Features

The passing of an iconoclast

Published

4 years ago

2021/12/12

by Anura Gunasekera

More than fifty years ago, my friend Jayasena Sirimanne, then a struggling amateur actor-cum-producer, and I, impressed by the dark, saturnine good looks of Nihal Ratnaike, his deep, rumbling baritone voice, the tall broad shouldered frame on which clothes sat with an uncontrived elegance, his avowed Marxism and casual contempt for the established order, named him the “Maha Kalu Sinhalaya”. We found it quite natural to conflate Nihal, the journalist, with the deposed Walagamba fleeing the advancing Chola.

Nihal, in our youthful eyes then, was the eponymous dissident, the quintessential bohemian. He lived that life as it came to him naturally. Politically, he was committed to an intellectual attachment to the extreme Left but he did not actively fight for his convictions.

In my early twenties, his little single bedroomed flat on Havelock road was a very convenient place to sleep off the excesses of a night, before presenting myself at my parental home the following morning. That was an abode which very frequently saw similar traffic. Nihal was always unquestioningly hospitable, sharing with all-comers meals he cooked himself in his tiny kitchenette. One wall of the sitting-cum-dining-cum- bedroom was covered with packed bookcases, prominent among the titles that I can still recall being Hemingway, Steinbeck, Silone, Moravia, de Beauvoir, Henry Miller , Orwell, Wilde, Mailer, Fitzgerald and other dissidents and icon-bashers. The playwrights ranged from Shakespeare to Ibsen, Beckett, Arthur Miller, Nabokov et al whilst Eliot was a preferred poet. There were also shelves dedicated to Ceylon history. On every available ledge rested dusty brass figurines, and sculptures and carvings by local artists, whilst a wide range of paintings, line drawings and sketches adorned much of the wall space. Very prominently featured was an iconic poster of Che Guevara and, alongside, a billboard print from the Moulin Rouge. The latter he had acquired whilst living in Paris.

Before I met Nihal in person I used to be an avid reader of his regular column in the Daily News, written under the pen-name “Viranga”. I liked the name so much that when our son was born many years later, we named him Isuru Viranga. But that is another story.

In 1967 my friend, the late Trevor Rosmale-Cocq, amused by my admiration of the writings of “Viranga, introduced me to the real man. The meeting took place in the then Art Centre Club bar, a dimly lit watering-hole above the Lionel Wendt, the meeting place of choice for both the artful and the artistic of Colombo. It was then managed by Ananada Gunatillke, who soon became my friend, entirely because of my frequent visits to the place.

Nihal could be found at the club on most evenings. Before entering the place you knew he was there; the deep, distinctive rumble of his baritone emerging clearly from the babble of voices, punctuated occasionally by the belly laugh, an equally deep extension of the voice, the man himself leaning against the bar, glass in one hand and cigarette drooping from the other, invariably in intense argument, either about current politics, theatre, film, art or books. Those were the subjects closest to his heart, those which invigorated his senses.

In the group around him would be Ernest Macintyre, Winston Serasinghe, Dhamma Jagoda, Chitrasena, Nihal’s dear friend Bevis Bawa, Geoffrey- the equally famous but less outrageous other Bawa brother- journalist Ajith Samaranayake, painter Manjusri and other assorted writers, theatre producers, journalists, actors and actresses, playwrights and artists; not all of them at the same time but at one time or another. There would also be yet others , not to be classified as belonging any cultural milieu but simply interesting personalities, some who worked hard at sustaining such an image, like the eccentric Eustace Fonseka. Tony Muller was a fixture at Nihal’s side, generally unsmiling and uncommunicative, opening his mouth only to sip from his glass.

The Art Centre Club then was where the off-beats and the oddballs gathered, along with star-struck youth such as I, feasting off an exotic table. The conversation was always interesting and often brilliant, the company very colourful and bewilderingly varied, whilst the drinks were cheap and the older patrons very generous. Impecunious, unemployed youth such as I could stride in confidently, with only the return bus fare in hand and, a few hours later, stagger out with the bus fare still intact.

Nihal was one of those exceptional people with a genuine personal magnetism, which made others to gravitate to him. It was not a consciously cultivated state but a natural composite of luminous intelligence, sardonic wit, a deep sensitivity to social and political dynamics, a genuine caring for people and a brutal honesty of opinion. What you saw was what you got. His imposing physical stature and rich, deep voice complemented the other attributes.

