote "Sinhala Shellyth wage Engrisi Shelley" (Sinhala Shelley is also like English Shelley).

Meemana whose full name was Karunaratne Premetilleke (he adopted the name of Meemana which was the name of a village in his hometown in Plilyandala) dropped "Karunaratne" and wrote a humorous short story in Silumina about how he entered the police and confessed that he had committed murder - that he had killed a man named Karunaratne.

Meemana died almost on the eve of his 50th birthday. Just before that, he had published an autobiographical work in which he reencountered poignantly the ups and downs in his life - " I trod both on treacherous and golden paths" . Extracts from the book were read over the National Radio the day he died.

A piece on Ananda would be incomplete without references to another Ananda - our beloved Anandatissa de Alwis.

The former Speaker and Minister of State was first a journalist, then a politician ; and above all, an orator par excellence. Apparently at Ananda he had been a favourite of that illustrious Principal P D S Kularatne. Years ago, at a function held symbolically in the Kularatne Hall, where the then Minister of Trade and Shipping Lalith Athulathmudali was the Chief Guest, Dr de Alwis recalled how the late Kularatne gave him a lesson in leadership, a lesson that had stood him in good stead when he became a politician: the lesson was do not put all responsibilities on your shoulders alone - delegate to others.

And then the former member for Kotte revealed how Anandians were ridiculed for their lack of good English. But he said , looking at Lalith Athulathmudali, “ don’t forget our debating team beat the Royal College team in a debate conducted in English.”

Anandatissa’s skill as an orator was well demonstrated when he made one of the finest speeches we had heard in Parliament soon after the new Parliament was opened in Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte. It was a clean, crisp delivery in English, impromptu that was as rhythmic as poetry and which was applauded by the Opposition. But to us, equally memorable was the first speech he made after becoming the Minister of State. Having relinquished the office of the Speaker, the House had assembled at Committee Stage discussing the votes of his Ministry which overlooked the press in general.

Anandatissa made a poignant appeal on behalf of journalists who he lamented led a near life of misery (no adequate pay and no pension at the end of a pathetic existence of eternal want); we were covering his speech from the Press Gallery and in our lobby coverage, we wrote that the new Minister of State brought instilled a new want in our enclosure and made us briefly though happy. Our sub editor Nadarajah headlined it “Darling of the Press”.

In 1984, when we were posted to the Sri Lankan Embassy in Bonn by him to counter the LTTE propaganda in the then West Germany, we had written a piece about our people in the embassy and our German friends which was frowned upon by the Foreign Ministry. Anandatissa de Alwis steadfastly rose to our defence dismissing all charges of violating diplomatic niceties claiming that no good journalist could be kept down from writing a good story.

We were beholden to him not only for the unprecented posting and for the manner in which he stood by us.

All references to journalists produced by Ananda will be inadequate if we fail to mention the name of another great in the profession, Prof. Emeritus Sunanda Mahendra. We hardly remember him in school for he was very much our junior but we cannot ignore him for he continues to be one of the most prolific writers of our times.

I take additional pride in writing about him for a parochial reason; he is my neighbour and I meet him almost daily when he takes his morning walk down the street where I live, his wife trailing him.

Sunanda’s walk is not the typical constitutional of the habitual walker who walks to keep trim - it is neither brisk nor wonderous rather a desultory amble much like a sadhu treading the terra firma in silent meditation.

Often he carries a newspaper with him and the professor who is easily distinguishable from his mirthful laughter (I have never seen him mirthless) pauses now and then in his walk to talk to people, all kinds of people, he exchanges good humoured banter and almost everybody laughs with him for his laughter is infectious; an old cripple confined to his wheelchair greets him with his eternal lament” books, books, where are they?” (they all know that he is an author). Sunanda laughs in response ( it is almost a daily occurrence) and continues his walk.

You take a look at Sunanda - he does not look like a esoteric scholar - he is a round up of simplicity, naive innocence pervades him and you are curious how such a simple ordinary looking man had taught mass communication for a long time as the Kelaniya University yet his writings are not ordinary, it is not the ponderous style of the erudite scholar, it is subtle, polished and the words flow freely like a silent cascading stream - it is easy both in the eyes and the ears. It is the type of writing, which after you have finished reading, makes you wish you had written it yourself.

Despite being a Don, Sunanda avoids pedantry - he writes simple lucid prose well within the reading reach of college students ; it is prose that is not deliberate rather spontaneous style as if you wrote the first words that came to mind and did not re-read to correct or re-write them.

I relish Sunanda’s humorous outbursts - they are not censored by him and he allows them to flow freely. In most TV discussions (most of them esoteric) it is Sunanda who saves them from becoming tedious and boring - he injects the funny one liner or infuses a levity and the intellectual pomposity breaks. And whatever the talk, it proceeds without unnecessary elaborations.

For sometime, I had lain my pen aside and was drifting. Sunanda having heard of this, stopped me briskly during his walk and rather sternly (it was the first time I had seen him so earnest), told me “ don’t stop writing”.

I was rather taken aback by his sternness; then he laughed and left me to my thoughts. I heeded his advice - I could only hope in equal earnestness that my namesake would follow suit.