BY Rajiva Wijesinha

A year has passed since the death of one of our most distinguished academics who was also a very good friend. I did not write about her then, for I was busy with looking after a contemporary of hers who was visiting from Canada. But I have kept thinking that I should record elements of our friendship since she was by far the Sri Lankan academic in the field of English to whom I felt closest. We never however worked together, for she had been in Australia for many years when I first joined Peradeniya, and the story I heard about her departure was from Tissa Jayatilleka, who was very much a votary of Ashley Halpe who headed the Deparment when I taught there.

The story went that there had been what both sides considered bad faith with regard to the Chair of English. But it was in fact well after Ashley had got it that Yasmine emigrated, in the climate of worry about academic freedom engendered by the higher education reforms of Mrs Bandaranaike’s second government. It may be remembered that they had brought all universities under one umbrella, with different campuses, and Kelaniya had become the centre for English, with only language teaching units even at Peradeniya.

Yasmine had by then moved to Australia, where she soon established herself as a leading scholar, in time receiving several honours from the Australian government. And she became a star in the field of Commonwealth Literature Studies, and a much revered participant at meetings of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies.

I first met her at an ACLALS meeting in Singapore in 1986, when she invited me for lunch with the friends with whom she was staying. But I believe we had been in correspondence previously, for she had followed what I had begun doing at the British Council, in particular my promotion of Sri Lankan Writing in English along with the British concerns of the Council. And her great friend Lakshmi de Silva, who was one of the most devoted fans of the programmes I put on, kept her informed of what we were doing.

So she asked me, having heard of the dramatized readings I had put on, most spectacularly of Dickens and Kipling with Richard de Zoysa bringing their characters to life, whether I would launch her book Relative Merits at the Council with such readings. This was a memoir of her family, and it had delightful set pieces which lent themselves to the dramatic reading that Richard and my other great mainstay, Yolande Abeywira, were capable of.

We had a lovely programme, using the old ebony furniture from home that I had used for Dickens, and with masses of flowers from the Council gardens, which set the scene splendidly. We did it when Yasmine and her husband Brendon were in Colombo, and the programme was an enormous success, so that Yasmine expressed herself ever afterwards as being in debt to me. But in fact it was I who was grateful, for she helped me to make clear how important our products were within the great tradition of English writing.

She and I kept in touch in the years that followed, and I loved seeing her on her visits here and also at various conferences, in Canterbury and in Jamaica and also here, for ACLALS met in Colombo in 1995. That was the year the English Association decided to showcase our writers in English, and decided on three volumes, to celebrate fiction and poetry and drama.

I am not sure to whom we entrusted the last, and it never saw the light of day. That was perhaps no great loss for there was not much that was remarkable in that field, but I was very sad that the writers we had asked to describe our novelists and short story writers, for the volume I was in charge of, produced hardly anything by the required time. I think only mine, on Punyakante Wijenaike, was ready, and that had in the end to be published in a subsequent issue of Navasilu, the journal of the English Association.

But it was poetry that we were keenest on, for we had so many excellent poets. This volume we had entrusted to Neloufer de Mel, but she had to be constantly badgered, so that she in turn badgered her writers. And finally the book did come out in time for the ACLALS Conference, but to my surprise most of our critics simply slated the poets, and it was only my piece on Anne Ranasinghe that did justice to the living writers.

What was most embarrassing was the piece on Yasmine Gooneratne, though with her customary insouciance she simply remarked that she knew the writer, a Peradeniya don, could not write; she now realized, she said, that she could not read either.

That was typical of the wry sense of humour she evinced about everything, and talking to her about the vagaries of our English Departments was great fun. She was very fond of Lakshmi de Silva, though found her devotion to D C R A Goonetilleke odd, for he was an odd man. But she got on well with him, while she could still be uptight about Ashley Halpe. And though she agreed once to have him invited to an event she was to feature in, her husband Brendon, who was made of sterner stuff, told me that there was still resentment about how he had acted over the chair many years earlier, and it was best they should not meet.

