Features
The Copper Tumbler & Donkeys in Mannar: A Work of Mourning – II
By Laleen Jayamanne
(First part of this article appeared in The Island Midweek Review on 12 July 2023)
‘it is not narrative that we should abandon but chronology’’ Kumar Shahani
Matter and Memory: Copper and Fire
The image of the copper tumbler on fire in the microwave oven is shocking and dangerous because of the proximity to electricity. But beyond that visceral shock, the image itself feels like the burning heart of this quiet film. This image on fire, in the hum-drum space of the kitchen, is an accident. The film doesn’t tell us who put it in there but we can guess. The tumbler itself is also emotionally supercharged. We learn that lots of stuff has happened to that copper tumbler, it has a mini-history.
The old mother, Daisy Teacher, was entrusted with a set of special copper tumblers and other personal items for safekeeping by her friend and colleague, Fatima Teacher, before the latter was evicted from her home in Mannar, along with a host of other Muslims. Clearly, she expected to return soon. Daisy Teacher’s son Jude who questioned the LTTE about this expulsion disappears at the same time and in her grief his mother collapses the two events, blaming her friend. She gets rid of the set of tumblers and all of the valuables left with her in trust. She has gone past understanding that like her son, Fatima Teacher is also a victim of LTTE violence, not the cause of it.
Quite by chance a single tumbler survives Daisy Teacher’s effort to get rid of the set. The surviving tumbler opens up a wound barely healed and also potential. Several Lankan and other critics have appreciated that the violence of the war is not represented in the film, but instead emerges in recollections. The single tumbler is a special copper cup, invested with the values of friendship between two professional women, the Tamil Daisy Teacher who taught English and the Muslim Fatima Teacher who taught Biology. Daisy Teacher flings the tumbler on the floor yelling at the maid for having served her tea in it when she had been ordered never to do so. Soon after as a result, the repressed past (at once personal and historical in scale), erupts irresistibly into the present.
Potentiality as an idea can be treated in two ways. As an Aristotelian scientific category, it is about strict cause and effect. It’s a latent possibility in an actuality – for example, a seed is a potential tree. The seed can only become that species of tree and no other. Change here is predictable and rationally understandable by science.
Now, the image of the tumbler on fire does not have a potential in this sense, its outcomes are indeterminate. It creates a breach within the hum-drum everyday normality. It opens up an old wound and raw pain manifests as shock and anger. But the sound and image of a copper tumbler of hot tea, first flung on the floor by Daisy Teacher, then catching fire in a microwave oven, and then subject to discussion, harbours historical memory.
If we allow the sense of utter urgency of the ‘mad’ old mother to rattle us, and we linger there, the sparks will fire our imagination. Then we might recall that there are similarly singular, disturbing fire-powered images in Sumathy’s two previous films also. I am thinking of the white car set ablaze by a Sinhala racist nationalist mob, with the film director K. Venkat trapped within it and his muffled mournful cries as he is burned to death, in Sons and Fathers. Then there is the burning tea bush in Ingirunthu, with Peter seated beside it playing his accordion in the dead of night, for example. But in their repetition, these fiery images do very different things, never the same.
So, the copper tumbler on fire in the microwave, in the kitchen, is not a Symbol, nor a Metaphor, or an Allegory. A symbol, like for example the blindfolded figure holding the scales of justice signifies that The Law is unbiased, objective, and rationally balanced. A metaphor, according to the very etymology of the word, converts one thing into something else without residue, unlike a simile, as in ‘Juliet is the sun,’ pure radiance. As for allegory, it has a bad name because it is arbitrary, unlike symbol and metaphor.
So, there can be ‘a tea bush on fire’ in Sumathy’s Ingirunthu which does not turn to ashes. The relationship between the tea bush and fire is ‘arbitrary’ which is what allegory does, it stops time, so we can read the image. You can’t say for example, that the tea bush is fire, there is no intelligible connection between the two. Their relationship is arbitrary but an imaginative director may help us perceive a sensuous abstraction, creating an allegorical connection, rather than a dry abstract juxtaposition.
