Light Sorrow: Peradeniya Imagination

Review of A Bend in the River by Ernest|
Macintyre (Vijitha Yapa, 2024)

By Laleen Jayamanne

The celebrated Lankan director and play-write Ernest Thalayasingam Macintyre (who has been active in English Language theatre for over 50 years), has given us a most unusual book (written in his 90s in Sydney, Australia), on his and his generations’ years as undergraduates at the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in the mid 1950s. There are plans to translate it into Sinhala as well. Mac, as he is popularly known, characterises his book in the following way:

“Old Peradeniya University in Memory and Imagination with a play in one act to conclude. Under The Ola Leaves about the tragedy between man and beast in Sinhabahu”.

A selection of small black and white photographs (so reminiscent of the size and feel of photos of that era’s family albums), of the Peradeniya campus and of visionaries who contributed to its cultural and spiritual vitality, has been carefully placed within the text. These photo (light)-images texture our perception and make time move our minds in a non-linear manner (as we pause to look at them), like meandering rivulets of the great sweeping river of Lankan ethno-nationalist post-colonial history itself. Seeing the high-angle shot of the misty hills through which the Mahaweli winds its way, placed towards the end of the book, creates a melancholy feeling of a time lost. The very first photo, of the memorial honouring Shirley D’Alwis (the architect who designed the magnificent modern campus buildings to echo the architecture of the classical eras), situated at the first roundabout on the main Galaha road, is unavoidably shot through with the more recent memory of decapitated heads grotesquely arranged like lotuses, around the shallow pond surrounding that very monument, during the ‘second JVP vs the Government’ mass killings.

Indeed, this small book of ‘memory and imagination’ takes poetic license in creating three fictional characters through whom we experience the ebullient years that Mac spent (making life-long friendships), at Peradeniya University. These three characters, Sita Fernando (from Ladies College), Phillip Fernando (from St Peters College) and Sidharthan Rasanayagam (from Jaffna College), are actually dramatis personae borrowed from Mac’s Black Comedy Rasanayagam’s Last Riot (Sydney, 1996), on the July ‘83 Anti-Tamil pogram which inaugurated the near 30 year civil-war. This poetic strategy, where biography and fiction are entwined, provides the playwright (born in Colombo but educated at St Patricks’ College, Jaffna), ample room to ‘dramatise’ the everyday University life of the young intellectuals experiencing a remarkable measure of independence from family and their social milieus for the first time. Also, for the first time young Lankans of different classes, ethnicities and languages, and religions found themselves living with each other in close proximity.

In addition, there is real dramatic excitement through theatrical activities of staging plays in both English and Sinhala. Sita, Philip and even Rasa perform in a production of the English language Dramatic Society (with its prior distinguished history at the University College in Colombo), under the direction of Professor of English, E. F. C. Ludowyk. This dramatic society is considered foundational for modern Lankan theatre where students were first introduced to modern European drama with Professor Ludowyk playing a leading role. The occasion is poignant as it is his farewell production of Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion, before he leaves the country in ‘56 for good, to retire to England. The activities around the creation of modern Sinhala theatre history at the University of Peradeniya, the plans to produce Maname with undergraduates, by Professor Ediriweera Sarthchandra, in 1956 is among the high points of the book, as is a test run of Sinhabahu in the open-air theatre. The imagined lecture given (based on factual information), by Prof. Sarachchandra to drum up support for the production of Maname, and to welcome the students to the multi-faceted University experience, are brilliant moments, spot-lit one might say, at the heart of the multi-ethnic linguistic political vision of this book, which Mac calls the ‘Peradeniya imagination’. I will return shortly to this intellectually stimulating scene which feels like an inspiring lecture because of its dramatic conception.

I write this review as one who experienced Peradeniya of University with all its splendour for a very brief but intellectually unmatched two years as a Temporary Assistant Lecturer in Western Classics, from ‘69 to April ‘71. What I studied, learnt and experienced there, while teaching with Professor Cuthbert Amerasinghe, feels like a seed bed that still nourishes my mind at 77. The explosion of bombs in one of the male halls of residence set off a curfew with a state of emergency enforced immediately, marking the first JVP Insurgency of April ‘71, during which month bullet riddled bodies of educated young Sinhala men and women floated down that great river to the sea. So, it’s with much interest that I read Mac’s account of the legendry period of the 50s when the great hopes of C. W. W. Kannangara’s ‘free education’ policy of 1948 was to inaugurate a confident, fairer post-colonial Lanka. Reading about it now in 2024 one recalls the recently installed Bronze statue (by Sarath Chandrajeeva), of the first Vice Chancellor, Sir Ivor Jennings, the implementor of that vision, gently fashioning an enchanted natural landscape at Peradeniya which still appears to flourish despite all.

