Lake House: Then and Now

Viranga of the Daily News

Premil Ratnayake reminisces...

For the first time in our discourse of the local Fine Arts he brought to the English readership the fine nuances of Sinhala art drama, cinema and music with his charming, simple and unsophisticated writing.

It was one direct leap from Ananda College to Lake House. At Ananda Nihal Ratnaike always dreamed of becoming a journalist. Then the dream came true - he landed on the lap of the great Tarzie Vittachi in the Observer.

Nihal was lucky: at a tender age, the tall lanky young man was going to hit the top in journalism under the tutelage of a genius in the journalistic profession - Tarzie, his editor. Vittachi immediately took a fancy to the fellow-Anandian.

Perhaps because of this bias and to groom the young cub reporter and following the old dictum, to teach to swim you must be pushed into water, Tarzie often sent Nihal on dangerous assignments - but the tutor would be there if there was a risk of drowning to rescue him.

In the Observer as a reporter Nihal was pitted against stalwarts - William de Alwis, Nalin Fernando. He must have been frustrated. His talents found expression in the occasional feature: writing human interest stories.

He brought a new freshness to Observer journalism with his style of lucidity and simplicity reminiscent of Chekhov and Hemingway. Reporters then were most of the time on the ‘beat’ not confined to telephone newsgathering in office.

One day Nihal was strolling down in the Fort busy corridors of Millers and then suddenly he stood still. He spotted (he was sure he saw) Henry Miller, the controversial American writer peering into the Millers show case.

Nihal astounded and thrilled by his sudden discovery of the celebrated author whose two sensational novels Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn were stupidly banned in Ceylon walked up stealthily from behind and tapped the old man.... “Sorry ‘no’, I am not Henry Miller,” the strange white man said as if in a huff and walked away. Nihal was dismayed.

Was the man annoyed being recognised? However, Nihal back at the typewriter in the Observer News Desk wrote the rather strange story and when it appeared in the Observer sent a cutting to Henry Miller.

Miller amused wrote back and said that was his double it had happened many times before in many countries. However he was sending a packet of his books - mind you, including the two banned Tropic books. But, Miller insisted, please don’t write - “for, I don’t have the time to reply you.”

Finally Nihal’s writing talents found full recognition as Viranga in the Daily News. His art column KALA by Viranga was a classic, a fine piece of aesthetic journalism, cultured writing straying often into Bohemianism. Nihal’s writing was not abrasive, his criticism, if there was any in the field of art, was mild. Most of the artists were his friends - Chitrasena, Manjusri, Henry Jayasena, Amaradeva.

He wrote about them passionately and brought recognition to them among the anglicised audience. His exercise won our applause because he filled a vacuum in the theatre of English journalism - there was a lament among Sinhala readers and lovers of art that the English newspapers took no notice of Sinhala Fine Arts.

Viranga was from the anglicised class but volunteered to turn Godaya to write about our Sinhala artistes. It was a bold move at a time when the Sinhalese and their art and culture were considered Yakkoish.

English readership

Nihal in his writing as Viranga not only brought to the English readership the happenings in the Sinhala art medium but stirred a new interest in the anglicised Sinhala class (most of them of the snobbish Govi Gama fraternity) in the local world of art.

Even the sophisticates of Colombo 7 began to patronise the poor Lumbini Theatre where Henry Jayasena with wife Manel and other young Sinhala boys brought to life splendidly the life of the most distressed and harassed Sinhala woman of our history, Kuveni with Irangani Serasinghe the stylised and realistic play Apata Puthe Magak Nethe; the adaptations.

The Colombo 7 folk accustomed to reading only English newspapers were curious when Viranga wrote in the Daily News about the Sinhala theatre, the great dancing of Chitrasena and Vajira, the ‘folkish’, spiritual haunting melodies of Amaradeva the parting of Manjari.

The old Tower Hall of Maradana which was our Broadway in those days when life was easy and unheavy would have gained greater national recognition and significance if writers like Viranga had been there to write about it. Viranga’s writing in the column Kala invested the Sinhala art with a new respectability. Our sophisticated Sinhalayas are awed when anything about anyone is written in the English language newspapers.

But ironically the people’s art columnist Viranga had his share of discomfiture too. Film Director K. A. W. Perera (it must be said that his films were far above the commercial trash that were dished out then produced a film called Lasanda an adaptation of the novel of the same name by T. B. Ilangaratne then a powerful Cabinet Minister in the Sirima Bandaranaike Government.

Features Editor

When the film was shown at the Regal Cinema, Daily News asked Nihal to review it. Viranga was hesitant. He saw the film and told the Features Editor that his review might not be to the liking of the producers and the hierarchy. That’s okay, go ahead and write.

Viranga wrote - the first para was a cheeky comment on the Baila sequence in the film (Nihal detested Kaffirinja of course he conceded that people enjoyed the fundamental right to appreciate Baila too) and it did not go down well with the creators of the film.

No sooner than the review appeared there was angry K.A.W. Perera storming Lake House with a damning reply to the review. It was a lengthy contradiction in which, inter alia, K.A.W. called Viranga a reactionary - heaven forbid, Nihal was anything but that.

The reply (perhaps K.A.W. was egged on by the novelist T.B. Ilangaratne - the term ‘reactionary’ was very much in vogue in his political vocabulary) was carried in full in the Daily News.

Nihal Ratnaike took his writing very seriously. He was never careless about his writing. When a proof-reader made a blunder once he was distressed. Nihal very stressingly written the word ‘dank’ in his story; the proof-reader changed it to ‘dark’. Agonisingly Nihal protested - “I am losing confidence in my writing.” Of course the proof-reader was not penalised. It was a lament made in anguish.

When Nihal was offered a culture trip to Paris, he was elated. Paris was the pasture of heaven for any artist. Paris where the Bohemians of the Lost Generation Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller gathered, Hemingway shooting parrots to keep his hunger away, hiding in bistros away from the gaze of Fitzgerald to write his one ‘true sentence’ starving but writing..... in Paris which he called a Moveable Feast.... Nihal strolling in Paris dressed in Batik sarong to the bewilderment and appreciation of Parisians, learning to grow a beard which he kept on there afterwards and writing to the Daily News about “a nut country” where rioting protesting students held sway.

When Neil Armstrong shockingly landed on the moon, Viranga wrote something he attributed to playwright and dramatist Henry Jayasena. According to Viranga Henry had been sceptical about Armstrong’s historic feat. Jayasena was furious and wrote back that he was uncharitably misquoted. Jayasena’s angry rebuttal was carried in the Daily News with Viranga’s devastatingly pithy response: “So” It was Reggie Perera, Nihal’s bosom friend who felt most hurt by a Viranga film review. Nihal while commending the acting and music of Sadol Kandulu lambasted the film script which was by Reggie Perera. Reggie took umbrage and was standing at the footsteps of Lake crying for Nihal’s blood. But mercifully nothing untoward happened.

To our relief the two friends departed Lake House with arms around each other either to Sandella, or Art Centre the two Bohemian joints of the Colombo men of art and letters for a straight shot of arrack. Nihal Ratnaike may be embarrassed and perturbed by this column which is written stealthily. But there is no help for it - I am writing about Lake House THEN; as for NOW, I am distressed and sad that Nihal has cast his pen away. Pick it up again friend!

To be continued