What critical move can we then make (having eliminated the main rhetorical figures we critics reach for, filed neatly in our brains), when we are lost for words in the face of such a singular image as a copper tumbler ablaze? There is, I think, a challenge, a critical imperative and an intellectual impulse too, to keep going back to it to see and hear it and think of its materiality and its immaterial powers of connectivity (sparks) with the rest of the film – its filmic provenance, so to speak.
We can register its unusual materiality; it’s a copper cup, not a base metal like tin of which most tumblers (belek coppa) are made. Who makes tumblers in copper one wonders and learn from Daisy Teacher’s rambling, crazy but partly lucid monologue that, ‘it’s of very good quality (using English), they don’t make them like that anymore’. It is believed that the ancient Mantai port, the main one for Anuradhapura, once even exported Seruwila copper to India. So, it’s very likely that a tradition of making those copper cups was alive in the country, alluded to by Daisy Teacher.
Copper is a precious civilizational metal, one of the oldest materials to be crafted by humans, providing also the material for the iconic bronze sculpture of Lanka across Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as Modernist and Contemporary abstract sculpture. So, a pure copper tumbler is part of a formidable Lankan lineage (though humbly domestic).
It sanctifies the friendship, trust and professional loyalty shared by Daisy Teacher and Fatima Teacher. That copper tumbler, in what poets call its ‘thisness,’ in its facticity, in its material links to history, is a Bazinean ‘fact-image,’ in both its use value and iconic value. It stirs one’s faculty of memory, opening up Epic-Memory, connecting an intimate female friendship with historical civilizational memory of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious polity, which includes trade and migration too. Those, as I see and understand, are some of the potential of the burning copper tumbler.
* * * *
The penultimate sequence in The Single Tumbler is of Old Daisy Teacher, dressed in a lime green sari with a dark blue-green blouse, leaving her house, shuffling along the main road, alone, with a dazed and distressed expression (captured in a profile tracking mid-shot, framed against trees), carrying that dented burnt copper tumbler, hoping to return it to her friend.
Even in her madness her ethical sensibility has re-emerged in her futile quest. She passes two donkeys at a crossroad when the camera leaves them behind, gathering speed on one of Sumathy’s favourite tracking shots taken from Lalitha’s car taking her to the airport, leaving behind Mannar town with its large Christian cemetery and church, crossing the causeway with its water landscape vistas as music strikes up.
Instead of ending there, quite unexpectedly, we are taken back to the family home. We see the familiar back veranda with a pot, mortar and pestle and some firewood, where Daisy Teacher gave her monologue. A wide shot of the house front, at a mid-distance, appears as the last image, rather than as the establishing shot at the beginning of the film. In inverting the traditional chronological order, this home we have inhabited is soaked in memory and feeling, which would not have been the case had we seen it as just a house at the beginning.
The film in fact opens with a woman glancing at the camera and saying animatedly, ‘Amma!’ It’s an odd way to open a film in mid-sentence, with this disorienting mid-shot, to not be given a context (the master shot), but that is indeed its strength, one realises later. We enter the film in medias res (in the middle) of hearing an outburst. The context becomes clear soon after, learning that it is the older daughter from Canada, Lalitha who appears to address us. But we are not quite sure of the film’s mode of address, because the camera has made its presence felt through that repeated direct glance at us through the camera lens. The entire opening scene is filmed with a hand-held camera which adds a feeling of volatility, a slight sense of unease physically.
Suddenly the scene cuts to a public street of a row of closed shops but with a snatch of conversation among the siblings played over it for continuity. The cut away happens when Jesse mentions the bazaar of their childhood and alludes to the army’s rampage in Mannar town during the war, when they attacked innocent people and burned down shops in retaliation to an LTTE ambush of an army truck leading to deaths. Through these rhetorical moves, Sumathy breaks the traditional rules of scene construction. And in doing so she creates a narrative freedom to shift her mode of address in ways that are unexpected, disorienting and yet rhythmically persuasive.
