A significant portion of the history of paediatrics is a triumph of prevention. From the simple act of washing hands to the miracle of vaccines, preventive strategies have been the unsung heroes, drastically lowering child mortality rates and setting the stage for healthier, longer lives across the globe. Simple measures like promoting personal hygiene, ensuring the proper use of toilets, and providing Vitamin K immediately after birth to prevent dangerous bleeding, have profound impacts. Advanced interventions like inhalers for asthma, robust trauma care systems, and even cutting-edge genetic manipulations are testament to the relentless and wonderful progress of paediatric science.

A shining beacon that has signified increased survival and marked reductions in mortality across the board in all paediatric age groups has been the development of various preventive strategies in the science of children’s health, from newborns to adolescents. The institution of such proven measures across the globe, has resulted in gains that are almost too good to be true. From a Sri Lankan perspective, these measures have contributed towards the unbelievable reduction of the under-5-year mortality rate from over 100 per 1000 live births in the 1960s to the seminal single-digit figure of 07 per 1000 live births in the 2020s.

Yet for all this, despite the overwhelming evidence of success, a most worrying trend is emerging. That is public scepticism and pessimism regarding these vital interventions. This doubt is not a benign phenomenon; it poses a real danger to the health of our children. At the heart of this challenge lies the potent, often insidious, spread of misinformation and disinformation.

The success of any preventive health strategy in paediatrics rests not just on its scientific efficacy, but on parental cooperation and commitment. When parents hesitate or refuse to follow recommended guidelines, the shield of prevention is compromised. Today, the most potent threat to this partnership is the flood of false information.

Misinformation is false information spread unintentionally. A well-meaning friend sharing a rumour about a vaccine side-effect they heard online is spreading misinformation.

Disinformation is false information deliberately created and disseminated to cause harm or sow doubt. This often comes from organised groups or individuals with vested interests; sometimes financial, sometimes ideological, who seek to undermine public trust in medical institutions and scientific consensus.

The digital age, particularly social media, has become the prime breeding ground for these falsehoods. Complex scientific data is reduced to emotionally charged, simplistic, and often sensationalist soundbites that travel faster and farther than the truth.

The most visible battleground is childhood vaccination. Decades of robust, high-quality research have confirmed vaccines as one of the most cost-effective and successful public health interventions ever conceived. Global vaccination efforts have saved an estimated 150 million lives in the past 50 years, eradicating or drastically controlling diseases like polio, measles, diphtheria, and tetanus.

However, a single, long-retracted, and scientifically debunked paper claiming a link between the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism continues to be weaponised by disinformation campaigns. This persistent myth, despite being soundly disproven, taps into deep-seated fears about children’s development. Other common vaccine myths target ingredients such as trace amounts of aluminium or mercury, which are harmless in the quantities used and often less than what is naturally found in food or the idea that “natural immunity” from infection is superior, totally ignoring the fact that natural infection carries the devastating risk of severe complications, long-term disability, and even death. The tangible consequence of this doubt is the dropping of childhood vaccination rates in various communities, leading to the wholly unnecessary re-emergence of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles.

Scepticism is not limited to vaccines. It can touch any area of paediatric preventive care where an intervention might seem unnecessary, invasive, or have perceived risks. Routine screenings for speech disorders, motor skills, or mental health issues can sometimes be perceived as medicalising normal childhood variations or putting a “label” on a child. Parents may resist or delay screening, missing the critical window for early intervention of proven measures that are likely to help. Advice on managing childhood obesity, reducing screen time, or adopting a balanced diet can be viewed by some parents as intrusive or judgmental, leading to poor adherence to essential health-promoting behaviours.

The regular use of inhalers for asthma or other chronic conditions might be looked down upon due to the fear of “dependency”, “addiction”, or long-term side effects, despite medical consensus that these preventive measures keep conditions controlled and prevent life-threatening exacerbations.

The common thread is a lack of understanding of the risk-benefit ratio. Parents, bombarded by fear-mongering narratives, often overestimate the rare, mild risks of an intervention while catastrophically underestimating the severe and permanent risks of the disease or condition itself.

