Siyapatha: Memoirs about a genius
Aravinda Hettiarachchi
“My thoughts, from my delicate ages, were attracted not to naturalism
but to poetry. My first memory initiates with four Kasa trees grown up
at the fence between the road and the courtyard in front of the house we
inhabited. I still remember that I used to look at these Kasa trees in
my ‘L’ shaped long verandah and have spent long moments of thought by
sitting silently there.”
This is how Tissa as a boy has stated his thinking. Yet this ideology
went a long way in Sri Lankan arts and intellectual history after 500
years of colonialism.
Tissa was brought up in the pre-1956 education system in this country
where even a person of a rural area could accomplish the capability of
reading, writing and uttering in both the mother tongue and English
language.
Therefore, Tissa was also a refined artiste and an intellectual of
self study who could converse devotedly on both Sinhala and English
equally. This is an uncommon quality of a person after the extreme
change took place in the education system in 1956. Therefore, after
people like Tissa (treasures), the society will remain a lack of
intellect and non accurate guidance.
This is proved by the last paragraphs of Gunasiri Silva. He says that
after the generation of masterminds such as Newton Gunasinghe, Regie
Siriwardene, Charles Abeysekara, Sugathapala de Silva, Tissa Abeysekara
and others, a never unfilled gap had set in for the reason that there is
no such a socio-political background for grooming such people in the
present society.
In this context, the book named Siyapatha, even though it contains a
handful of stories, emerge a lot of significant messages to the society
today that how our society lacks with intellectual capacity and correct
guidance. If the educational system remain as this, it will be unable to
produce scholars or artistes who could deal with languages.
According to D.B. Nihalasinha in this book, Tissa, before writing a
script or its dialogue, he goes through a deep reading of books and long
dragging of discussions. Nihalsinha was deeply attracted to Tissa for
this deep alertness of him while he was involved in cinema.
We are losing today many teachers due to bad education system brought
after 1956, and the economy after 1977.
Sunil Mihindukula dared to give direct exclamation that Tissa is the
only intellectual who made an insightful explanation on the art of
scriptwriting.
The intellectual capacity of Tissa on cinema is immeasurable and
fascinating, says Patrick Rathnayake. He had the capacity to make us
like a film that we have even never seen.
“It’s a divine pleasure to hear his speeches where no word is used
without a reason. The cinematic knowledge I got from Tissa, I didn’t get
it from any other interlocutor in cinema.”
Uditha Gunasekara says that the preciseness in Tissa should be
studied by the country and treat him as a national icon. To me, the real
meaning of this national icon could not be found within the post 1956
period. It focuses from pre 1956 periods social components to its
future.
Yet Priyankara Rathnayake, whose intellectual acumen was influenced
by the 88-89 uprising period, (he also came through the post-1956
one-language education system) states a very profound idea about Tissa.
He placed Tissa’s cinema in the exact line between the ascetic cinema
style of Lester and the radical cinema of Dharmasena Pathairaja. Thus he
found both these qualities simultaneously in Tissa’s cinema.
And his struggle for a better classical art in cinema was unique, his
death will affect to the history of struggle for a better classical art
in cinema. Yet the struggle remains even for the future generations.
This is how Ashoka Handagama expresses on the loss of this valuable
personality. |
