Features

Vijaya Nandasiri : Losing it in laughs

Published

4 years ago

2022/08/12

By Uditha Devapriya

Vijaya Nandasiri left us six years ago. The epitome of mass market comedy in Sri Lanka, Nandasiri belonged to a group of humourists, which included Rodney Warnapura and Giriraj Kaushalya, who redefined satire in the country. Nandasiri’s aesthetic was not profound, nor was it subtle. It was not aimed at a particular segment. Indeed, there was nothing elitist or pretentious about it; if you could take to it, you took to it. It was hard not to laugh at him, it was hard not to like him. Indeed, it was hard not to sympathise with him.

In the movies, Sri Lanka’s first great humourist was Eddie Jayamanne. Typically cast as the servant or bumpkin, Jayamanne could never let go of his theatrical roots. More often than not his laughs targeted a particular segment, so much so that when Lester Peries cast him as the father of the hero’s lover in Sandesaya, he still seemed stuck in those movies he had made and starred in with Rukmani Devi. Many years later he was cast as a close friend of the protagonist in Kolamba Sanniya, in many ways Sri Lanka’s equivalent of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Even there, he could not quite escape his origins.

In Kolamba Sanniya, Jayamanne played opposite Joe Abeywickrema. Hailing from a different background, more rural than suburban, Abeywickrema had by then become our greatest character actor. Dabbling in comedy for so long, he found a different niche after Mahagama Sekara cast him in Thunman Handiya and D. B. Nihalsinghe featured him as Goring Mudalali in Welikathara. Yet he could never let go of his comic garb. Cast for the most as an outsider in the cities and the suburbs – of whom the epitome has to be the protagonist of Kolamba Sanniya – Abeywickrema discovered his élan in the role of the man who falls into a series of absurd situations, but remains unflappably calm no matter what.

There is nothing profoundly or intellectually funny in Kolamba Sanniya. Like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the humour emerges from the characters’ imperfections and foibles: their way of looking at the world, their accents, their lack of polish and elegance. The dialogues are not convincing, and some of the situations – like the hero’s family discovering a bidet for the very first time – are downright silly, if not condescending. What strengthens the story is Joe Abeywickrema’s performance; specifically, his ability to convince us that, despite the situations he is being put through, he can stand on his own. Like the protagonist of Punchi Baba, left to take care of an abandoned baby, he is helpless but not lacking control. He often makes us think he’s losing it, but then gets back on track.

Vijaya Nandasiri was cut from a different cloth. In many respects he was Abeywickrema’s descendant, yet in many others he differed from him. Whereas Abeywickrema discovered his niche playing characters who could conceal the absurdity of the situations they were in, Nandasiri’s characters could only fail miserably. Abeywickrema convinced us that he was in control; Nandasiri could not. As Rajamanthri, the politician who for most of us epitomised the silliness and stupidity of our brand of lawmakers, he frequently parrots out that he’s an honest man. Abeywickrema could say the same thing and get away with it. Nandasiri could not: when he says he’s honest, you knew at once that he was anything but.

Nandasiri revelled in having no self-respect even when we ascribed to him some sense of honour and dignity. In Nonawarune Mahathwarune the ubiquitous Premachandra flirts with the woman next door (Sanoja Bibile), though we don’t get why the latter never returns his affections. As Senarath Dunusinghe in Yes Boss, the situation is reversed: he has to suffer another man flirting with his wife, the issue being that the man happens to be his employer who doesn’t know that they are married. The whole plot pivots on two things: the fact that his boss doesn’t like him, and the fact that he has to disguise himself as an older husband of his own wife to conceal their marriage from his boss.

In his own special way, Nandasiri went on to represent our contempt for womanisers, cuckolds, and politicians, by turning them into easily recognisable and easily mockable stereotypes. In Nonawarune Mahathwarune he was the womaniser, in Yes Boss he was the cuckold – though his wife only pretends to give in to their employer’s advances – and as Rajamanthri, easily the most recognisable comic figure here during the past 20 years, he was the politician. It was as Rajamanthri that he prospered, even when playing characters who only vaguely reminded us of him, such as the antihero of Sikuru Hathe.

Many years ago, I watched a mini series on Rupavahini revolving around a politician and his driver. Vijaya Nandasiri played the politician, Vasantha Kumarasiri’s driver. Early on I sensed something odd about them. Their voices were different. The dubbing team had synced one actor’s voice with the other, a trick that survived the first 10 minutes of the first episode, after which these two meet a horrible accident that (inexplicably) leaves onlookers and relatives confused as to whose body belongs to whom.