When I joined the Police Department as a Sub-Inspector in 1968, Nihal was horrified. In his eyes the police was a necessary evil but also an “extension of a fascist regime”- his own words. He recommended that I read George Orwell’s “1984”, as an extreme case scenario of life under ultimate repression. Some years later, after I had read Solzhenitsyn, I suggested to him that life in Stalinist Russia was the closest one could get to the Dystopia of Orwell. However, whilst conceding the excesses of the Bolshevik regime, he rationalized them as a regrettable case of individual freedoms occasionally being subjugated for the common good. When I left the police to become a planter in a British owned company he was amused, asking me how I planned to justify my admiration for the revolutionary vision of Che Guevara, whilst being an agent of the oppressive colonial model of plantation management. I cannot remember how I dealt with that question.

As a writer and journalist and in his views candidly expressed on other platforms, Nihal was aggressively anti-establishment. He openly despised the United National Party political doctrine. Unsurprisingly, the very day after the UNP election victory in 1977, he was dismissed from his then position as Deputy Editor of the Daily News. When I phoned him from my estate home in Nuwara Eliya he said, ” Anura, the Dharmishta government has done something very Adharmishta to me”, his very words. Subsequently, he successfully contested his dismissal at Labour Tribunal and was awarded compensation. Later, he did a short assignment for “CARE”, followed by a spell as the editor of “Focus”, another publication which enjoyed a brief but interesting life. With the changing of regimes he returned to Lake House where he was, variously, Associate Editor, Editor-in-Chief and Director, Editorial. He was also Media Consultant to the Prime Minister during Ratansiri Wickramanayake’s term. In between there were also spells at the Sunday Standard and the Island.

Nihal was a deeply complex, non-conformist who led an extremely simple existence. He attracted people to his orbit very quickly and retained them as friends for life. He was genuinely indifferent to the accumulation of wealth and assets, or material gain. Quite content with what was sufficient for the day, he lived a life which was governed by his uncompromising principles and unconventional personal beliefs. His passing was also consistent with the way he lived, quick, without drama and extended farewells. He had left strict, detailed written instructions for his family, for the immediate and unceremonious disposal of his physical self. His much loved sisters, the twins Indrani and Manel, and Waruna, his loving nephew, all of whom cared for Nihal in his final years when ill-health enforced dependence on this otherwise fiercely independent man, followed his final directives to the letter.

Nihal would have considered this tribute an embarrassing ostentation but I feel obliged to tell the world of a man who, at an early stage of my life, compelled me to examine my world view from different angles. We disagreed often but delighted in the debate. In the last couple of years, restricted by Covid-induced protocols, we did not meet often. My last meeting with him was a couple of months ago, when I sat by his bed for a few hours and reminisced on old times, discussed the books that we both enjoyed, together deplored the current state of the country, chuckled over interesting incidents of the past and revived memories of old friends who have passed on.

Nihal was older than I with a near generational gap between us but, together, we have sat through the final rites of several mutual friends. Trevor Roosmale-Cocq and Abey Ekanayake were two such in the last decade. The most recent was in 2019, that of Scott Dirckze where, as he was laid to rest, Nihal said to me with great sadness, ” he was a good and dear friend; I shall miss him very much”. I shall say the same of Nihal, my dear friend of over half a century.

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Features

The Division Bell Mystery

Published

20 hours ago

2026/05/29

Thilina Walpola

Tales of Mystery and Suspense 3

The murder, in a private dining room in the house, is of a financier with whom the government was negotiating a loan. When this seemed difficult the Minister of Home Affairs agreed to lead discussions, since he had known Mr Oissel the financier when they were young. Hence the private dinner, but when the Minister stepped out for a vote, Oissel was shot just as the Division Bell rang.

The Brahms and Simon detective novels, the first of which I wrote about last week, were amongst several books by the pair that Robert Scoble gave me when I was in Australia towards the end of last year. Amongst them was another thriller of a very different sort, though that too was written and set between the wars.

Called The Division Bell Mystery, it was set in the House of Commons, the first such book I believe, and was by Ellen Wilkinson, a Labour MP who became Minister of Education in Attlee’s government after the war, having served previously as Parliamentary Private Secretary to several ministers. Her hero Robert West is also a PPS, but a conservative, and his Minister, of Home Affairs, is an old style aristocrat, not much loved by the less orthodox Prime Minister, who nevertheless needs his support on many occasions.

The murder, in a private dining room in the house, is of a financier with whom the government was negotiating a loan. When this seemed difficult the Minister of Home Affairs agreed to lead discussions, since he had known Mr Oissel the financier when they were young. Hence the private dinner, but when the Minister stepped out for a vote, Oissel was shot just as the Division Bell rang.

West was just outside the door when the shot was heard, and when he opened it saw only the dead body with a revolver beside it. The assumption that this was suicide was however challenged by Oissel’s grand-daughter Annette, who was his heir, on the grounds that he would never have killed himself. But her view was given greater credence by the Inspector put in charge of the case who said there were no burn marks on the body which would have been the case had Oissel fired the pistol himself.

