Features

The Copper Tumbler & Donkeys in Mannar: A Work of Mourning – II

Published

3 years ago

2023/07/21

By Laleen Jayamanne

(First part of this article appeared in The Island Midweek Review on 12 July 2023)
‘it is not narrative that we should abandon but chronology’’ Kumar Shahani

Matter and Memory: Copper and Fire

The image of the copper tumbler on fire in the microwave oven is shocking and dangerous because of the proximity to electricity. But beyond that visceral shock, the image itself feels like the burning heart of this quiet film. This image on fire, in the hum-drum space of the kitchen, is an accident. The film doesn’t tell us who put it in there but we can guess. The tumbler itself is also emotionally supercharged. We learn that lots of stuff has happened to that copper tumbler, it has a mini-history.

The old mother, Daisy Teacher, was entrusted with a set of special copper tumblers and other personal items for safekeeping by her friend and colleague, Fatima Teacher, before the latter was evicted from her home in Mannar, along with a host of other Muslims. Clearly, she expected to return soon. Daisy Teacher’s son Jude who questioned the LTTE about this expulsion disappears at the same time and in her grief his mother collapses the two events, blaming her friend. She gets rid of the set of tumblers and all of the valuables left with her in trust. She has gone past understanding that like her son, Fatima Teacher is also a victim of LTTE violence, not the cause of it.

Quite by chance a single tumbler survives Daisy Teacher’s effort to get rid of the set. The surviving tumbler opens up a wound barely healed and also potential. Several Lankan and other critics have appreciated that the violence of the war is not represented in the film, but instead emerges in recollections. The single tumbler is a special copper cup, invested with the values of friendship between two professional women, the Tamil Daisy Teacher who taught English and the Muslim Fatima Teacher who taught Biology. Daisy Teacher flings the tumbler on the floor yelling at the maid for having served her tea in it when she had been ordered never to do so. Soon after as a result, the repressed past (at once personal and historical in scale), erupts irresistibly into the present.

Potentiality as an idea can be treated in two ways. As an Aristotelian scientific category, it is about strict cause and effect. It’s a latent possibility in an actuality – for example, a seed is a potential tree. The seed can only become that species of tree and no other. Change here is predictable and rationally understandable by science.

Now, the image of the tumbler on fire does not have a potential in this sense, its outcomes are indeterminate. It creates a breach within the hum-drum everyday normality. It opens up an old wound and raw pain manifests as shock and anger. But the sound and image of a copper tumbler of hot tea, first flung on the floor by Daisy Teacher, then catching fire in a microwave oven, and then subject to discussion, harbours historical memory.

If we allow the sense of utter urgency of the ‘mad’ old mother to rattle us, and we linger there, the sparks will fire our imagination. Then we might recall that there are similarly singular, disturbing fire-powered images in Sumathy’s two previous films also. I am thinking of the white car set ablaze by a Sinhala racist nationalist mob, with the film director K. Venkat trapped within it and his muffled mournful cries as he is burned to death, in Sons and Fathers. Then there is the burning tea bush in Ingirunthu, with Peter seated beside it playing his accordion in the dead of night, for example. But in their repetition, these fiery images do very different things, never the same.

So, the copper tumbler on fire in the microwave, in the kitchen, is not a Symbol, nor a Metaphor, or an Allegory. A symbol, like for example the blindfolded figure holding the scales of justice signifies that The Law is unbiased, objective, and rationally balanced. A metaphor, according to the very etymology of the word, converts one thing into something else without residue, unlike a simile, as in ‘Juliet is the sun,’ pure radiance. As for allegory, it has a bad name because it is arbitrary, unlike symbol and metaphor.

So, there can be ‘a tea bush on fire’ in Sumathy’s Ingirunthu which does not turn to ashes. The relationship between the tea bush and fire is ‘arbitrary’ which is what allegory does, it stops time, so we can read the image. You can’t say for example, that the tea bush is fire, there is no intelligible connection between the two. Their relationship is arbitrary but an imaginative director may help us perceive a sensuous abstraction, creating an allegorical connection, rather than a dry abstract juxtaposition.