Both are near dying. A quick surgery is hence followed by a quick plastic surgery, in which the wrong face is placed on the wrong body. The voices now revert to the correct actor. In hindsight this was an unnecessary gimmick, but also a useful trick, since for the rest of the story the driver becomes the believer in authority and the politician the believer in Marxist politics. Crude, and rather one-dimensional, but fun. And it wasn’t just a change of voice: it was also a change of spirit, of two contradictory personalities transplanted to each other. That was Nandasiri’s charm. You could never anticipate anyone other than him when he was there. For the mini series to work, hence, he had to be himself.

If Joe was redeemable because he was at the receiving end of some confusing dilemma (like the baby he raises in Punchi Baba, or the lifestyle in Colombo he gets used to in Kolamba Sanniya, Vijaya was unredeemable because he was at the other end, always provoking if not unleashing some havoc. It’s not a coincidence that, in this respect, his characters were always middle class, consumerist, very often in professions that called for security, stability, and status: as a Junior Visualiser in an ad agency in Yes Boss, as the chief in a security firm in Sir Last Chance, and as a police sergeant in Magodi Godayi. These symbolised a lifestyle that Nandasiri’s antiheroes sought to subvert and to defy.

Where he was his own man – the magul kapuwa in Sikuru Hathe or Rajamanthri in so many movies and serials – he wasn’t a provocateur, but a lovable antihero. And like all antiheroes, he conceals goodness because he despises it: in Sikuru Hathe, for instance, he commits one deception after another for his family’s sake, especially his daughter’s.

Where he was paired with another actor, I think, Nandasiri failed. He was his man, so when in Methuma he and Sriyantha Mendis are mistaken for two lunatics by a veda mahaththaya in a village, he could not really shine the way he had in Ethuma. Even in Magodi Godayi, he was less than he usually was whenever he was opposite Gamini Susiriwardana. Yes Boss and Nonawarune Mahathwarune had him among a plethora of other actors, to be sure, but then he was on his own there. There are moments in Yes Boss when Lucky Dias nearly outshines him. But Nandasiri gets back on track; he exerts his dominance again.

In other words, Nandasiri could give his best only if his co-star was alive to his range, or if his character was of a lesser pedigree than his co-star. That is what happens in King Hunther, where he could be himself opposite Mahendra Perera for two reasons: because Mahendra was a fairly good comic actor himself, and because Nandasiri’s character, Hunther, hails from such a different world that the present (in which Mahendra is an escaped convict) appears outlandish to him. Hunther to get used to this world, and that means getting used to the first two people he befriends: Mahendra and Anarkali Akarsha.

Vijaya Nandasiri’s ultimate triumph was his gift at getting us to feel for unfeeling antiheroes. Sometimes he could trump us, as Abeywickrema often did, like in King Hunther, when he hears that the politician who befriends him to further his career has decided to kill him off, and surreptitiously escapes. You never thought he was capable of upping the antagonist, but he does just that, providing us with the final twist in the story.

He couldn’t behave this way as Rajamanthri because he was not reflecting our contempt for figures of authority, but downright embodying it. When, towards the end of Suhada Koka, he is killed off by an assassin acting on the orders of the second-in-command to the Prime Minister (the latter played by W. Jayasiri), the film preaches to us a homily on the corrupting influence of power, a warning for all politicians. But then, just as you come to terms with this conclusion, he wakes up; the whole scene, it turns out, was a nightmare.

Ordinarily, you’d think he would learn from such a nightmare. But he doesn’t. Even after that harrowing fantasy, he is soon back to being the pompous figure he always was. Yet in that brief sequence he told us everything that needed to be told about how the corrupt remain corrupt, and how irredeemable they are. Was it a cruel coincidence, then, that the only time Rajamanthri was killed off like that marked the last time Vijaya Nandasiri played Rajamanthri? We may never know, but perhaps it was more than a coincidence. Perhaps it was the only fitting end to such a career that could be filmed.The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com

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Features

The hard challenge of clinching a political settlement in the Middle East

Published

4 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Bruised hearts: Displaced Palestinian civilians in the Gaza.(Photo by Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Despite some sections of the Trump administration persisting with the view that the possibility could not be entirely ruled out of there being a diplomatic solution to the current US-Iran hostilities in West Asia, the skeptic could not be blamed for thinking otherwise. The intensity, scale and frequency of the tit-for-tat strikes by the antagonists over the past few days against selected military targets and civilian infrastructure in particular in West Asia make the adoption of this stance excusable.

