Growing up with him

Professor Sunanda MAHENDRA

Dr Gunadasa Amarasekara, our good friend and writer of fame, has reached the ripe age of 83 years. While wishing him all good health, well being and many happy returns, I go down the memory lane with a few encounters. Most of us of my age group grew up with some of his books, both creative and otherwise.

I remember two of his short story collections titled as ‘Ratu Rosa Mala’ and ‘Jeevana Suvanda’, which were mostly linked with the literary teachings commencing from mid 50s. Some of the short stories embedded in these two collections were both Chekhovian and Joycian in content and structure. But the indigenous flavour was the hallmark in such stories as ‘Bicykalaya’, a narrative with a protagonist named Siyadoris. Perhaps it is a truth that we grew up with these narratives, and still wish to read them over and over again.

Emotional experiences

Then came his poems in such collections as ‘Bhava Geeta’, ‘Uyanaka Hinda Liyu Kavi’, ‘Amal Biso’ and ‘Gurulu Vatha’. He was both experimental and trendsetting. Some of the poems in ‘Bhava Geetha’ still haunts in us as intimate emotional experiences in such experiences as love, nature, adolescent aspirations, nostalgia and other aesthetic experiences.

The readers were engrossed in these experiences as a welcome measure to the much mundane poetic overdose of the existing pattern of creativity. In the second collection of poems, Amarasekara was more liberal minded with some matured and academic discipline both in content and form. One good example is the poem titled as ‘Diyasindunu Marukathara’, which reminisces T S Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’.

But I do not want to make any comparison of the two. In his long poem, he visualizes perhaps the pseudo modernity which we experience now, in sixties. The gradual alienation of the individual in an uprooted society was perhaps visualized in his poem, which presumably is one that should be rediscovered today. But I am not sure if the present day academics are properly tuned to such literary nuances.His very first novel was titled ‘Karumakkarayo’, which was also made into a Sinhala film by the late creator of some standing Tissa Abeysekara. At the time of the publication, the work was attacked as well as hailed by all fronts. What Amarasekara wanted to express, as I felt on my first reading, was the calamities that arise in some rural household life, with the gradual dawn of commercialism seeping into body structure of the family pattern.

The novel also portrayed various nuances of hitherto unexpressed family alliances which would have been trounced as unethical by the conventional critic of the day.

His next novel ‘Depa Noladdo’, was a short narrative, which tried to express the inner nature of human experiences. But unfortunately the work was not discussed in the way it would have been. Amarasekara is a social thinker who felt that the youth in the rural sector of the country should take up the lead. He was trying his best to gather the ideology and frame it into a series of narratives triggering off from some of the experiences he gathered from the pre-insurrection period around 1969.

London days

I remember he was quite vigilant about some of the local happenings while spending his time in academic pursuits in London. I was the managerial producer of the BBC’s ‘Sandeshaya’ Sinhala programme. He would walk up to my office for two main functions. One was to read the local newspapers that we were getting from the post. The other was to contribute to our programme on various subjects, especially the medical sources.

His contributions to the radio were received well in Sri Lanka. He was gathering more and more human experiences, as a futuristic measure, which reached culmination with his series of Sinhala novels he wrote on his return to the country. His protagonist was Piyadasa, who is reflected as his own portrait, traversing a circuitous path in the globe and reaching his homeland.

Renaissance anticipated

He had sufficient, as he has even now, material for a long saga, which is continuously expressed. Commencing from the narrative titled ‘Gamanaka Mula’ (Beginning of a Journey), his intention is to make the reader picture in the first instance the immediate post 1956 era. Has it really dawned or ushered in a renaissance or an era of a common man, as anticipated.Or has it not? Then he visualizes the protagonist Piyadasa traversing to a gradually dawned urban sector of life. With all his learning, he is really equipped to be a human being in that frame. The sequel of the first narrative titled as ‘Gamdorin Eliyata’ (out of the village). What are his aspirations? Is he a sensitive person who knows his social pattern? Then the reader from time to time comes to terms with the protagonist in the other works that had followed. One is titled as ‘Vankagiriya’ or the circuitous path. Then comes the sequel ‘Inimage Ihalata’ (Up the ladder).

Gauging genuinty

He sees the Piyadasa as a person who dwindles from one area to another predominantly with middle class values, embraced, but at the same time questioning the validity of the same. I may be mistaken in the interpretation. But as a creator, he is more self referential and honest than some of the pseudo spinners of long drawn narratives. Despite being an award winning short story writer and a poet, Amarasekara never anticipated that kind of mundane status and honour bestowed on him.Some of his narratives are translated into English. One example comes as the translation Apasu Gamana as ‘Going Back’, translated by Reggi Siriwardhana. Perhaps it is the right time to embark on Amarasekara studies and include it in the literary curricula. His contributions to periodicals in newspapers reach a formidable size. Amarasekara had not wasted time. As he pointed out in his Godage literary Festival address as the guest of honour, ‘the time has come for us to gauge the genuinty from falsity.’