What critical move can we then make (having eliminated the main rhetorical figures we critics reach for, filed neatly in our brains), when we are lost for words in the face of such a singular image as a copper tumbler ablaze? There is, I think, a challenge, a critical imperative and an intellectual impulse too, to keep going back to it to see and hear it and think of its materiality and its immaterial powers of connectivity (sparks) with the rest of the film – its filmic provenance, so to speak.

We can register its unusual materiality; it’s a copper cup, not a base metal like tin of which most tumblers (belek coppa) are made. Who makes tumblers in copper one wonders and learn from Daisy Teacher’s rambling, crazy but partly lucid monologue that, ‘it’s of very good quality (using English), they don’t make them like that anymore’. It is believed that the ancient Mantai port, the main one for Anuradhapura, once even exported Seruwila copper to India. So, it’s very likely that a tradition of making those copper cups was alive in the country, alluded to by Daisy Teacher.

Copper is a precious civilizational metal, one of the oldest materials to be crafted by humans, providing also the material for the iconic bronze sculpture of Lanka across Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as Modernist and Contemporary abstract sculpture. So, a pure copper tumbler is part of a formidable Lankan lineage (though humbly domestic).

It sanctifies the friendship, trust and professional loyalty shared by Daisy Teacher and Fatima Teacher. That copper tumbler, in what poets call its ‘thisness,’ in its facticity, in its material links to history, is a Bazinean ‘fact-image,’ in both its use value and iconic value. It stirs one’s faculty of memory, opening up Epic-Memory, connecting an intimate female friendship with historical civilizational memory of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious polity, which includes trade and migration too. Those, as I see and understand, are some of the potential of the burning copper tumbler.

* * * *

The penultimate sequence in The Single Tumbler is of Old Daisy Teacher, dressed in a lime green sari with a dark blue-green blouse, leaving her house, shuffling along the main road, alone, with a dazed and distressed expression (captured in a profile tracking mid-shot, framed against trees), carrying that dented burnt copper tumbler, hoping to return it to her friend.

Even in her madness her ethical sensibility has re-emerged in her futile quest. She passes two donkeys at a crossroad when the camera leaves them behind, gathering speed on one of Sumathy’s favourite tracking shots taken from Lalitha’s car taking her to the airport, leaving behind Mannar town with its large Christian cemetery and church, crossing the causeway with its water landscape vistas as music strikes up.

Instead of ending there, quite unexpectedly, we are taken back to the family home. We see the familiar back veranda with a pot, mortar and pestle and some firewood, where Daisy Teacher gave her monologue. A wide shot of the house front, at a mid-distance, appears as the last image, rather than as the establishing shot at the beginning of the film. In inverting the traditional chronological order, this home we have inhabited is soaked in memory and feeling, which would not have been the case had we seen it as just a house at the beginning.

The film in fact opens with a woman glancing at the camera and saying animatedly, ‘Amma!’ It’s an odd way to open a film in mid-sentence, with this disorienting mid-shot, to not be given a context (the master shot), but that is indeed its strength, one realises later. We enter the film in medias res (in the middle) of hearing an outburst. The context becomes clear soon after, learning that it is the older daughter from Canada, Lalitha who appears to address us. But we are not quite sure of the film’s mode of address, because the camera has made its presence felt through that repeated direct glance at us through the camera lens. The entire opening scene is filmed with a hand-held camera which adds a feeling of volatility, a slight sense of unease physically.

Suddenly the scene cuts to a public street of a row of closed shops but with a snatch of conversation among the siblings played over it for continuity. The cut away happens when Jesse mentions the bazaar of their childhood and alludes to the army’s rampage in Mannar town during the war, when they attacked innocent people and burned down shops in retaliation to an LTTE ambush of an army truck leading to deaths. Through these rhetorical moves, Sumathy breaks the traditional rules of scene construction. And in doing so she creates a narrative freedom to shift her mode of address in ways that are unexpected, disorienting and yet rhythmically persuasive.