Matters are complicated by the fact that Oissel’s flat had been burgled while he was at dinner, and Jenks the policeman allocated to him, who had served the Home Secretary and seemed more acceptable to Oissel than someone from the Security Service, had been killed. Matters get even more complicated when Annette says her grand-father’s notebook in which he wrote his secrets in cipher was missing.

That was found in Jenks’ pocket, and then a photographer came to West to say he had been asked by Jenks to photograph this. More worryingly for West, he finds in the Home Secretary’s drawer a few pages from the notebook with what appears to be an interpretation of the cipher.

Ellen

Overwhelmed by all this he confides in a recently created peer who knows all about the business world, who insists that they leave the house party at which they had met over dinner and discuss the matter with the Prime Minister who promptly summons the Home Secretary.

But the Home Secretary had gone to Scotland to launch a ship over the weekend, so the meeting could take place only on the morning of the Monday, when difficult questions were expected on the adjournment motion. He admits at the meeting that he had got Jenks to take the notebook, and also that he knew the code since it had been created by him and Oissel when they were young.

He thought he should resign, and even contemplated suicide, but the Prime Minister told him that that would be even worse for the government, and that he should go home to bed. The Prime Minister said that he himself would handle the question, which he did with aplomb, insisting that confidentiality was needed until the inquest. What had happened would be made clear then, he declared, leaving West and Inspector Blackit and Lord Dalbeattie what seemed the impossible task of solving the murder.

Dalbeattie had suggested that West ask a female Labour MP who was very fond of him to get what information she could from the staff. That there was some involvement there had become clear when West, going back late one night to collect a briefcase he had left in a dining room, found someone lurking in the dark in the corridor outside the private rooms. Room J, where the murder had happened, was meant to be guarded throughout by a policeman, but he had left the room having felt dizzy, and it seemed that his coffee had been drugged. West’s sudden appearance however had prevented anyone else getting into the room.

Dalbeattie decides to recreate the scene of the murder and has a dinner party in Room J on the Tuesday night, inviting West and Annette and the society hostess at whose house he had met, and also Patrick Kinnaird, an MP who was engaged to Annette, as well as the Permanent Secretary to the Home Ministry.

After coffee Inspector Blackit comes in with Grace, the Labour MP who had got the confidence of the staff, and a journalist who had also been helpful, and just as they say they think they are on the track the division bell rings. Grace jumps up and tells the Inspector that that provides the solution and they get a ladder, and sure enough find the revolver in the space where the bell is. Directed at the place where Oissel had sat, it had been primed to go off with the ringing of the bell. The waiter who had helped to set things up made clear who the murderer had been.

The reason for the murder and the confused motives of all those involved made for a fascinatingly intricate mix. But also impressive in the book were the descriptions of the isolation possible in the crowded premises of the house, the forceful characterization of the members – Grace based on the writer, the society hostess based on Nancy Astor, the first female MP – and the laid back nature of senior politicians which West realized had to change in the brave new world of high finance.

Features

The challenge of keeping value-based politics alive

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Anti-migrant protests in Durban, South Africa. BBC

The current outbreak of anti-immigrant protests in Durban, South Africa is bound to have taken many a subscriber to value-based politics or political idealism quite by surprise. After all, this is evidence that despite the historic accomplishments of nation-builders of the stature of the late President Nelson Mandela it cannot be taken for granted that identity politics, including racism in its worst forms, is no more in South Africa.

At the time of this writing details are scarce on the substantive root causes of the protests but it could very well be that economic grievances, particularly on the part of the majority community in South Africa, are contributing considerably to the disaffection. Shrinking employment and material prospects are likely to figure majorly among the factors igniting the unrest.

Fortunately, the local authorities in Durban are losing no time in calling for peaceful co-existence among the relevant communities and are pointing to the vital importance of stepping-up national integration processes. Apparently, immigrants in sizable numbers from neighbouring countries are present in Durban. However, international TV footage of the protests quoted some local authorities as saying that the majority of the immigrants in some centres that housed them were not illegal migrants and had the documents that entitle them to be in Durban.

In the Durban protests the world has fresh proof of the socially divisive consequences of the gathering globe-wide economic disaffection, touched off particularly by the continuing crisis in West Asia. Going ahead, the world would need to brace for increasing identity-based unrest of the kind it is just witnessing in South Africa.

Considering that the material lot of ordinary people everywhere could only aggravate progressively, with the US and Iran showing no signs of negotiating an end to their confrontation any time soon, it will be left to the more democratic and progressive sections of the world community to initiate positive measures collectively to bring a measure of relief to the discontented.

