Searching for Lakdasa

A few weeks ago, when I wrote an article titled “Shakespeare in a takarang shed” about the English department at Kelaniya University in the 1970s, I mentioned of Lakdasa Wikkramasinha, the poet. Lakdasa did not teach in the English department – he was an instructor in the sub-department of English, which conducted English language courses for all the undergraduates – but he was very much a part of the scene. In the article, I recalled playing carrom with him at the Senior Common Room, and how we both escaped severe injury, perhaps death, from a mob that was coming to attack campus students.

In the article, I described Lakdasa as “a man of few words, with a disdainful stare that made lesser mortals uncomfortable, [wearing] his shirt halfway buttoned that displayed his hairy chest, the sleeves rolled up just below the elbow.” In other words, a bad ass.

To accompany that article, I needed a photo of Lakdasa. I Googled, only to be shocked by the images that popped up. The most prominent was his gravestone, streaked with a black stain that obscured some markings, and a photo of the Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, mislabeled Lakdasa. Other search engines also came up with the same images.

Surely, someone, somewhere should have Lakdasa’s photo. Thus, began my search. Lakdasa had been my senior at the Maharagama training college, so I reached out to his classmates for a photo. One, who said he had been the best man at Lakdasa’s wedding, did not have a photo. Another, a photography enthusiast, could not be contacted because of the lockdown. Two other classmates of Lakdasa did not respond to my messages.

I was told about Lakdasa’s sister, who had built a house on Heerassagala Road, Kandy, but my attempts to trace her petered out. A friend of a friend, who said that she may have a photo at her office, was also unavailable, due to the lockdown and a death in the family. Tracing Lakdasa’s genealogy, I contacted a second cousin of Lakdasa’s, without a response. An appeal to the head of an academic department, where Lakdasa’s wife had taught, has gone unanswered. That is understandable, because she last taught there 40 years ago, and my attempt was a desperate shot in the dark.

When I first knew Lakdasa at Maharagama, in 1970, he was known as “the poet”, although hardly anyone around him may have read his poetry, (I hadn’t). In those days, poetry meant Wordsworth, Blake, and Keats to us. Also, at that time, Lakdasa’s poetry hadn’t received much critical assessment, or much read for that matter, because his poems had been self-published in limited editions. He was courting his classmate Claire, and I would see them seated on the corridor leading to the library and chatting for long periods. Lakdasa’s collection titled, Fifteen Poems (1970) carried the dedication “For Claire”. But, they didn’t marry. By the time his next collection, Nossa Senhora dos Chingalas (1973), came out, the dedication was “To Shanthini”, who had become his wife. She taught Chinese at the University of Kelaniya.

Lakdasa’s stature as a poet hit me full in the face, so to speak, only in the early 1990s, when I read Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, a rollicking memoir of Ondaatje’s Ceylonese lineage. Chapter 3 is titled “Don’t Talk to Me about Matisse”, and Lakdasa’s poem of the same title is quoted there. I was in the USA at the time, and could not access any of his poetry.

Some years later, in Hong Kong, I was introduced to the chairman of a university English department. When he realised I was Sri Lankan, Andy blurted out, “Did you know Lakdasa?”, and seemed to disbelieve when I said “Quite well”. Later, I realised that he, a British/Australian, was an ardent fan of Lakdasa’s poetry. When Andy published the volume World Englishes (2007), two of Lakdasa’s poems were included in the accompanying CD, read by Prof. Thiru Kandiah.

In personality, Lakdasa was eccentric. His philosophy was an enigma. In 1965, he stated that “to write in English is a form of cultural treason” and called English the language of the “most despicable and loathsome people on earth”. But, just four years later, he was training to become an English teacher, and went onto “commit treason” by teaching English at the University of Kelaniya.

His poetry has been called masculine, and anger, eroticism, sarcasm, and satire were clearly on display. His originality and daring can be seen in lines such as “thick black coils of hair on her head, and Elsewhere”; “the great white hunter Matisse with a gun with two nostrils … Gaugin – the syphilis-spreader, the yellowed obesity”. And satire in “What does the Professor do? He plants brinjals all day”. The soaring finale – “All roads lead to Rome!” – from “To My Friend Aldred” is matchless.

When he was being interviewed for admission to Maharagama training college, Lakdasa was asked what he had been doing in the past few years. He replied. “Growing cardamoms”. Indeed, he had, in the remote Yahanagala area in the Uva. Usually, to interpret Lakdasa’s poetry, one may have to delve into history, the Classics, Latin, Sinhala folklore. But, the appealing simplicity of “In Ancient Kotmale” perhaps derives from those cardamom growing days.

In the beautiful principality, in Kotmale

I will build my house of the good soil’s brick

With the timber of the ringing forests,

And I will cover it with the tiles flat,

One on one, as the palms of the farmers ….

And in the morning will I see

The sun wounded as my heart with a million arrows,

Rise between the mountain ranges

And spread in the green valley its golden blood.

And I will go into the fields in the seasons ….

I will sow the grain, a stream between my hands,

I will cast the grain in falling nets.

It will stream up round the calves of maidens

From the viridian fire of that clay.

And in the kilns of my sun-wed fields,

And under the haven of passing clouds

As I repose, in those almost everlasting days,

In the time ordained, in green calendars

Will come my yearned harvest

Over the years, Lakdasa’s poetry has drawn much analysis – in academic presentations, scholarly articles, an anthology here and there, theses, blog sites – and in the popular press. Some poems were also included in the English literature A/L syllabus. He has been acknowledged as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost poets writing in English. But, sadly, his poetry is scattered in various, little-known publications, and 43 years after his death, there is a possibility of his poetry receding into obscurity.

But, for now, we can focus on a more urgent matter, that of finding a photo of Lakdasa and placing it on the Internet. So, here’s my plea. If you have a photo, could you send it to me at georgebraine@gmail.com? I am also on Facebook. Thank you.

GEORGE BRAINE