The power of paediatric preventive medicine is not in a single shot or pill, but in the consistent, committed partnership between healthcare providers and parents. Paediatric science, driven by rigorous evidence-based medicine, do continue to refine guidelines, conduct transparent research, and communicate its findings clearly. When guidelines are confusing or lack robust evidence, it naturally creates openings for doubt. The scientific community’s commitment to continuous quality improvement and accessibility is paramount.

Ultimately, the success of prevention rests with the parents. Parenting, as a vital form of preventive care, includes all activities that raise happy, healthy, and capable children. The simple, non-medical steps mentioned in the introduction, proper handwashing, good sanitation, and encouraging exercise, are all forms of parental preventive intervention.

For more complex interventions, parental commitment requires several actions. They need to seek and trust the guidance provided by qualified healthcare professionals over anonymous, unsubstantiated online claims. They need to engage in an open dialogue by asking relevant questions and expressing concerns to doctors in an open, non-confrontational manner. A good healthcare provider will use this as an opportunity to educate and build trust, and not a portal to simply dismiss concerns. Then, of course, there is the spectre of adherence to various protocols and actions by the parents. These include consistently following recommended schedules, whether for well-child checkups, vaccinations, or daily medication protocols.

Addressing public scepticism requires a multi-pronged, collaborative strategy. It is not just about correcting false facts (debunking), but about building resilience against future falsehoods (prebunking). The single most influential voice in a parent’s decision-making process is their paediatrician or primary care provider. Clinicians must move beyond simply reciting facts. They need to use empathetic communication techniques, like Motivational Interviewing (MI), which focuses on active listening, validating parental concerns, and then collaboratively guiding them toward evidence-based decisions. For example, responding with, “I hear you’re worried about the side-effects you read about. Can I share what we know from decades of safety monitoring?” Being open about common, minor side effects such as a short-lasting fever after a vaccine pre-empts the shock and distrust that occurs when an expected, yet unmentioned, reaction happens.

Public health campaigns must go on the offensive, not just a defensive fact-checking spree. Teaching the general public how disinformation works, the use of “fake experts”, selective cherry-picked data, and conspiracy theories all add up to a most powerful form of inoculation (prebunking) against future exposure. Health institutions must simplify their communications and make verified, high-quality information easily accessible on platforms where parents are already looking.

Parents often trust their peers as much as their doctors. Engaging local community leaders, faith leaders, and even trusted social media influencers to share accurate, positive messages about paediatric health can shift the public narrative at a grassroots level. While protecting privacy, sharing aggregate data and stories about the dramatic decline in childhood diseases thanks to prevention can re-emphasise the collective good.

The battle against child mortality and morbidity has been one of the great human achievements, a testament to scientific ingenuity and collective effort. Today, the greatest threat to maintaining these gains is not a new virus, but a breakdown of trust fuelled by unchecked falsehoods.

Paediatric preventive interventions, from a cake of soap and a proper toilet to the most sophisticated genetic therapies, are the foundation of a healthy future for every child. To secure this future, the scientific community must remain transparent, the healthcare system must lead with empathy, and the public must commit to informed, critical thinking. By rejecting the noise of disinformation and embracing the clear, evidence-based consensus of science, we can ensure that every child continues to benefit from the life-saving progress that defines modern paediatrics. The well-being of the next generation demands nothing less than this renewed commitment.

Little children are not in a position to make abiding decisions regarding their health, especially regarding preventive strategies in health. It is ultimately the crucial decisions made by responsible parents regarding the health of their children that really matter. As doctors, our commitment is never to leave any child behind.

by Dr B. J. C. Perera  ✍️
MBBS(Cey), DCH(Cey), DCH(Eng), MD(Paediatrics), MRCP(UK), FRCP(Edin), FRCP(Lond), FRCPCH(UK), FSLCPaed, FCCP, Hony. FRCPCH(UK), Hony. FCGP(SL)
Specialist Consultant Paediatrician and Honorary Senior Fellow, Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Joint Editor, Sri Lanka Journal of Child Health
Section Editor, Ceylon Medical Journal

We express our profound concern and deep outrage at the vulgar, misogynistic, and defamatory attacks being directed at the Prime Minister and Minister of Education, Dr. Harini Amarasuriya.