Though I still do not know what happened, and who was hard done by, I had to respect this diffidence. But I knew resentment went deep, and Yasmine more than enunciated this when, in her first novel, A Change of Skies, which came out in 1991, she caricatured the Halpes. There had been an article about them which called them the von Trapps of Sri Lanka, after the family in ‘The Sound of Music’ and she lampooned them wickedly if entertainingly in the novel. I could see then that it was perhaps unwise to think of bringing them together.

Yasmine published two more novels over the years that followed. The first was called The Pleasures of Conquest and explored the impact of colonialism from different angles, beginning with the taking up by an American of a masseur who then returns to Sri Lanka as a guru. Her next novel, The Sweet and Simple Kind, is a critique of Sri Lanka and its politics, though there is also lyricism in her description of university life at Peradeniya, where she studied and then taught. Later on she developed the political satire of this novel in Rannygazoo, which she sent me in electronic form before she died. She wanted comments, but I find reading on a computer difficult and was waiting for a hard copy she said she would lend me, but that was not to be.

She was back in Sri Lanka then, having left Australia after her retirement. She and Brendon had a flat in Colombo initially, but they had also bought an estate bungalow which he wanted to turn into a writer’s retreat, having been to the Rockefeller Centre at Bellagio which is a blissful experience. The place, which he called Pemberley, in honour of Yasmine’s devotion to Jane Austen, was not far from Sabaragamuwa University, and he asked me if I could arrange a literary conference there so that their international invitees could get funding for their visit for the inauguration.

That was in 1999 and the conference duly took place and its proceedings were published by the Sabaragamuwa University Press which I had set up, mainly for textbooks for the students but also for such initiatives. And I still recall the splendour of the opening of Pemberley, for which the Australian High Commissioner Peter Rowe, who had become a great friend, came up, spending the night before at the Belihuloya Resthouse where we had dinner, along with Nirmali Hettiarachchi, a mainstay of early programmes at Belihuloya, and my former student Walter Perera, who went on to teach at Peradeniya.

That was an idyllic day, and then we had the conference, with a starring role for Meenakshi Mukherjee, doyenne of Commonwealth Studies in India, whom I had met when she was a resident in Bellagio in May 1993 when I was there. And she had been a marvellous host at a conference at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi in 1997, just before I joined Belihuloya, so I was delighted to be able to put her and her husband Sujit up at Lakmahal after the Conference. Sadly I never saw them after that, for though I was often in Delhi they had retired to Hyderabad.

Though the Gooneratnes planned to spend much time at Pemberley, Brendon also bought a wonderful house in Colombo, a short distance away from Lakmahal, and I saw them there off and on over the years. I also once had lunch with Yasmine at Pemberley, for it was on the way to Diyatalawa, where while I was at Sabaragamuwa I coordinated the degree course of the Military Academy. I still recall the sheer joy of that meeting, from which I had to drag myself away for my teaching commitments.

I saw the Gooneratnes quite often over the next decade. They would drop in frequently on my father, of whom they were both very fond, and Yasmine made him the most beautiful sampler to celebrate his 90th birthday, yet another instance of her varied talent.

And I was deeply touched when I was one of the few guests Brendon invited to celebrate his 75th, or perhaps it was his 80th, birthday. This was at Ceytra House, the old mansion in Bagatelle Road which he had bought, a much better setting for them than the apartment they had initially got in Queen’s Road. These were both near to Lakmahal, within walking distance, and though I never went to the apartment I was at Ceytra House on and off in those years.

Both my father and I were both invited to the wedding of their son but that was in Kandy and by then my father could not travel far. But I went, and stayed with Derrick and Ayra Nugawela, who also attended. I remember the event best because, finding a massive queue at the lunch buffet, I decided to start with the desserts and found there Ena’s cousin Arjuna Aluvihare, the best UGC Chairman we have had, who had had the same idea.