I haven’t said much about the conversations and chit chat which really constitutes the film. There are the usual family conversations, catching up on this and that, then there is the long and disorienting monologue of Daisy Teacher, also recounting traumatic events. Anthony appears to be the sibling most damaged by the war years, having lost his youth to its terror. The two sisters remember a distant past that sounds idyllic. When Lalitha (who slips into English intermittently), asks about the disappearance of Jude, Anu, stuck at home, doing chores, caring for their mother and her own family, responds impatiently with, ‘that’s an old story, now we have other problems’! But anecdotal accounts of the history of the civil war, its horror at a personal and mass scale are woven in and out casually, including the circumstances of Jude’s disappearance. The question about what really happened to him keeps coming up. Amidst all this, a few lines of Daisy Teacher have stayed with me. When she hears that Fatima Teacher has died, she responds sharply:
“Why did she die! She’s my age. Why did she have to die!” This is in the same monologue where she irrationally says that Jude disappeared because Fatima Teacher cursed him.
Neo-Realist Acting?
The Post WWII Italian Neo-Realist cinema created a new kind of cinema and film acting, on the rubble of a war-ravaged Italy, even as the Nazis withdrew from the country’s North. Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1946), introduced a new kind of realism into acting which Bazin theorised in the course of celebrating the emergence of this movement of cinematic resistance to fascism from 1945 on. While Rossellini worked with celebrated actors like Anna Mangani, he also included non-actors, and people from the very milieux filmed. He elicited remarkable performances from them, especially from little children.
Sumathy also uses a mix of people, experienced actors like Sharmini Masilamani as Lalitha, and her own eldest sister Nirmala Rajasingham, as the mother. The actor playing the younger brother, Suman Loganathan appeared in Ingirunthu. Nirmala as a person, carries a complex political history. These personal connections with the realities presented are very important for Sumathy, in her choice of people to act in her films, along with their professional competence, which Is why I am invoking Italian Neo-Realism here, which continues to nourish world cinema, though the Italian movement ended after a few years with post-war modernisation. (To be continued)
In 2016, I participated in research focused on gathering information about reconciliation mechanisms in post-war Sri Lanka. During one of the interviews, a Tamil mother, from the Eastern part of the country, broke into tears as she shared her story. Her son had disappeared, and, according to some of the neighbours, he was apparently abducted by a paramilitary group. Her story goes as follows: After hearing the news, she began searching for her son and went to the police station to file a case. However, police refused to file the case and directed her to a military camp. In the military camp, she was directed to an officer, who took her to a room with scattered flesh and blood stains. Then the officer, pointing to the room has told the lady that, ‘This is your son’.
In another instance, in the same year, while we were working in Kurunegala, an elderly mother, wearing a white saree, approached us and shared her story. She held a stained envelope, and when she carefully took out a piece of paper, related to her son, she broke into tears. She handled the paper with such tenderness, as though it were a part of her son himself. Her son was abducted by a para military group in 1989 and never returned.
These two stories have remained deeply etched in my mind for several years, leaving a lasting impact. Now, with the release of the Batalanda Commission Report, which sheds light on the atrocities committed during a dark chapter of Sri Lanka’s history, coupled with the release of the movie ‘Rani’, there is renewed attention on enforced disappearances. These disappearances, which were once shrouded in silence and denial, are now gaining significant traction among the public. Thus, it is timely to discuss the stories of enforced disappearances and the political dynamics surrounding them.
The Effect
Enforced disappearance is often employed as a strategy of terror, deliberately designed to instil fear and insecurity within a society. The tactic goes beyond the direct impact on the immediate family members of the disappeared individuals. The psychological and emotional toll on these families is profound, as they are left with uncertainty, grief, and often a sense of helplessness. However, the effects of enforced disappearance extend far beyond these immediate circles. It creates a pervasive atmosphere of fear that affects entire communities, undermining trust and cohesion. The mere threat of disappearance looms over the population, causing widespread anxiety and eroding the sense of safety that is essential for the social fabric to thrive. The fear it engenders forces people into silence, discourages activism, and ultimately weakens the collective spirit of resistance against injustice.