Dr. Harini Amarasuriya is not merely a political leader; she is a scholar, public intellectual, and lifelong advocate of social justice, equality, and education. Attempts to discredit her through personal abuse rather than reasoned policy debate are not only an insult to her, but an assault on democratic values, women’s leadership, and intellectual integrity in public life.

Such attacks are unjust and unethical, and they corrode democratic discourse. We are deeply disappointed that certain political actors and their supporters continue to rely on misinformation, prejudice, and emotional manipulation, instead of engaging in rational, evidence-based, and constructive debate.

Sri Lanka has already paid a heavy price for decades of politics rooted in fear, communal division, and sentiment-driven populism. The country’s economic collapse and social breakdown are the direct consequences of these failed approaches. The people decisively rejected this style of politics through the Aragalaya, signaling a clear demand for change. Sri Lanka now stands at a historic turning point. After decades of corruption, ethnic manipulation, and policy paralysis, the people have given a clear mandate for systemic reform.

At this critical moment, Sri Lanka urgently needs structural reforms, particularly in education, which is the foundation of long-term national development, social mobility, and global competitiveness. Yet we observe that the very forces responsible for the country’s decline are once again attempting to block or derail reforms by exploiting religious, cultural, and emotional narratives.

We strongly affirm that no nation can be rebuilt through hatred, fear, or division. Education reform is not a political threat; it is a national necessity. Efforts to undermine reform through personal attacks and manufactured controversies serve only those who seek to return to power by keeping the country weak, divided, and intellectually impoverished.

Those who now attack Dr. Harini Amarasuriya are not defending culture or morality. They are defending privilege and political survival. Having failed the country for over seventy-five years through communalism, patronage, and anti-intellectualism, they now fear that an educated, critical, and empowered generation will render their outdated politics irrelevant.

This is why they target:

=a woman,

=an academic,

=and a reformer.

We therefore state clearly that we:

1. Condemn all forms of character assassination, gender-based attacks, and hate propaganda against the Prime Minister and Minister of Education.

2. Affirm our full support for Dr. Harini Amarasuriya’s leadership in advancing Sri Lanka’s education reforms.

3. Urge the government to proceed firmly and without retreat in implementing the proposed education reforms, in line with national policy and the public mandate.

4. Call upon academics, professionals, teachers, parents, and citizens to stand together against reactionary forces that seek to sabotage reform through fear mongering and disinformation.

A country cannot be rebuilt by those who destroyed it. A future cannot be created by those who fear education reforms.

Sri Lanka’s future must not be sacrificed for the ambitions of a few.Sri Lanka must move forward — with knowledge, dignity, and courage.

Signatories:

