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[Book Review]
Power over prejudice
It takes only a few minutes in real life to establish that Rohini
Nanayakkara is a woman of purpose. Proudly so, in a formidable yet
rather restrained and gracious way. That is something only people of
presence can command.
In our parochial chauvinist society this might very well be
disparaged as an iron persona (think Thatcher, CBK and Indira Ghandi) in
various forms of bar/board room defeminisation. For male counterparts
the authority figure is romanticised as charisma. Brashness and bravado
too are in this lumpen euphemism.
Who cares?
 Women of Power transcend these petty insecurities of gender
hierarchies and the ceilings that are set through semantics and other
cultural cues. Silly stuff in a scheme of things that are predestined on
a grander scale. Success is after all a mind game; even in the older
order where career woman straddled work life with greater balance and
less sexual power play.
In ‘What glass ceiling?’ Michelle Gunawardana deftly establishes at
the outset , in a tone setting exchange, the no-nonsense,
let’s-get-cracking approach to life and circumstance that Rohini
Nanayakkara adopted in the male bastions of power, as an equal and often
path-finding player. Rather than a statement on gender discrimination,
the title of the book itself is a telling reflection of her attitude to
any and all obstacles in her path.
The intriguing and nonlinear biography of Rohini the corporate
persona is captured through a small but immensely readable set of
interviews and commentary. They trace the journey of this woman of
purpose and leave in their wake a portrait of an immensely capable
leader in our financial and corporate community.
That she strode through these corridors with a mix of grit and
sensibility, from a platform of a government bureaucracy that she helped
re-engineer, is in itself amazing. Her persistence is reminiscent of
women like Viviene Gunwardene and Florence Senanayake, though Florence
was perhaps in a league of her own, given the era and the political
paths she strode.
Rohini Nanayakkara too was someone who kept to her own beat. Raising
the bar or imploding the glass-ceiling, if you must insist on the set
paradigm. The choice of Michelle as writer of this tale is apt.
Biotechnologist turned banker turned scribe, Michelle the writer has
already brought to us the ‘The women behind your label’: portraits of
the rural women working in garment factories that transcended
circumstance to be role models and beacons in their workplaces and
communities. Stories that brought to life the flesh and blood realities
of these spirited women. In her private life Michelle races sailing
boats on the local and international circuit, and has won many awards
together with her husband. Pragmatic and astute, in her own tough but
quiet way, she would have the sensitivity needed to understand and
capture what went on in this world of business and banking.
Rohini was born in the last decades of British Colonial Ceylon, her
father Murukkanadurage Amarasena Wijeyaratne was a doctor in Government
service, who moved his family around from station to station, in the
process giving Rohini a good grounding in managing change and adapting
to different surroundings. In fact Rohini moved house and school nine
times in her first fifteen years. From Raththota in Matale to Lunawa
Moratuwa and then to Akuressa where her father, a seemingly introverted
man who despite being devout Buddhist had developed an admiration for
the rigour of Christian schools, sent her to Ratnapura Fergusan High
School, a Baptist school run by two English principals.
Later it was Kegalle and St. Joseph’s Convent, a Catholic School run
by Belgian and Irish nuns. There she recalls how she was imbued with
Irish folk mythology and Irish folk ballads. Of her years in Kegalle she
describes harsh memories of a bad outbreak of Malaria that her father
battled with in the hospital and starkly recalls many children dying.
Little vignettes of living history that add to the socio cultural value
of the book.
Her next move was to Newstead Negombo and exposure to the leadership
of another English headmistress. At fifteen some stability kicked in and
she moved to a bastion of Christian girls education, Methodist College.
These early years gave Rohini a strong grounding in diversity, and a
worldview that ranged from the eclectic mix of foreign teachers balanced
by life in village surroundings. This possibly set in place some key
factors for her capacity to go into unknown challenges and meet them
head-on, and the mix of cosmopolitan self-confidence and humility and
simplicity that have framed her world views. She also says that the
constant moving taught her lessons in detachment from possessions, which
she constantly needed to move away from (though she laments ruefully
that this admirable trait was lost in later life).
The book has some lovely imagery from her school holidays at her
grandfather, ‘Pappappa’s’ house in Randombe with memories of travel in
bullock carts and in his old Chevrolet, where neighbours included Dr.
Colvin R. de Silva and C. P. de Silva.
Rohini graduated from that idyllic haven of intellect and civility,
Peradeniya University in its halcyon days in 1959. She was fortunate to
have tutelage from some ‘brilliant people like Fr. Pinto, Prof.
Arasaratnam, Ian Vandendreisen and H A D S Gunesekera. Here, the memoirs
break off abruptly to take in some interesting tributes from her
colleagues and friends that add a whole new perspective to Rohini. A
device used as breaker in the book’s format, that lends it an
inside-out, outside-in perspective.
Manouri Muttetuwegama for instance says, ‘she is good sense
incarnate- very good at sizing people up and making balanced assessments
of people and situations... She has an extraordinarily tidy mind… her
drive determination and consummate professionalism is balanced by a
healthy sense of fun She is a perfectionist but without the migraine
headaches!’
Or take the rather touching tribute from her sister Delecia
Karunaratne –’My sister cares deeply for the people around her… She
always keeps her promises and sees anything she undertakes through to
the end..’ or the succinct description of her as a wife and mother by
her niece Eesha Speldewinde… ‘my uncle Cyril adored Rohini and was
extremely proud of her….. I have never seen anyone juggle work and
family life as well as she did.’
From there on, the third part of the book moves to her professional
career as she rose from one of the first two women that the Bank of
Ceylon recruited (and one of the first women bankers in Sri Lanka), to
breaking down invisible barriers of prejudice or ignorance in her work
life in a classically understated almost business-as-usual manner.
Woven amidst the iconic moments of the Bank are events in national
history, such as union uprisings and J VP problems. The transformation
of bank strategy with Rohini at its helm during the period 1989-1995
propelled an amazing swathe of pioneering innovations and firsts to the
local banking industry. The milestones include: ‘the introduction of
cheque guarantee cards, commercial paper issuance, asset securitisation,
forward rate agreements, interest rate and currency options and fixed
and floating rate deposit products. The bank also launched its first
unit trust, introduced credit cards, ATMs, and women’s and children’s
savings accounts, built a stronghold in SME credit, and expanded across
Asia into India, Pakistan and Nepal.’
Shehara de Silva |