Absence of the body
For years, the families and loved ones of the disappeared hold on to a fragile hope, clinging to the belief that their loved ones may still be alive. The absence of a physical body leaves room for uncertainty and unresolved grief, creating a painful paradox where the possibility of closure remains out of reach. Without the tangible proof of death—such as a body to bury or mourn over—the search continues, driven by the hope that one day they will find answers. This absence extends beyond just the physical body; it symbolizes the void left in the lives of the families, as they are left in a perpetual state of waiting, unable to fully mourn or heal. The constant uncertainty fuels a never-ending cycle of searching, questioning, and longing.
Making a spectacle of unidentified bodies
In 1989, as a small child, I found myself surrounded by an atmosphere that was both suffocating and frightening, filled with sights and sounds that I couldn’t fully comprehend at the time, but that would forever leave a mark on my memory. I can still vividly recall the smell of burning rubber that hung thick in the air, mixing with the acrid scent of smoke that lingered long after the flames had died down. The piles of tyres, set ablaze, were a regular feature of the streets where I lived. Yet, it wasn’t just the sight of the burning tyres that etched itself into my consciousness. As the flames raged on, the shadows of bodies emerged—neither completely visible nor entirely hidden.
Though my parents tried their best to shield me from the horror outside our home, I would sneak a peek whenever I thought no one was watching, desperate to understand the meaning behind what was unfolding before me. It was as though I knew something important was happening—something I couldn’t yet comprehend but could feel in the very air I breathed. I understood that the flames, the smoke, and the bodies all signified something far greater than I could put into words.
The burning piles of tyres—and, of course, bodies—which people spoke of in hushed tones, served as a chilling spectacle, conveying the threatening message the government sent to the public, especially targeting the young rebels and anyone who dared to challenge the state
Unable to seek justice
The absence of the body makes justice seem like a distant, unreachable concept. In cases of disappearance, where no physical evidence of the victim’s fate exists, the path to justice is often blocked. Without the body, there is no concrete proof of the crime, no tangible evidence that can be presented in court, and no clear sign that a crime was even committed. This leaves families and loved ones of the disappeared in a state of uncertainty, with no clear answers about what happened to their dear ones. As a result, families are forced to live in a limbo, where their grief is ignored and their calls for justice are silenced.
Undemocratic actions under a Democratic Government
Governments are meant to serve and protect the people who elect them, not to subject them to violence, fear, or oppression. Irrespective of the situation, no government, under any circumstances, has the right to make its citizens disappear. A government is a democratically elected body that holds its power and authority through the consent of the governed, with the explicit responsibility to safeguard the rights, freedoms, and lives of its citizens. When a government starts to take actions that involve the arbitrary killing or disappearance of its own people, it betrays the very principles it was founded upon.
The act of making people disappear and killing represents a fundamental breach of human rights and the rule of law. These are not actions that belong to a legitimate government that is accountable to its people. Instead, they signal a state that has become corrupt and tyrannical, where those in power are no longer bound by any ethical or legal standards. When the government becomes the perpetrator of violence against its own citizens, it destroys the trust between the state and the people, undermining the core foundation of democracy.
In such a scenario, the authority of law collapses. Courts become powerless, and law enforcement agencies are either complicit in the wrongdoing or rendered ineffective. This breakdown in legal authority does not just mean a failure to protect the rights of individuals; it signals the descent of society into anarchy. When the government wields power in such a violent and oppressive way, it erodes the social contract. When this relationship is violated through actions like disappearances, those in power essentially declare that they are above the law, which leads to a breakdown of social order. It no longer becomes a state that works for its people but rather a regime that rules through fear, repression, and violence.
by Dr. Anushka Kahandagamage
Much has been written about the use of Hazard Warning Lights at Lotus Tower (LT)
Now it looks as if the authorities have got the day and night in a ‘twist’.
During the day time LT is in darkness. What should be ‘on’ during the day are the High Intensity Strobe Lights. It is observed that the authorities switch them ‘on’ in the night instead!
According to the ICAO recommendations what should be ‘on’ in the night are the low intensity strobe lights. High intensity in the night as is now, can momentarily blind the pilots.