The continuing hostilities render the mentioning of the MOU signed between the warring parties in mid-June a laughable matter. While it could very well be that the foes are wishing privately for a cessation of hostilities before long, what seems to be uppermost on their minds right now is to negotiate with each other from a position of strength. This strategy compels them to incapacitate each other militarily to the extent possible, lest they have to concede too much to each other during negotiations. Hence the stepped-up hostilities.

However, even on the question of there being a negotiated political settlement in the West Asian theatre in the longer term, the skeptic could come to be seen as scoring over the optimist. Developments on the ground account for this.

At the time of writing Israel’s Netanyahu government is going ahead in fairly care-free fashion with the establishment of more Jewish settlements in the Gaza and the West Bank, and it’s all happening under the apparently complacent gaze of the US. In fact, some quarters estimate that Israel is in control of some 65% of the Gaza Strip. Ethnic cleansing, that is, is being drastically stepped-up.

Accordingly, in terms of the power relations of West Asia, the world is almost back to the status quo of the late forties of the last century when the state of Israel was established and the Palestinians were reduced to a microscopic minority in the land they came to inhabit. Therefore, even the impartial observer would be compelled to ask: ‘Will a negotiated peace be ever possible in the Middle East?’

The humanist in the observer would prefer to answer this question in the affirmative and it is indeed the ideal stance to adopt considering the staggering human and material costs of the conflict. But the way ahead to peace could be expected to be highly hazardous and arduous. Among other odds, it would also prove an uphill endeavour to win minds and hearts.

The US’ Trump administration would need to be counted out in this pursuit. This is on account of the fact that it has been far too wayward in its management of West Asian affairs in particular over the past couple of years. Given its unpredictable character it is a matter for conjecture whether it could be counted on to live up to its commitments.

Moreover, Israel could be expected to ‘go it alone’ in the Middle East regardless of whether US help is coming or otherwise. It has indicated as much in recent times and Israel could be doubted on this score only at the doubter’s peril. Because time and again Israel has demonstrated that it could steadfastly defend its interests even single-handedly in the Middle East. History bears this out.

However, a durable alliance with the US would stand Israel in good stead. On the matter of military and intelligence assistance, for example, the US’s help proved invaluable for Israel in the past and going forward this is bound to be so as well. Moreover, it is unlikely that the Trump administration would give up on Israel, considering that a strong Israel is crucial for the furtherance of the US’ strategic and economic interests in West Asia.

But whether the above factors would have a considerable bearing on the question of working out a durable solution to the West Asian tangle is an entirely different matter. Israel, as in the case of the Palestinian enclaves, is acutely security conscious and would need to satisfy itself fully that it could live in a security environment that would guarantee its complete safety, going forward.

The Middle East is badly in need of another peace effort on the lines of the Oslo Accords of the mid-nineties that brought the key actors together and helped hammer out a solution that addressed some of their notable concerns. To be sure, that process did not prove to be the ideal answer to the tangle, but it yielded some respite to the region and drove home that one-time sworn foes could indeed negotiate with a degree of success. The West Bank authority, although falling short of fulfilling some key Palestinian aspirations, is testimony that a degree of success is possible if the intent is right.

Given the current realities of West Asia, peace-making is bound to be an uphill challenge. The violence faced in recent times by the Palestinian community, in particular, has been nothing less than mind-numbing. Merciless has been the violence visited on them by the Israeli side. In such circumstances, durable peace in the region could smack of an idealist’s dream.

Nevertheless, there needs to be urgently, a meeting of minds over the divides. The US would need to be counted out as an honest broker in bringing the sides together but the rest of the West would do well to step up to the challenge.

In this exercise the onus would be on the world’s democracies to take the initiative and doggedly stay the course. An acceptable combination would be the EU and the UN. Given their credentials, the main sides in West Asia ought to find them the least controversial.

Even if the relevant institutional and political arrangements could be shored up to take a reconciliation process forward, winning hearts and minds for the peace drive would prove a grueling challenge. Over the past few years in particular tens of thousands of hearts and minds on both sides of the divide have been bruised badly in the runaway murderous violence that has come to define the Middle East.

These badly scarred personalities would need to experience healing without much delay. It is therefore a multi-faceted challenge that is at hand. Since wide-ranging expertise would be needed in the healing process, people’s participation in peace-making, ranging over the divides, would need to be made a durable reality. It will be a time for enthroning humanity and ensuring the rejection of all forms of violence and coercion.