1. Markandu Thiruvathavooran, Attorney at law

2. S. Arivalzahan, University of Jaffna

3. Dr S.Ramesh, University of Jaffna

4. Dr. Mariadas Alfred, Former Dean, University of Peradeniya

5. Prof B.Nimalathasan, Senior Professor, University of Jaffna

6. S. Srivakeesan, Station Master, SriLankan Railways

7. A. T. Aravinthan, Branch Manager, Commercial Bank

8. Dr. S. Niththiyaruban, Paediatrician, Teaching Hospital, Jaffna

9. Dr. S. Selvaganesh, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon, Teaching Hospital, Jaffna

10. Dr. S. Mathievaanan, Consultant Surgeon, Teaching Hospital, Jaffna

11. Prof. P. Iyngaran, University of Jaffna

12. Eng. M. Sooriasegaram, President, Education Development Consortium

13. Dr. S. Raviraj, Senior Consultant Surgeon, Former Dean, Faculty of Medicine, University, Jaffna.

14. Mr. Saminadan Wimal, University of Jaffna

15. Dr. A. Antonyrajan, University of Jaffna

16. P. Regno, Attorney at Law

17. Prof. J. Prince Jeyadevan, University of Jaffna

18. Prof. S. Muhunthan, University of Jaffna

19. Prof. R. Kapilan, University of Jaffna

20. Dr. S. Jeevasuthan, University of Jaffna

21. J.S. Thevaruban, University of Jaffna

22. S. Balaputhiran, University of Jaffna

23. Dr. N. Sivapalan, Retired Senior lecturer, University of Jaffna

24. I. P. Dhanushiyan, University of Jaffna

25. Dr. K. Thabotharan, University of Jaffna

26. Dr. Bahirathy J. Rasanen, University of Jaffna

27. Perinpanayagam Ronibus, Vice Secretary, Change Charitable Trust, Jaffna

28. Dr. S. Maheswaran, University of Peradeniya

29. Mr. S. Laleesan, Principal, Kopay Teachers’ College

30. Victor Antany, Teacher, Kilinochchi

31. K. Shanthakumar, Principal, Technical College, Vavuniya

32. S. Thirikaran, Principal, J/ Puttur Srisomaskanda College

33. Dr. T. Vannarajan, Advanced Technical Institute, Jaffna.

34. X. Don Bosco, Resource person, Piliyandala Educational Zone

35. K. Ravikumar, Regional Manager, Powerhands Pvt Ltd

36. Sathiyapriya Jeyaseelan, DO, Economist

37. A. Kalaichelvan, Chief Accountant, Animal Productive & Health

38. C. Vathanakumar, Retired Project Director

39. P. Kirupakaran, Department of Buildings (NP)

40. A. Antony Pilinton, David Peris Company, Jaffna

41. A. Muralietharan, Social Activist

42. Sinthuja Sritharan, Independent Researcher

43. T. Sritharan, Social Activist

44. Ms. Gnasakthi Sritharan, Social Activist

45. P. Thevatharsan, Management Service Officer

46. . S. Mohan, Social Activist

47. K. Jeyakumaran, Social Activist

48. Dr. N. Nithianandan, Chairman, Ratnam Foundation

49. George Antony Cristy, Social Activist

50. S. Thangarasa, Social Activist

51. N. Bhavan, Retd. Deputy Principal, Mahajana College

52. P. Muthulingam, Executive Director, Institute of Social Development, Kandy

53. M.K. Sivarajah, Social Activist

54. Mr. V. Sivalingam, Human Rights Activist

55. S. Jeyaganeshan, Samuthi Development Officer

Humour and the Creation of Community:

“As melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness,

so humour is comedy that has lost its bodily weight”. Italo Calvino on ‘Lightness’ (Six Memos for the New Millennium (Harvard UP, 1988).

With the death of Ernest Thalayasingham MacIntyre or Mac, as he was affectionately known to us, an entire theatrical milieu and the folk who created and nourished Modern Lankan Theatre appear to have almost passed away. I have drawn from Shelagh Goonewardene’s excellent and moving book, This Total Art: Perceptions of Sri Lankan Theatre (Lantana Publishing; Victoria, Australia, 1994), to write this. Also, the rare B&W photographs in it capture the intensity of distant theatrical moments of a long-ago and far-away Ceylon’s multi-ethnic theatrical experiments. But I don’t know if there is a scholarly history, drawing on oral history, critical reviews, of this seminal era (50s and 60s) written by Lankan or other theatre scholars in any of our languages. It is worth remembering that Shelagh was a Burgher who edited her Lankan journalistic reviews and criticism to form part of this book, with new essays on the contribution of Mac to Lankan theatre, written while living here in Australia. It is a labour of love for the country of her birth.

Here I wish to try and remember, now in my old age, what Mac, with his friends and colleagues from the University of Ceylon Drama Society did to create the theatre group called Stage & Set as an ‘infrastructure of the sensible’, so to speak, for theatrical activity in English, centred around the Lionel Wendt Theatre in Colombo 7 in the 60s. And remarkably, how this group connected with the robust Sinhala drama at the Lumbini Theatre in Colombo 5.

