‘Dammika’ was hardly an omission
A few days ago I wrote about a ‘get-together’. It was a sending-off
party to a friend who was going overseas and also a celebration of
friendships that had lasted 20 years and survived political
disagreements, loyalty-shifts and the trajectories that personal lives
take, sometimes dragging the relevant persons far away from the world of
power and intrigue, betrayal and sacrifice, rhetoric and white lie. I
gave that article the title ‘A Janatha Mithuro moment’ and referred in
passing to an organization by that name which those who gathered that
night had helped form or were part of.
Political associate
I got an email from a friend from my University days, who, after
reading the article made the following observation: ‘Malinda, you’ve
forgotten one great name of the founder of Janatha Mithuro: Dammika
Amarakoon.’
I replied that he was not at the little party we had that night. No
deserves to have his/her life written in a line where name and life are
embedded in the midst of so many other names and lives that they become
invisible. I was not writing biography and am not doing so now; just
wanted to say that Dammika, most than any of those who gathered that
night, was and is still my closest political associate.
Political associates remain good friends if the relevant politics
coincide or the trajectories of political transformation run parallel to
one another. It is friendships that remain strong regardless of the
political differences that are precious (at least when it comes to
politically-associated friendships).
Anti-JVP
Dammika is unforgettable for many reasons. He was one year junior to
me at Dumbara Campus, Peradeniya University. He had excelled at
badminton while at Dharmaraja College and was in the National Junior
Pool, I believe. He was a sportsman and a sports fan. Followed all
sports. Played most of them. I still remember going for a Kandy-Police
rugger match at Nittawela with Dhammika. Kandy were leading right up to
the final minute.
Two goals, on in the last minute and one in injury time, saw the cops
trip the hosts and left the Kandy supporters stunned. This was in the
early nineties. We still talk about that match. Dammika recalls: ‘the
spectators hung around as though there had to be more minutes left to
play’.
It was, admittedly, the politics that generated most conversations
between us. We were Marxists then, he and I, and of the ‘Old Left’
tradition. We were anti-JVP, therefore. And yet, we could identify with
the student movement and its objections to the UNP regime of the time.
We were both horrified by the fascism of both UNP and JVP and would both
object later to the complicity of the Old Left in the bloodbath that
took 60,000 lives in just two years. Dammika complained that the LSSP
never opened the party office in Kandy for him to tender his
resignation.
Jathika Chinthanaya
We were both inspired by the writings of Gunadasa Amarasekera and
Nalin De Silva of ‘Jathika Chinthanaya’ fame and they helped rescue us
from the determinism, reductionism and overall inadequacy of Marxism. It
was natural, then, for us to gravitate to the Janatha Mithuro brand of
green socialism and the nationalisms that just could not suffer the
pandering to Eelamism by way of myth-mongering of the Old Left and their
new avatar The NGO Lobby (well, key sections of it anyway) and their
thinly veiled anti-Buddhist politics.
Dammika stood up to the JVP in the early nineties. Single-handedly.
He worked tirelessly. He started a magazine called ‘Sanvaada’ (‘Debate’)
and created the ground conditions for political debate to take place and
eventually for the JVP monopoly of student politics to be seriously
challenged throughout the 90s.
His contributions to various political magazines constitute to my
mind the most articulate, theoretically profound, philosophically deep
and intellectually honest contributions in the Sinhala language during
the past two decades. If he were to collect and publish his essays they
would put to shame most academics in his field of specialization,
political science. His essay on friendship, published in the ‘London’ I
think, is a classic, a wonderful exposition where philosophy, politics
and literature blend in ways that make it impossible to extricate any of
these threads from the tapestry.
Old music
He was funny. I asked him, a few years ago, when he was visiting Sri
Lanka (he lives in the USA, where he was once an award-winning cook and
now teaches in a university) what he thought of marriage: ‘Marriage, my
friend, is a sinful institution!’. He claimed, at the age of 42, that he
had never been in love, but a year ago, he wrote to me claiming, ‘Machan...Dammika
here...I think I am in love.’ The subject line of the email read
‘Touched for the very first time at the age of 43!’ Yes, he loves music.
Old music. And films too. He gives me ‘must watch’ lists every now and
then.
He could marry her for her voice alone, he said. He was becoming
dysfunctional, he confessed, reporting that he had spent a weekend in
bed doing nothing. He asked if this is what they call ‘love’. He
believed it was a Karmic thunderbolt hitting him for laughing at those
who claimed to be madly in love.: ‘I do not care if I have to wait for
another 10 years; if that day comes I want to marry her in the
traditional Sri Lankan way, covering her with jewellery from head to
toe. And you will be my bestman.’ I’ve seen him weep over other things,
man’s inhumanity, social injustice, poverties and tragedies that are so
preventable that they challenge us to examine the worth of our
existences. He had no tears for women. Or so I had thought!
Adorable friends
It is more than a quarter of a century since I met Dammika Amarakoon.
Whenever he’s here we meet up. He meets all his friends, organizes
cricket matches and picnics. And we talk. For hours. About all kinds of
things. And he knew how to laugh too.
A few days ago he sent me an email with the following on the subject
line: ‘inspected enough’. There was a request: ‘Machan, can you please
take me off your ‘morning inspection’; your name is all over my
account...it is like a curse.’ I obliged.
He likes to insult me. He praises me too. He once said he’s writing a
sequel to Plato’s ‘The Republic’ and that he will dedicate it to me
because, in his words, ‘you will be forced to read it and you more than
anyone I know deserve it’.
He’s the purest political associate I’ve known. I felt stronger with
him by myself. Felt privileged to stand with him. We were not many then.
He is the most adorable of friends. Someone to die for, without
hesitation.
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