The first chapter, ‘A Train Comes In’, introduces both Sita and Phillip from Colombo, strangers at first who find themselves congenially in the same carriage (and even married much later when they appear in Rasanayagam’s Last Riot), and also the lay out of the campus. The second chapter has Phillip and Sidharthan as ‘Room Mates’ where the former promptly decides to call the latter Rasa, establishing a lifelong friendship which ends tragically (in the play Rasanayagam’s Last Riot), in July ‘83 when, caught by a Sinhala mob, he refuses on principle to pronounce the word bucket in Sinhala as baldiya and meets his death. It is as room-mates that Phillip casually taught him in a jocular manner, the difference between Baldi and Valdi.

The main focus of the book is around the rich theatrical activities on campus in both English and Sinhala, which laid the foundations, after their undergraduate days, for the development of a robust bi-lingual theatre in the 60s, centred at first at the Lionel Wendt Theatre Colombo with the Stage and Set Group formed by Mac and his Peradeniya friends, strengthened by the exceptional acting talents of Irangani and Winston Serasinghe too. Given the theatrical emphasis in the book, one gets the impression that above all, it is theatre that galvanised Mac’s imagination at Peradeniya far more than any academic subject as such, for there is no scene set in the magnificent library, amidst the stacks for example, a favourite spot for lovers. Importantly, he shows persuasively that these theatrical activities were integrally linked to wider political currents of the country as well and offers a vision of Lanka imbibed at the University, which is universalist and humanist in outlook, inclusive and open to the world, not parochially ethno-nationalist and myopic.

At a student meeting held by a government official to discuss the proposed national flag for the country, a Muslim student, Ibrahim, known as a resident ‘joker’ makes fun of the manner in which concessions are made to ethnic minorities of the country who are marginalised with simplistic colour coding by the national emblem of the sword-carrying lion taking the lion’s share of space. This mythical lion, emblem of the Sinhala folk, recurs in various dramatic forms right across this book creating an emotional resonance that vibrates across their student lives and also across several aspects of the post-colonial history of the country. Mac treats the iconic lion as a poetic emblem to critique the emerging ethno-nationalism in the wake of the 1956 ‘Sinhala Only Act’ which affects the students for generations to come, as well. Mac poses a challenge to ethno-nationalism in the following way:

“In the connected event of ‘56, Maname of Peradeniya may be conceived in relation to Sinhala Only Act. It is a great Sinhala play because it is not Sinhala only” (p.64).

Mac gives us an understanding of the wide range of world historical theatrical research which was essential for Sarachchandra in developing his scholarly book on Lankan Folk Drama at first, and then his two plays, Maname and Sinhabahu. These include the knowledge of Indian theatrical traditions and theory, Greek theatre and theatrical theory and Japanese Noh drama as well. Without a knowledge of English, such wide ranging research in depth would have been impossible. At the marvellously conceived, well attended lecture organised by the Sinhala Natya Mandalaya, Professor Sarachchandra speaks (seated flanked by Charles Silva Gunasinghe Gurunanse from Balangoda and Dr Siri Gunasinghe, a lecturer in Sanskrit), of this rich context in which Maname was conceived. The importance of the Tamil folk form Natu Kuthu (originally from South India and then performed in the North East of Lanka), for the development of the Sinhala Nadagam form, on which Maname in turn is based, is also made explicit. Mac then adds other sources such as the Kurosava’s film Rashomon as a vital influence on Sarachchandra in transforming the moralistic, misogynist ending of the folk tale into a Modern parable of a multi-perspectival reading of the controversial ending of the play. He does something similar in his own play Under the Ola Leaf at the end of this book.