Shelagh shows us how Bertolt Brecht’s plays facilitated the opening up of a two-way street between the Sinhala and English language theatre during the mid-sixties, and in this story, Mac played a decisive role. I will take this story up below.

I was an undergraduate student in the mid-sixties who avidly followed theatre in Sinhala and English and the critical writings and radio programmes on it by eminent critics such as Regi Siriwardena and A. J. Gunawardana. I was also an inaugural student at the Aquinas University’s Theatre Workshop directed by Mac in late 1968, I think it was. So, he was my teacher for a brief period when he taught us aspects of staging (composition of space, including design of lighting) and theatre history, and styles of acting. Later in Australia, through my husband Brian Rutnam I became friends with Mac’s family including his young son Amrit and daughter Raina and followed the productions of his own plays here in Sydney, and lately his highly fecund last years when he wrote (while in a nursing home with his wife and comrade in theatre, Nalini Mather, the vice-principal of Ladies’ College) his memoir, A Bend in the River, on their University days. In my review in The Island titled ‘Light Sorrow -Peradeniya Imagination’ I attempted to show how Mac created something like an archaeology of the genesis of the pivotal plays Maname and Sinhabahu by Ediriweera Sarachchandra in 1956 at the University with his students. Mac pithily expressed the terms within which such a national cultural renaissance was enabled in Sinhala; it was made possible, he said, precisely because it was not ‘Sinhala Only’! The ‘it’ here refers to the deep theatrical research Sarachchandra undertook in his travels as well as in writing his book on Lankan folk drama, all of which was made possible because of his excellent knowledge of English.

The 1956 ‘Sinhala Only’ Act of parliament which abolished the status of Tamil as one of the National languages of Ceylon and also English as the language of governance, violated the fundamental rights of the Tamil people of Lanka and is judged as a violent act which has ricocheted across the bloodied history of Lanka ever since.

Mac was born in Colombo to a Tamil father and a Burgher mother and educated at St Patrick’s College in Jaffna after his father died young. While he wrote all his plays in English, he did speak Tamil and Sinhala with a similar level of fluency and took his Brecht productions to Jaffna. I remember seeing his production of Mother Courage and Her Children in 1969 at the Engineering Faculty Theatre at Peradeniya University with the West Indian actress Marjorie Lamont in the lead role.

 Stage & Set and Brecht in Lanka

The very first production of a Brecht play in Lanka was by Professor E.F. C. Ludowyk (Professor of English at Peradeniya University from 1933 to 1956) who developed the Drama Society that pre-existed his time at the University College by expanding the play-reading group into a group of actors. This fascinating history is available through the letter sent in 1970 to Shelagh by Professor Ludowyk late in his retirement in England. In this letter he says that he produced Brecht’s The Good Woman of Szechwan with the Dram Soc in 1949. Shelagh who was directed by Professor Ludowyk also informs us elsewhere that he had sent from England a copy of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle to Irangani (Meedeniya/Serasinghe) in 1966 and that she in turn had handed it over to Mac, who then produced it in a celebrated production with her in the role of Grusha, which is what opened up the two way-street between the English language theatre of the Wendt and the Lumbini Theatre in Sinhala. Henry Jayasena in turn translated the play into Sinhala, making it one of the most beloved Sinhala plays. Mac performed in Henry’s production as the naughty priest who has the memorable line which he was fond of reciting for us in Sinhala; ‘Dearly beloved wedding and funeral guests, how varied is the fate of man…’. The idiomatic verve of Henry’s translation was such that people now consider the Caucasian Chalk Circle a Sinhala play and is also a text for high school children, I hear. Even a venal president recently quoted a famous line of the selfless Grusha in parliament assuming urbanely that folk knew the reference.