I haven’t said much about the conversations and chit chat which really constitutes the film. There are the usual family conversations, catching up on this and that, then there is the long and disorienting monologue of Daisy Teacher, also recounting traumatic events. Anthony appears to be the sibling most damaged by the war years, having lost his youth to its terror. The two sisters remember a distant past that sounds idyllic. When Lalitha (who slips into English intermittently), asks about the disappearance of Jude, Anu, stuck at home, doing chores, caring for their mother and her own family, responds impatiently with, ‘that’s an old story, now we have other problems’! But anecdotal accounts of the history of the civil war, its horror at a personal and mass scale are woven in and out casually, including the circumstances of Jude’s disappearance. The question about what really happened to him keeps coming up. Amidst all this, a few lines of Daisy Teacher have stayed with me. When she hears that Fatima Teacher has died, she responds sharply:

“Why did she die! She’s my age. Why did she have to die!” This is in the same monologue where she irrationally says that Jude disappeared because Fatima Teacher cursed him.

Neo-Realist Acting?

The Post WWII Italian Neo-Realist cinema created a new kind of cinema and film acting, on the rubble of a war-ravaged Italy, even as the Nazis withdrew from the country’s North. Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1946), introduced a new kind of realism into acting which Bazin theorised in the course of celebrating the emergence of this movement of cinematic resistance to fascism from 1945 on. While Rossellini worked with celebrated actors like Anna Mangani, he also included non-actors, and people from the very milieux filmed. He elicited remarkable performances from them, especially from little children.

Sumathy also uses a mix of people, experienced actors like Sharmini Masilamani as Lalitha, and her own eldest sister Nirmala Rajasingham, as the mother. The actor playing the younger brother, Suman Loganathan appeared in Ingirunthu. Nirmala as a person, carries a complex political history. These personal connections with the realities presented are very important for Sumathy, in her choice of people to act in her films, along with their professional competence, which Is why I am invoking Italian Neo-Realism here, which continues to nourish world cinema, though the Italian movement ended after a few years with post-war modernisation. (To be continued)

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Features

Coercive laws recipe for future misrule

Published

2 hours ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Jehan Perera

The NPP government is going after powerful figures from the past and present who have engaged in corruption, fraud and criminal activity in a way that no previous government in Sri Lanka has done. Former ministers, politicians and senior state officials are among those facing investigations and legal proceedings. The government has placed before Parliament a document listing 50 cases involving corruption, fraud and other crimes. These include not only financial offences but also cases relating to the Easter Sunday attacks, the killings of Lasantha Wickrematunge and Wasim Thajudeen, the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda and attacks on journalists Keith Noyahr and Upali Tennakoon.

The significance of this effort is that it can demonstrate that nobody is above the law, regardless of political connections or social standing, which will help restore public confidence in institutions that have long been distrusted. It could also recover public resources, improve the investment climate and strengthen the foundations for a more prosperous and just Sri Lanka. When criticised for focusing on the past and not the present, the government position is that these investigations were initiated under earlier governments, particularly between 2015 and 2019, and that it is now allowing investigators to proceed to deal with the backlog without political interference.

But there is an aspect of the government’s approach that is less justifiable. While pursuing past wrongdoing by powerful individuals, it is also advancing a triumvirate of draft laws that could give the state sweeping powers over citizens, organisations and dissent in the present and future. The draft Prevention of Terrorism legislation, the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill and the NGO Registration and Supervision Bill raise serious questions about the over-centralisation of power. Each of these laws strengthens the powers of the state while weakening the rights and safeguards that protect people from their misuse and thus questions the basic rights of people in democracy where ‘the power of the people is vested in the government’. This is a recipe for future misrule rather than the rule of law. As the well-known saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Proposed Laws

The real test of system change, for which the government obtained an overwhelming mandate, requires not only a government willing to hold others accountable, but one prepared to subject itself to the same principles of legality, transparency and restraint. The three proposed laws that are particularly important in this regard are the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill, the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill and the NGO Registration and Supervision Bill. Each of these draft laws has been presented as serving a legitimate purpose. Preventing terrorism, combating organised crime and ensuring that NGOs do not facilitate money laundering or terrorist financing are proper responsibilities of the state. Sri Lanka has international obligations in these areas, and no responsible government can disregard them. However, the existence of a legitimate objective does not justify every means adopted to achieve it.