At this time of the year the island experiences afternoon thunder showers which make the LT and the natural horizon invisible. (See picture) in a phenomenon known as ‘white out’ caused by fog (low cloud), mist and rain. However, the LT is kept dark and not lit up and that could be dangerous to air traffic.
In short what is needed are white strobe lights 24/7 (day and night). High Intensity by day and Low Intensity at night. They are known as ‘attention getters’.
The red lights must be ‘on’ at sunset and ‘off’ by sunrise (as correctly carried out currently).
I am aware that the Organisation of Professional Associations (OPA) has written to the LT authorities at the request of the Association of Airline Pilots, Sri Lanka, about three months ago but strangely the OPA has not even received an acknowledgement!
GUWAN SEEYA
Features
Ninth Iftar celebration organised by Police Buddhist and Religious Affairs Association, Wellawatte
Islam is a peaceful religion that guides people to fulfil the five pillars of Islam, namely, Kalima, Prayer, Sakkath, Fasting and Hajj and through them to attain the grace of God.
The fact that the Holy Quran, the sacred book of Muslims, was revealed on one of the odd nights of the month of Ramadan, makes people realize the special importance of the month of Ramadan.
Fasting, the Holy Quran states, “0 you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may become pure.” (2.183)
Muslims observe the first fast in the early hours of the evening when the first crescent of the month of Ramadan is sighted. The special feature of Ramadan fasting is to wake up early in the morning, eat before the sunrise (Sahur) and then fast for 14 hours until the evening prayer (Mahrib), remember the Creator and worship Him five times a day, break the fast at the time of Iftar (Mahrib), eat food with dates and spend the 30 days of Ramadan.
Ramadan fasting increases fear and faith in Allah, and it is not equal for the wealthy to live luxuriously without realizing the poverty of the poor and the poor to die of poverty. Therefore, fasting has been emphasized as the fourth Pillar in Islam to make the rich aware of the nature of poverty and to make the rich aware of the nature of hunger and to give charity.
Ramadan fasting is a shield for Muslims. The main objectives of fasting are the virtues, characteristics, morality and spiritual attraction of a person.
When approaching fasting from a medical perspective, it is said that ‘a disease-free life is an inexhaustible wealth’, so the good deed of fasting provides great benefits to the body.
Generally, it is a universal law to give rest to all the machines that have power. That is, it allows the machines to continue to function well. Similarly, it is necessary to give rest to our bodies. The fasting of the month of Ramadan explains this very simply.
“Historically, fasting has been proven to be very safe for most people,” says Babar Basir, a cardiologist at Henry Ford Health in Detroit, USA. “Ramadan fasting is a form of intermittent fasting that can help you lose fat without losing muscle, improve insulin levels, burn fat, and increase human growth hormone,” he says.
All wealthy. Muslims are required to give 2’/2 percent of their annual income to the poor in charity. This is why Muslims give more charity in the form of money, food, and clothing during Ramadan.
Anas (Kali) reported that the Prophet (Sal) said, “The best charity is to feed a hungry person.” This shows how great an act it is to feed a hungry person.
Fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, one of the most sacred duties of Muslims, is Providing facilities for fasting and breaking it is also a pious act that brings benefits. In that way, the Sri Lanka Police, as a way of receiving the blessings of Allah, have organized the Police Iftar ceremony to break the fast for the fasting people.
The Police Iftar ceremony, which is organized annually by the Sri Lanka Police Buddhist and Religious Affairs Association for Muslim police officers serving in the Sri Lanka Police, will be held for the 9th time this year on the 24th at the invitation of the Acting Inspector General of Police Mr. Priyantha Weerasooriya and will be held at the Marine Grand Reception Hall in Wellawatte under the participation of the Hon. Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs Mr. K.M. Ananda Wijepala. Muslim members of Parliament, Foreign Ambassadors of Islamic countries, High-ranking Police officers and Muslim Police officers, as well as members of the public, are also expected to attend the Iftar ceremony.
a.f. fUARD
Chief Inspector of Police
International Affairs
Criminal Investigation Department
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