Features

Amazing Thailand …right here in Colombo

Published

4 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

For many Sri Lankans, Thailand is the go-to holiday — beaches, temples, food, and that famous warm hospitality.

In fact, I’ve been to Amazing Thailand 24 times myself, and was honoured with the Friends of Thailand International Media Award by the Tourism Authority of Thailand for promoting Thai tourism.

The good news I have for you today is that you don’t even need a passport to get a taste of Amazing Thailand.

The Royal Thai Embassy, in Colombo, is bringing a vibrant slice of Thailand, to the city of Colombo, with Thai Festival 2026 — a cultural experience like never before.

Whether you are an avid enthusiast of Thai culture, a total novice, or simply just interested in exploring foreign cultures, Thai Festival 2026 is going to be the perfect opportunity for you to get more than just a glimpse into one of the most celebrated cultural heritages in South East Asia. And ENTRANCE IS FREE.

The festival will be held on the 1st and 2nd of August, 2026, at Siam Nivasa, 43, C.W.W. Kannangara Mawatha, Colombo 7, and the East Parking Area, of the Colombo Municipal Council, from 11:00am to 5:00pm.

Both days will be full of live entertainment, and dispersed throughout with Thai cultural displays, including exhilarating traditional dance performances and breathtaking Muay Thai demonstrations.

Exploring art and craft specific to Thailand, tasting irresistible authentic Thai cuisine, and playing arcade games, are just a few more fun-filled events available for visitors at the festival premises.

An array of Thai products will also be available for purchase.

While at the festival, you will find Sri Lankan Alumni from Thai universities sharing their experiences with you and willing to answer any questions you might have, related to studying abroad in Thailand.

You can also register for the Muay Thai workshop that will be happening on the 7th and 8th of August, 2026, in Colombo.

Irresistible authentic Thai cuisine

Visitors can also stand a chance to win traditional Thai souvenirs, get exclusive photo opportunities, and, the big one — to enter the raffle draw, at the end of each day, for the grand prize of an all-inclusive round trip to Thailand.

Be sure to avail yourself of this exceptional opportunity and add a cultural spin to your weekend.

To keep up with the latest updates on Thai Festival 2026, head over to the Thai Festival official social media pages.

The Royal Thai Embassy in Colombo official webpage:

https://colombo.thaiembassy.org

Official social media:

Facebook: @RTEColombo

Instagram: @thaiembassysrilanka

Thai Festival official social media:

Facebook: Thai Festival in Colombo

Instagram: @thaifestival_colombo

TikTok: @thaifestival.incolombo

Features

Thicker, stronger hair …

Published

4 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

Hair fall, in this heat, can be so frustrating, and noticing a thin patch is even more worrying. The good news is … yes, with a little care and kitchen ingredients, you can nourish your scalp and support healthy regrowth.

Try these four easy home remedies … even our grandmothers trusted:

* Coconut Oil and Curry Leaves Tonic:

Warm 04 tablespoons of coconut oil, with a handful of curry leaves, till the leaves turn black. Cool, strain, and massage into scalp 02-03 times a week. Leave for 01 hour, or overnight.

Why:

Coconut oil deeply nourishes, while curry leaves help strengthen roots and add shine.

* Onion Juice for Spot Treatment:

With cotton, dab the juice of 01 small onion, directly on the thin/bald patches. Leave for 20-30 minutes, and then wash with a mild shampoo. Use twice a week.

Why:

Rich in sulfur, onion juice helps boost blood circulation to the scalp.

* Aloe Vera and Castor Oil Mask:

Mix 02 tablespoons of fresh aloe vera gel and 01 tablespoon castor oil and apply to the scalp, focusing on thinning areas. Leave for 45 minutes, and then rinse with cool water.

Why:

Aloe vera soothes the scalp, while castor oil coats hair to make it look thicker.

* Fenugreek and Curd Strengthening Pack:

You will need 02 tablespoons fenugreek seeds, soaked overnight, and 02 tablespoons plain curd.

Grind to a paste, apply to scalp for 30 minutes, and then wash.

Why:

Fenugreek strengthens strands and reduces breakage.

Extra Tips for Healthy Hair:

Avoid tight hairstyles that pull on the scalp.

Eat iron and protein rich foods: greens, dhal, eggs, fish.

Use lukewarm water, not hot.

Be gentle when brushing and drying.