Others will discuss in some detail the classical and modern repertoire of Western plays that Mac directed for Stage & Set and the 27 plays he wrote himself, some of which are published, so that here I just want to suggest the sense of excitement a Stage & Set production would create through the media. I recall how characters in Mac’s production of Othello wore costumes made of Barbara Sansoni’s handloom material crafted specially for it and also the two sets of lead players, Irangani and Winston Serasinghe and Shelagh and Chitrasena. While Serasinghe’s dramatic voice was beautifully textured, Chitrasena with his dancer’s elan brought a kinetic dynamism not seen in a dramatic role, draped in the vibrant cloaks made of the famous heavy handloom cotton, with daring vertical black stripes – there was electricity in the air. Karan Breckenridge as the Story Teller in the Chalk Circle and also as Hamlet, Alastair Rosemale-Cocq as Iago were especially remarkable actors within the ensemble casts of Stage & Set. When Irangani and Winston Serasinghe, (an older and more experienced generation of actors than the nucleus of Stage & Set), joined the group they brought a gravitas and a sense of deep tradition into the group as Irangani was a trained actor with a wonderful deep modulated voice rare on our stage. The photographs of the production are enchanting, luminous moments of Lankan theatre. I had a brief glimpse of the much loved Arts Centre Club (watering hole), where all these people galvanised by theatre, – architects, directors, photographers, artists, actors, musicians, journalists, academics, even the odd senator – all met and mingled and drank and talked regularly, played the piano on a whim, well into the night; a place where many ideas would have been hatched.

A Beckett-ian Couple: Mac & Nalini

In their last few years due to restricted physical mobility (not unlike personae in Samuel Beckett’s last plays), cared for very well at a nursing home, Mac and Nalini were comfortably settled in two large armchairs daily, with their life-long travelling-companion- books piled up around them on two shelves ready to help. With their computers at hand, with Nalini as research assistant with excellent Latin, their mobile, fertile minds roamed the world.

It is this mise-en-scene of their last years that made me see Mac metamorphose into something of a late Beckett dramatis persona, but with a cheeky humour and a voracious appetite for creating scenarios, dramatic ones, bringing unlikely historical figures into conversation with each other (Galileo and Aryabhatta for example). The conversations, rather more ludic and schizoid and yet tinged with reason, sweet reason. Mac’s scenarios were imbued with Absurdist humour and word play so dear to Lankan theatre of a certain era. Lankans loved Waiting for Godot and its Sinhala version, Godot Enakan. Mac loved to laugh till the end and made us laugh as well, and though he was touched by sorrow he made it light with humour.

Chitrasena & Shelagh as Othelo & Desdemona

And I feel that his Memoir was also a love letter to his beloved Nalini and a tribute to her orderly, powerful analytical mind honed through her Classics Honours Degree at Peradeniya University of the 50s. Mac’s mind however, his theatrical imagination, was wild, ‘unruly’ in the sense of not following the rules of the ‘Well-Made play’, and in his own plays he roamed where angels fear to tread. Now in 2026 with the Sinhala translation by Professor Chitra Jayathilaka of his 1990 play Rasanayagam’s Last Riot, audiences will have the chance to experience these remarkable qualities in Sinhala as well.

 Impossible Conversations

In the nursing home, he was loved by the staff as he made them laugh and spoke to one of the charge nurses, a Lankan, in Sinhala. Seated there in his room he wrote a series of short well-crafted one-act plays bristling with ideas and strange encounters between figures from world history who were not contemporaries; (Bertolt Brecht and Pope John Paul II, and Galileo Galilei and a humble Lankan Catholic nun at the Vatican), and also of minor figures like poor Yorik, the court jester whom he resurrects to encounter the melancholic prince of Denmark, Hamlet.

Community of Laughter: The Kolam Maduwa of Sydney

A long life-time engaged in theatre as a vital necessity, rather than a professional job, has gifted Mac with a way of perceiving history, especially Lankan history, its blood-soaked post-Independence history and the history of theatre and life itself as a theatre of encounters; ‘all the world’s a stage…’. But all the players were never ‘mere players’ for him, and this was most evident in the way Mac galvanised the Lankan diasporic community of all ethnicities in Sydney into dramatic activity through his group aptly named the Kolam Maduwa, riffing on the multiple meanings of the word Kolam, both a lusty and bawdy dramatic folk form of Lanka and also a lively vernacular term of abuse with multiple shades of meaning, unruly behaviour, in Sinhala.