The proposed Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill illustrates the problem. Although its definition of terrorism draws on a model developed by a former United Nations Special Rapporteur, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka has warned that the definition of terrorism extends beyond the model and could bring legitimate political protest, trade union action and civil disobedience within the scope of counter-terrorism legislation. Its concerns also include prolonged detention, inadequate judicial oversight and restrictions on access to legal counsel. These are objections that go to the heart of the relationship between the citizen and the state. The government cannot credibly promise to protect democratic freedoms while creating powers that could be used to restrict them. It is necessary for the government to reassess the draft through transparent consultation and revise provisions that could criminalise legitimate dissent.

The Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill raises similar concerns. It is presented as giving effect to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, which Sri Lanka ratified in 2006. The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) has argued that the convention does not require many of the bill’s provisions. The proposed law extends to a broad range of offences, permits detention orders lasting up to a year, makes confessions to police admissible for purposes of legal evidence, and introduces extensive surveillance powers. A law intended to dismantle criminal networks should not create a parallel system of exceptional powers that could be applied far beyond organised crime. Nor should safeguards developed through years of experience with abuses under the Prevention of Terrorism Act be weakened through legislation bearing a different name. The government should review whether or not existing laws could be used effectively to control these crimes or whether each exceptional power is necessary.

Civil Society

The proposed NGO Registration and Supervision Bill presents another test of the government’s intentions. The government may reasonably seek transparency in the finances of organisations receiving public or foreign funds, including measures to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. It seeks to justify its overreach on the grounds of meeting the internationally mandated requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for the Asia-Pacific region. But these objectives do not justify placing civil society and NGOs under excessive administrative control when even the FATF ranks them as low to medium risks. The draft bill would require registration and renewal, impose extensive obligations on organisations and empower authorities to suspend or deregister them on broadly framed grounds. It is important to redraft provisions that confer excessive discretion over registration, renewal, suspension and deregistration of NGOs.

Among the concerns raised by United Nations human rights special rapporteurs with regard to the draft NGO law are provisions requiring organisations to align with government policies and restrictions that could affect advocacy, dissent and freedom of association. The implications extend well beyond organisations that engage directly with the government. Community groups, human rights organisations, independent researchers and organisations working on reconciliation or accountability could find their activities constrained by uncertainty over how these provisions might be interpreted. Organisations that criticise government policies are not thereby working against the country. Their freedom to do so is part of what distinguishes a democracy from a system in which the government determines which opinions and activities are acceptable.

The government has generated considerable public goodwill through its pursuit of corruption and criminality. It should not assume that this goodwill gives it an unlimited mandate to strengthen the coercive powers of the state. The NPP knows from its own history that governments can treat dissent as a threat and use the machinery of the state against their opponents. There is still time to correct the drafts through transparent public consultation, narrow definitions of offences, meaningful judicial control over detention and surveillance, and effective remedies against arbitrary decisions. A government that pursues corruption while weakening safeguards against state abuse risks undermining its own achievements. Besides bringing to light the abuse of power by previous governments, the NPP government needs to build a system in which no future government can abuse power in the belief they can get away with it.

Features

Quality assurance without quality enhancement: The irony of university QA

Published

2 hours ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

By Ramya Kumar

According to the Quality Assurance Council (QAC) of the University Grants Commission (UGC), quality assurance (QA) refers to “the means (i.e. the policies, attitudes, actions, procedures, etc.), by which an institution can guarantee with confidence and certainty, that the standards and quality of its educational provision are being maintained and enhanced”.

An expansive structure has been in place since 2005 to govern and implement QA processes within the state university system. The QAC is the focal point at the UGC that implements external reviews of state universities and institutes. Each university has its own Centre for Quality Assurance (CQA) tasked with performing QA in line with QAC directives. Faculties, in turn, have Internal Quality Assurance Cells (IQAC) performing their own QA; they are answerable to the CQA.

The big question is whether this all-encompassing top-down QA system, that in many ways undermines the internal dynamics of university governance, actually supports universities to enhance the quality of education. This article highlights some concerns.

