Daughters of the Dervish by Vasantha Senanayake

Reviewed by Rajiva Wijesinha

Late last year Vasantha Senanayake, whom I had first met when we were new members of Parliament together way back in 2010, produced a book of poetry which was most unusual. I do not think there has been any long poem published in English in this country for many years, not perhaps since A Vesak Oratorio by former British Council Representative Bill McAlpine.

This is understandable for to write a long poem is not easy, given the different qualities that need to be sustained over many pages. A narrative is not easy to put together poetically, and reflections can turn dull if too long protracted. But Vasantha succeeded admirably in a story that roused reflection, that of Rama and Sita but told emphatically from her perspective.

Daughters of the Dervish , his second book, is very different from that epic, in substance as well as effort, Transcending Sita. This book is a collection, with poems on different subjects and in different tones. Holding them together as it were is a roaming mind which, as noted in the introduction, houses a ‘continuously evolving and revolving cocktail of emotions and thoughts…. It is then my mind, which is the Dervish that forever spins. I have let out a glimpse of him mirrored through his daughters, my poetry’.

Interestingly, I found parallels in the subject matter of these poems and the subject matter of the paintings which his mother Suwaneetha exhibited a few weeks back. There are several pictures in the poetry of women and their emotions, an old woman who brings up her orphaned grandson only for him to die in an accident, Kuveni abandoned by her kinsmen and then by Vijaya, a rich old woman living in apparent poverty

Mildew growing on her notes
Forgotten in the antique safe…..
If she knew, the expense would be that high
Quite certainly, she would’ve declined to die.

There are unusual glimpses of society ladies, one a hostess whose perfect parties are ruined by a guest who drums, another who dies in a toilet in a bar which becomes a ‘tourist site’, contrasting with an elegant Tamil lady waiting in her home to be burned in it seems the horrors of July 1983.

Nature too, as in Mrs Senanayake’s pictures, is presented in very different ways. The elegance of ‘Kala Wewa’ ends with a triumphant hawk catching a fish, much needed rains ‘drench us yet again’ after protracted drought, a marsh with storks that peck a frog to death and crocodiles lurking to catch

Even a blissfully carefree dog
Wagging its frisky, unsuspecting tail
Edging too near the sandy bank
Until it’s finally, much too late.

There are richly varied perspectives on what we think of as the warp and woof of daily life, a cuckoo hanging lustfully on a papaya fruit being described as a rapist, modern religion represented by a pastor ‘in his private jet’, the horror of cattle being thrust in hordes to be slaughtered. There are moving accounts of mental suffering, from sorrow for a departed lover to anguish in what seems a godless world, from despair as faith fades away to the endlessly renewed sorrow of a woman waiting for her husband to return from work without the distraction of drink.

In the midst of this variety, what stands foremost is the commitment the introduction enunciates, ‘to draw emphasis to the indignities inflicted by man towards other species that occupy the planet as well as the planet itself’. A credo that is sad but of the essence in a world that seems to change only for the worse.