The intergenerational and international transmission of Brecht’s theatrical experiments and the nurturing of what Eugenio Barba enigmatically calls ‘the secret art of the performer’, given Mac’s own spin, is part of his legacy. Mac gave a chance for anyone who wanted to act, to act in his plays, especially in his Kolam Maduwa performances. He roped in his entire family including his two grand-children, Ayesha and Michael. What mattered to him was not how well someone acted but rather to give a person a chance to shine, even for an instance and the collective excitement, laughter and even anguish one might feel watching in a group, a play such as Antigone or Rasanayagam’s Last Riot.

A colleague of mine gave a course in Theatre Studies at The University of California at Berkeley on ‘A History of Bad Acting’ and I learnt that that was his most popular course! Go figure!

Mac never joined the legendary Dram Soc except in a silent walk-on role in Ludowyk’s final production before he left Ceylon for good. In this he is like Gananath Obeyesekere the Lankan Anthropologist who did foundational and brilliant work on folk rituals of Lanka as Dionysian acts of possession. While Gananath did do English with Ludowyk, he didn’t join the Dram Soc and instead went travelling the country recording folk songs and watching ritual dramas. Mac, I believe, did not study English Lit and instead studied Economics but at the end of A Bend in the River when he and his mates leave the hall of residence what he leaves behind is his Economics text book but instead, carries with him a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

I imagine that there was a ‘silent transmission of the secret’ as Mac stood silently on that stage in Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion; the compassionate lion. Mac understood why Ludowyk chose that play to be performed in 1956 as his final farewell to the country he loved dearly. Mac knew (among others), this gentle and excellent Lankan scholar’s book The Foot Print of the Buddha written in England in 1958.

Both Gananath and Mac have an innate sense of theatre and with Mac it’s all self-taught, intuitive. He was an auto-didact of immense mental energy. In his last years Mac has conjured up fantastic theatrical scenarios for his own delight, untrammelled by any spatio-temporal constraints. And so it happens that he gives Shakespeare, as he leaves London, one last look at his beloved Globe theatre burnt down to ashes, where ‘all that is solid melts into air’.

However, I wish to conclude on a lighter note touched by the intriguing epigram by Calvino which frames this piece. It is curious that as a director Mac was drawn to Shakespearean tragedy (Hamlet, Othello), rather than comedy. And it becomes even curiouser because as a playwright-director his own preferred genre was comedy and even grotesque-comedy and his only play in the tragic genre is perhaps Irangani. Though the word ‘Riot’ in Rasanayagam’s Last Riot refers to the series of Sinhala pogroms against Tamils, it does have a vernacular meaning, say in theatre, when one says favourably of a performance, ‘it was a riot!’, lively, and there are such scenes even in that play.  So then let me end with Calvino quoting from Shakespeare’s deliciously profound comedy As You Like It, framed by his subtle observations.

‘Melancholy and humour, inextricably intermingled, characterize the accents of the Prince of Denmark, accents we have learned to recognise in nearly all Shakespeare’s plays on the lips of so many avatars of Hamlet. One of these, Jacques in As You Like It (IV.1.15-18), defines melancholy in these terms:

“But it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.”’

Calvino’s commentary on Jacques’ self-perception is peerless:

‘It is therefore not a dense, opaque melancholy, but a veil of minute particles of humours and sensations, a fine dust of atoms, like everything else that goes to make up the ultimate substance of the multiplicity of things.’

Ernest Thalayasingham MacIntyre certainly was attuned to and fascinated to the end by the ‘fine dust of atoms, by the veil of minute particles of humours and sensations,’ but one must also add to this, laughter.

by  Laleen Jayamanne ✍️