The bride was the daughter of a niece of Ena who was known as Goatie. Though she was not part of the inner circle, she was there with me on the day Ena died, and I was holding her hand. Another niece, Chitty, born a Ratwatte, who had been with us on trips, had noticed that Ena was dying and could not bear to stay, but fortunately Goatie had not and so I was not alone.

There was a child of the marriage, but it was not a happy one, and then the son died. Brendon was shattered, and could not stop crying when I went to condole, though Yasmine was more stoic. Fortunately their daughter Devika proved a tower of strength to them at this time and thereafter.

When Covid struck they isolated themselves in the Haputale hills, with elaborate protocols when the situation eased, for they wanted to be absolutely sure that visitors would not bring any infection. I planned once to visit them but some crisis intervened and I could not make it, and then Brendon died. He had contracted a different infection but in the Haputale hospital he was exposed to covid and the complications proved too much.

I think they did not come to Colombo for some time so I could not condole in person. I had realized over the years how very close they were, and I do not think Yasmine could have done as much as she did without his support. But he too was an intellectual in his own right, and though a doctor had worked with her on historical writing, in particular a sensitive biography of Sir John D’Oyly, who had associated with the Sinhala poet Gajaman Nona.

But perhaps the most important element in their relationship was that noted by Yasmine in the appreciation she penned, when having expanded on his other qualities she wrote that she loved him most because, as Jane in the William books had said, he made life so exciting.

Yasmine Gooneratne stayed in touch by email over the next couple of years after Brendon died though once again an attempt to see her at Haputale failed, as covid virulence varied. Then, when finally she and Devika moved back to Colombo, I was asked to drop in at their house in Bagatelle Road, but it was some time before we could fix a date and time when she was free and I could leave the house.

But the wait was worth it for we had the most delightful conversation over a sumptuous tea that she had prepared for me, eating hardly anything herself. Devika tactfully stayed away, so we could talk, though she dropped into the room for a bit before going out.

We talked about everything, ACLALS conferences all over the world, the launch of Relative Merits at the British Council, her time at Peradeniya as both student and then lecturer, changes in Sri Lankan academic standards and the joy she had experienced in Haputale when there was just the family together during the corona restrictions. She had adjusted to Brendon’s death though it was clear she still missed him, but she was also deeply grateful to Devika for the care she took of her.

She told me about her latest novel, and wondered if she should publish it. It was political and it seemed she had put into it a number of active politicians including, she seemed to suggest, my cousin Ranil who had by now become President even though he had not been voted into Parliament at the 2020 General Election.

An earlier novel, The Sweet and Simple Kind, had veered towards politics in its conclusion, with the preposterous antics of its heroine Latha’s cousin and his step-mother, whom she had called Moira Wijesinha. Latha eventually marries the younger brother who, with his sister Tsunami, are estranged from their power hungry sibling and Moira, who rises ever higher after the death of her husband, in a scarcely disguised reference to the ascent of Mrs Bandaranaike.

The new novel, called Rannygazoo, took up the tale with Moira by now Prime Minister, but unfortunately Yasmine did not have a hard copy. She emailed me a soft copy and asked for my views, but I find reading on a computer difficult and could not manage a full novel.

She said she would pass on a hard copy when she got it from Haputale but alas that did not happen. I had hoped to drop in again, but before I could my friend Nirmali Hettiarachchi called to say Devika had rung her to say Yasmine was in hospital. We went to see her, but she was not conscious and it was clear she would not survive and we knew this was the last time we would see her.

But it is not the figure in hospital that I remember, but the vibrant personality that still continued to shine through at that last tea together in the grand drawing room at Ceytra House, the suitable setting Brendon had found for her for their retirement to Sri Lanka, a pendant to the verdant beauty of Pemberley. And there still remains Rannygazoo, which I shall try to read online, to revive memories of mordant wit and great joy in life.