The swiftness with which such relief will be provided would depend crucially on the importance those sections taking up these undertakings attach to value-based politics as opposed to Realpolitik of power politics.

Going by these yardsticks, Italy could be considered to be moving in the right direction. Recently Italy came to the fore in initiating the collective named, ‘Rome Coalition for Food Security and Access to Fertilizer’, which has as one of its aims the swift provision of fertilizer to economically weak African countries.

In a recent statement Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio Tajani, said that a principal aim of the project was to ensure that the farmers of Africa gained easy access to fertilizer, considering that food security is a growing concern among some of Africa’s economically vulnerable countries.

The statement went on to mention that some 30 countries hailing from the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, the Balkans as well as the FAO had been invited to join the coalition. The venture is far-seeing in that food security is main among the reasons for social discontent which in turn could degenerate into endemic political turmoil and bloodshed. Separatist violence and geographical fragmentation of countries wouldn’t be too far behind these developments, as Africa itself has often proved.

It is hoped that more G7 countries would take the cue from Italy and do what they could to ease the hardships of economically distressed countries, particularly of the global South. In these efforts they would need to break rank with the US, which is today brutally indifferent to the consequences of its policy of making ‘America First’, come what may.

Going by current developments, the Trump administration seems to be blithely oblivious to the wider, deleterious effects of its policy course in West Asia. Besides rendering Iran militarily and otherwise impotent nothing else seems to matter to Washington, as regards West Asia. This is policy short-sightedness of an extreme kind. After all, right now West Asia could be said to be sitting on the proverbial powder keg.

On the other hand, Iran is not giving the world the impression that it is doing anything constructive to get out of the policy straitjacket that it wove for itself decades ago. Rather than enter into a policy of ‘live and let live’ in relation to Israel in particular and initiate a process of reconciliation with the latter, it has chosen to operate within policy parameters that continue to damn Israel. This has put Israel always on the ‘defensive’ so to speak and prevented the opening up of space for meaningful dialogue.

That said, Israel is obliged to explore the possibilities of entering into a negotiatory process with the Arab-Islamic world that could lead to a de-escalation of tensions and bloodshed. It cannot continue to look at its neighbours through lenses that distort them as archetypal enemies who should be ‘wiped off completely from the face of the earth.’

In other words, the need is urgent for Realpolitik to give way to value-based politicks. Italy is beginning to prove that the latter approach could be pursued with some success. May be the EU and the UK could throw their weight behind these initiatives as well and establish that international politics could be refashioned on the basis of humane, civilized norms. The UN would need to be fully supportive of these moves and prove an organizational nucleus of the operations that follow.

In fact the time is ripe for people of conscience to collectively stand up on the side of peace and say ‘No’ to war and violence. Organizations such as the ICRC, the WHO and Medicines Sans Frontiers have already taken up this call. Referring to the widespread destruction of health facilities and their dehumanizing results these organizations have said, among other things, that ‘This is not a failure of the law. It is a failure of political will.’

True, ‘failure of political will’ among those powers that matter accounts for the runaway, uncontrollable nature of war and destruction in contemporary times, but more fundamentally it is a failure of the human conscience. It could very well be that the phenomenal levels to which violence and war have been unleashed today have had the effect of deadening consciences. This is a matter for urgent study and wide discussion.

Features

Vesak celebrations … with Cuteefly

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions // Gift pack

I would describe Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka as innovative and creative, and she operates under the name of Cuteefly.

Indunil always comes up with something novel to celebrate special occasions, and she does it with candles … and that’s her profession.

She was in the spotlight when she created a happening scene, with candles, for Christmas, Sinhala and Tamil New Year, and Valentine’s Day.

As lanterns light up Sri Lanka for Vesak, the Colombo-based candle maker is quietly turning wax and wick into little pieces of the festival.

Candles reflecting Vesak themes

Her candles reflect Vesak themes – light, peace, remembrance, giving, etc., to enable you to fill your Vesak celebration with devotion and beauty.

Among her Vesak creations is a lotus-shaped soy candle, scented with sandalwood, lavender, etc., meant to burn during this Vesak Poya Day.

Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka: Customers
praise her for her creativity

These handcrafted Vesak candles are perfect for offering at the temple, she says.

What makes her creations so novel is that they come in different shapes, scents, themes, and all are handmade.

What’s more, her customers have heaped praise on her for her creativity.

According to Indunil, her creations are perfect as a thoughtful gift … to bring beauty, unity, and light into every moment.

Says Indunil: “Our beautifully handcrafted Unity candles are designed with premium detail and love, making them perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions.”

Cuteefly, says Indunil, is available online.

Readers could contact Indunil on 0778506066 for more details.

He Facebook Page is: Cuteefly.