Top-down check-box activities

The QAC conducts external reviews of universities and degree programmes. A review team appointed by the UGC (who may or may not have experience in the institution/programme in question) examines the self-evaluation report submitted by the said institution/programme. The team then conducts a site visit to verify the claims made in the university’s self-evaluation report, clarify issues identified during the desk review, and examine how QA procedures operate in practice. The team holds meetings with the university administration, members of the Council and Senate, Deans, Heads of Departments, academic and non-academic staff, students, and others. Following the visit, a draft report is submitted to the relevant institution/programme for comment before final publication. The reviewed institution/programme then prepares and publishes an action plan addressing the recommendations, with subsequent monitoring of progress.

There are some worthy QA initiatives under implementation, such as improving facilities for students with disabilities and strengthening mechanisms to address sexual- and gender-based violence. However, for the most part, QA activities have little to do with improving the quality of education. They are mostly preoccupied with monitoring faculty and department websites, digital transformation, student feedback, subject evaluation, course evaluation, peer evaluation, and, more recently, staff appraisal. These activities, which consume an inordinate amount of time—so precious at understaffed universities—have become check-box activities completed to generate evidence for the next review. Below is an excerpt of a conversation between two academics (1 and 2) that conveys how QA plays out at universities (reproduced with permission).

1: … .it’s like social media you know, like posting things on Facebook or twitter or Instagram. When people do a lot of social media, everything they do, they do thinking, “okay I’m going to post it in this way… this I have to put on my Instagram.” QA is a little like that… everything is considered in light of, “ah we can use this for the review, as evidence… for example very recently we were encouraged to have all the things that we do in our department in the faculty newsletter so then they can put in the review. Every little thing has to be noted down….

2: And with pictures and all…

1: At the very least it has to be written so that you have written evidence .. you can’t be doing something for the sake of doing something or because it is good for the department … and sometimes people tell me “oh yea that’s a good idea we can fit that under this x, y section of the review..”

2: Yea, and nobody really thinks about the actual outcome… whether it’s actually helping anyone..

1: I also find that a lot of the words that we used in different ways have now been co-opted to the QA discourse ..including quality.. I can’t actually say what I want as an “outcome”, for example, that the outcome of this workshop is that my students “think about” … then I am told “ah but no that’s not one of the Bloom’s taxonomy words, “think about”.…

2: And the worst part is these medical and agriculture people, these types of people go around spreading it like some kind of gospel!

1: Yea, this cookie cutter way of doing things, they think is the height of innovativeness or creativity, when actually it is so mundane … for me the most awful thing about it is like some fungus of mundanity has taken over through QA reviews.

2: yea, when you say QA, my mind closes off immediately and I stop listening…

Auditing everything but power

QA leaves out crucial aspects of university governance. For instance, there is no review or assessment of the “quality” of university administrations under Criterion 1 or the integrity of procedures governing the promotion of academic staff under Criterion 6 of the institutional reviews.

The majority in the Council—the university’s executive and governing body, which is responsible for selecting the Vice-Chancellor (VC)—are appointed in ad hoc fashion. Apart from the Ex-Officio members in the Council (VC, Deans, etc.), and the two members elected by the Senate, the remainder are appointed by the UGC with no formal consultation or vetting procedure. The VC appointment process described in UGC Circular No. 03/2023 exemplifies how an ostensibly technical process can become entangled in political sycophancy. The Registrar invites applications for the position of VC through advertisement. Applicants must submit a curriculum vitae, a statement of vision for the university and supporting documents. The University Council appoints a three-member Search Committee of senior academics to encourage “eminent persons” to apply, while the UGC appoints a former VC from another university to “observe” the selection process.

A Special Meeting of the University Council is convened. Candidates are interviewed and must make a presentation to the Council Members, followed by questions. Each Council member “gives marks” for seven prescribed criteria: strategic focus (20%), effective leadership (20%), holistic thinking/conceptual skills (10%), academic and research excellence (15%), personal integrity (10%), professional communication (10%) and managerial competence (15%). Marks are averaged, and the Council recommends three candidates to the UGC in rank order. The UGC-appointed observer separately submits a confidential report on the selection process.