While there is no need to rehearse that ending of Maname here, the point Mac makes is that if all scholars or play-wrights knew was ‘Sinhala only’, then much of world drama and film would be inaccessible to Lankans, creating an academic parochialism. A small but very significant feminist angle is introduced by shifting the emphasis to the actress who was to play the princess. In her school days she had played the role in the old folk version where the princess is condemned as being fickle in betraying her husband, the prince. The student’s training in movement and singing by Gunasinghe Gurunanse while she was still at school has been decisive in being chosen for the role in the current play. But it’s the dialogue between Professor Sarachchandra and her which I find most remarkable. When he asks her if she was ‘happy to act the evil princess in the folk tale’, instead of answering the question, she queries the professor as to why he asks that specific question in the first place. This rather rare critical ability (of not taking anything for granted), pleases Professor Sarachchandra who says: ‘I knew I was meeting a creative woman’.

We experience the ‘race-riots’ of ‘58 through Sita and Philip who have gone down to Colombo with Rasa having been invited to stay in the safety of Philip’s house. Though they are safe, the effects of the violence are felt by all three young intellectuals and casts a dark shadow on the short time they have left at Peradeniya. In the concluding section of the book (shaken by the national tragedy, made all the more acute by their protective, deep friendship with Rasa, enacted so close to home by the burning down of Saraswathi Lodge where they’d just eaten the night before), Mac offers as an olive branch, through a dramatic enactment of what he calls the ‘Peradeniya imagination’.

The setting is a conversation among the three friends as they walk on the Galaha road in the dark, after having seen a test performance of Sinhabahu at the famous open-air theatre of the Peradeniya campus on the eve of their departure from University life in 1959. The mood is thoughtful, sombre. Sita leads the conversation with her sharp analytical mind which the other two take in quietly. All three have registered the pathos of the ending, the sudden blackout and long silence, as did the rest of the audience in being very slow to applaud and that too so quietly as the actors come forward slowly.

“As the stage lights went out to end the experience, almost abruptly, when the Lion Sinhaya fell down from his human son’s third arrow in the chest, the dumb founded silence, lasting seemingly to continue without let up, covertly suggested other considerations beyond the extracted part of the Mahavamsa story… it seemed to invite the audience to think of what was left unperformed in the large story of the Mahavamsa which the audience were familiar with. The origin of the Sinhalese” (72-73).

Patricide is a terrible crime and as in Oedipus Rex, leaves the ‘innocent’ killer/son tormented and blind. The play Under the Ola Leaf written by Sita is an effort to offer a new perspective on the old Mahavamsa legend by exploring the sense of pathos, the ‘pity and fear’ they all registered at the end of Sinhabahu that night in the open-air theatre. Precisely because there is no ‘catharis’ or release possible (as mandated by Aristotle in his conception of Tragedy), after the horrific act of patricide, the ending of the play creates a sense of desolation.

In Ludowyk’s decision to stage Androcles and the Lion as his farewell play in 1956, he had the lion’s head worn by the actor designed like the one on Lankan heraldry. Mac states that the choice of this play was a political gesture of farewell, (a parable on gratitude and compassion), to a country that Ludowyk loved dearly and contributed so much of value to enrich its multiethnic cultural and intellectual life. That all too human lion, grateful to the slave Androcles who once removed the thorn from his wounded paw, refuses to kill him later, and instead embraces him.

Mac’s one act play is also a parable for our times. He refuses to forget the heart- rending line, ‘me mage puthu novedo!’ (Is this not my son!). But he also refuses to forget (contrary to the Mahavamsa legend), the affective point of view of the son, Sinhabahu. In the play he is a man with a conscience and the patricide a swift ‘mercy killing’ so that his lion-father may not be trapped, tortured and beaten to death by the blood thirsty villagers.

In addition, Mac gives Vijaya, Sinhabahu’s own son (the legendry founder of Lanka), a more enlightening role than that of a rebellious son attributed by the Mahavamsa. Vijaya is a post Darwinian human, and so for him the lion on his flag (his grandfather), is to be remembered not as a killer but as embodying love. In so doing he appears to acknowledge our kinship with the animal world and therefore the seated lion on his flag, pointedly does not carry a sword. This is Mac’s alternative enlightening avihimsa perspective on the national patricidal legend, where the father, son and the grandson appear to evolve ethically, which augurs well for the new hybrid, multi-ethnic nation yet to be born. Mac reminds us, through Rasa, that Buddhism once flourished among the Tamils of South India as well.