Reach for the skies

Sachitra MAHENDRA

Yana Maga

If you want to understand a place and its peoples you must get under its skin, you must gaze with love and lucidity, walk through its landscape, pick up shards of its history, catch facets of its present and glimpse pathways of possible futures.

You must listen to its stories as told by its greatest story tellers, look, listen and learn with a degree of humanism. If you want to understand Sri Lanka, you must read Elmo Jayawardena’s Realist Humanism. Yana Maga tells the story of where we are coming from, the path we are on and the open road ahead. - Dr Dayan Jayatilleka

An inspiring chronicle... Jayawardena’s journey stands out quite exquisite and exotic. His works have much to comment on humanity: how frail it is. It took him almost a decade to finish his work that takes us across the breathtaking landscape of our own history.

Captain Elmo Jayawardena

It is one riveting journey - Last Kingdom of Sinhalay, a novel of more than 800 taller-than-average pages. In 2001 Sam’s Story won the Gratiaen award. In 2005 Sinhalay won the State Literary Award. The author of both these works goes by the name of Captain Elmo Jayawardena, an airline captain who is dedicating his leisure times for ‘people without people’.

Q: Sri Lanka’s English literature is celebrated in two festivals: State Literary Awards and Gratiaen. Nihal de Silva’s Road From Elephant Pass received both awards, translated into Sinhala and was filmed later on – a rare achievement. You were a close colleague of Nihal de Silva.

A: He was someone I really loved as a friend and even today whenever the subject of literature comes, I miss him very much.

Q: Gratiaen judgment is questioned at times. You are also a recipient though you did not submit your recent works for the award.

A: I think the Gratiaen is a great award - gives something for the writer to compete for. Yes I did not submit Sinhalay and Rainbows in Braille for the award. That is with deep respect to the award.

If by some fortune I got even shortlisted, I would have deprived a new author of that accolade (not that I would been shortlisted) but I won it once and that is enough.

Q: You had taken 10 years to complete Sinhalay. Why?

A: I wrote when I was doing a full time job as an Airline Captain. The subject was so vast and I had to be careful, and I needed all the research possible. It is 850 pages and that is a lot to write.

Q: You are an airline captain by profession. I won’t inquire how you could thrive in a diametrically opposed career. But I’m wondering how you would find time for writing.

A: Don’t forget I run CandleAid where more than 700 volunteers work from 21 cities. It is all a matter of managing time. I train pilots for the Boeing Co and for other Airlines, and write too when I can wake up at 4 am.

Q: You are inclined towards charity. Do you see any link between creative writing and charity?

A: No, creative writing is in no way connected to working to help people in need.

Q: However, all funds from your books are channeled to charity. Your latest work, a coffee table book called Yana Maga, is expensive and profits are channeled to charity.

A: Yana Maga is what our lives are all about. The path we travel. Each of us has a Yana Maga which dictates to us what our lives will be.

Life for us all is a matter of Yana Maga and how well we travel and how strongly we face adversity and how much we lend our hands to fellow travelers.

The book comes out in late December, and, yes, the money I get is for ‘People without People’. I founded CandleAid Lanka with this objective. We are a link between one person’s generosity and another person’s humanitarian need. CandAid helps people who suffer from the multiple burdens of poverty. My job is to make the world hear their cries.

Q: The rest of your works are different from Sinhalay. They are not based on history.

A: I like to write different books. The latest is about a crow, ‘Kakiyan, the Story of a Crow’ which is metaphorical philosophy from someone who only looked at life differently. I will publish it after Yana Maga. It needs some polishing though. My next work will be ‘Revolution’ based on ’71 uprising.

Q: You help young Sri Lankan English authors a lot. How would you discern the difference between your generation and the modern generation?

A: The modern generation has computers to write on and Google to get all the information - if only they can just write for the love of writing and not worry too much about who’s going to read the book or who is going to publish - there is such a lot of young talent and it is a shame such is wasted as much to do with writing books is who you know and who you are - that is very sad

Q: Sri Lankan English authors don’t enjoy a good market. This is partly because the English readers reach for native English writers. Do you agree?

A: No. It is mainly because the local authors do not get marketed well. There must be a literary festival for local authors if we are to promote local writing - so that people would know them.

That is what they do in most lit fests: Byron Bay, Ubud, Singapore Lit fest have a lot of coverage. I would certainly have spearheaded such a festival, if I had the time. But I don’t. If anyone leads, I will be giving 100 percent support. We can call it Annassi and Kadala gotu, find a place and invite people. It will be a great way to promote English writing.

It is high time Artscope had given it a thought. You can start a literary festival where the cost is minimal and participation is totally inexpensive and the literature is from the talented young or old but mostly unknown so that would be authors will not get buried before they start.

Q: Veteran Sinhala writers accuse that most Sri Lankan English writers lack common man’s conscience. Do you agree?

A: No, I don’t.

Q: Sri Lankan English literature seems to be stagnating, compared with Sinhala literature. How would you analyze it?

A: No encouragement to write simply because it is difficult to get published. Once I went for the Gratiaen awards and all five shortlisted were only in manuscript form. That is the time Shehan Karunatilaka won and Malinda Seneviratne was short listed person. Being the wonderful writer he is - he wasn’t published.

So why? There is a great difficulty for new authors to get published.

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