This procedure is expected to guarantee quality, but does it? Applications are submitted to the Council Members, who have been appointed on questionable bases, and who are expected to review the applications and give scores, based on objective assessments. But, in reality, most Council Members are manipulated by VC candidates, who often have personal ties with them. The UGC-appointed observer usually has no genuine interest in the outcome. And there is no way for anyone to actually question the Council’s decision once it is made. Although the highest-ranked candidate may ultimately be appointed, the selection remains a political decision made by the President, who retains the discretion to appoint any one of the three.

External reviews also do not look into the promotions of academic staff, except to scrutinise whether there are policies and procedures in place to govern promotion. Academic staff may apply for promotion to Professor once they satisfy the prescribed eligibility requirements, which typically include the period of service, academic qualifications, research and publication achievements, teaching experience, and contributions to the university and wider community. Applications are evaluated against specified criteria, with research output and academic contributions assessed through documentary evidence and expert evaluation. Under the UGC’s scheme for Professors, two experts from outside the applicant’s institution assess specified aspects of research and knowledge dissemination. Again, beneath this technical process, which is externally evaluated, lies a problematic points-based scheme that can be manipulated and abused with impunity.

Rethinking university QA

Like the VC election process and the schemes of promotion for academic staff, QA reviews are open to manipulation. Before a review, there is a chaotic rush to complete evidence gathering and reporting. Academics leave all other work aside, including at times their teaching, to focus on completing documentation and preparing reports. The standardised criteria in the review manuals and scoring sheets often do not reflect differences in disciplines and institutional contexts. But this does not really matter because any serious problems experienced by institutions or programmes are hastily brushed under the carpet to conceal any evidence that could taint the review. The goal is to obtain an A or at least a B grade at whatever cost.

QA may result in positive change if it moves beyond top-down check-box activities towards internally designed and owned processes encompassing all aspects of university governance, led by departments and faculties, and supported by adequate resources. The current QA system needs to be dismantled and replaced by procedures that are accountable, not to the UGC, but to our students and the communities we serve.

(Ramya Kumar is attached to the Department of Community and Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Jaffna)

. Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

Features

Down Memory Lane — the Grand 20th Edition!

Published

2 hours ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

Down Memory Lane: Ready to sing again

Yes, Down Memory Lane, the beloved Sing-Along concert series that first struck a chord, way back in 1997, returns for its landmark 20th edition this Saturday, 17th October, at the beautiful Bolgoda Grand Resort, Moratuwa town centre.

Having celebrated its glorious 25th anniversary with the show in 2023, this milestone 20th concert promises to be even more special.

The organisers, the ever-popular Moratuwa Arts Forum, are pulling out all the stops to present yet another unforgettable evening, brimming with camaraderie, fellowship, and pure nostalgia.

Get ready for two-and-a-half hours of non-stop singing as veteran vocalists, from the Moratuwa Arts Forum, will take the stage to lead and inspire the happy audience to sing, sing and sing to their hearts’ content.

The repertoire? Absolutely magical, according to the organisers.

Veteran Arun Dias Bandaranaike: Will handle the evening’s proceedings / Priya Peiris: Event Conceptor

Around 40 golden oldies — from timeless English vintage evergreens and hits from the 50s to the 90s, to toe-tapping calypsos, soulful American plantation melodies, rousing cowboy and Dixieland favourites, aa well as cherished Sinhala standards. All to be sung with much gusto!

This year’s dedicated organising committee comprises Brian Coorey (Chairman), Priya Peiris (Event Conceptor), Hiran Fernando, Suranga Fernando, Viranjan Perera, Hemka Fernando and Neelesh Silva. Guidance and support comes from Moratuwa Arts Forum President Sarana Guneratne and Secretary Chandani Silva.

Adding his signature charm to the evening, as Master of Ceremonies, will be the veteran Arun Dias Bandaranaike.

Don’t miss this landmark celebration of music and memories!

For further details, contact Hiran Fernando on 0772636446 or WhatsApp 0783636446.