Midweek Review
The Gift of Music:Sons and Fathers
a film by Sumathy – Part II
by Laleen Jayamanne
There is a recurrent discussion among the film industry personnel in the film about the desirability of ‘originality’ in Sinhala music and also in films, which translates as the need to abandon copying Indian genre films or anything Indian for that matter. One opposing view interrogates the possibility of originality itself, asking ‘what is originality? Are we original?’ Yet another view is expressed by Upul Shantha Sannasgala, in favour of anything that creates box office success, citing the triangular plot of his new film which describe exactly the outrageously plotted, sexist film, Samiya Birindage Deviyaya (The Husband is the Wife’s God,) with the leading star and singer, Rukmani Devi and its arch villain, Domi Jayawardena. The desirability of nationalising the film industry and the creation of ‘our’ studios (meaning with Sinhala ownership, breaking the Tamil monopoly) is also expressed as the racial tensions outside reaches a critical point, when several army officers are killed by the LTTE near Jaffna and kindling the State terror of July 83. When Rex is put on the spot by friends and asked for his views on politics, he says he doesn’t know anything about politics and all he knows is music, adding that music has no race or country, while Sannasgala comes to his defence with; ‘Master is music, music is master!’
Writing or Drawing a Character
In the world’s oldest film school in the former Soviet Union (USSR), there was a practice of getting the students to first draw their characters and ideas on paper before writing with words. The teachers who devised the practice knew that drawing a line, as in a line drawing, would activate a mental process different from writing using words. Highly experienced mentors like Mikael Romm practiced this pedagogy with his students, one of whom was Andre Tarkovsky. The stimulation of the student’s imagination and extra-linguistic sensory powers was one of their aims. It is said that he urged his students to reach into their ‘darkness’ so that they might be able to find a way to speak, find a ‘language’. He protected his students from the communist thought police. Honouring this process of teaching and learning, as I try to do also in my writing, I like to resist asking a director why s/he did such and such, a sad and intellectually feeble resort. Such blunt questions blunt one’s own imaginative capacity to make multi-sensory connections, especially when it’s about cinema. Lucky’s haunting question ‘Appa, what language?’ requires a critic to become self-reflexive about how she uses linguistic-language in writing on film, which doesn’t behave like language as such. As Pasolini rather impatiently pointed out (to the eminent semiologists, including Roland Barthes, at the Pesaro Film Festival) that unlike language with its denotative, finite number of words, there is no dictionary of images we can draw on for film and nor are words similar to images.
So, it’s best not to ask directors what they meant either, because when trying to write a book on his cinema, I once asked Kumar Shahani why an ‘epic persona’ in his film did something, he said ‘I don’t know.’ Was he being a Zen Master, I wondered, a bit taken aback. But then chatting with him I realised the truth of what he was saying, that sometimes artists make their characters do stuff in such a way that it is fruitless to try to find out the motivation for an action, as though every act is a perfectly rationally explainable response to a stimulus, like Pavlov’s poor dog, salivating at the ring of a bell. Some artists want to be able to sustain a degree of freedom in their thinking, that is, keep that which is barely consciously sayable, especially to themselves (at three o’clock in the morning, as they say in the Blues) in a shadowy subconscious state. They might feel its necessity, without being able to put it into words and not even wanting to do so, as it might kill their evanescent impulses. Artists are creatures who trust their impulses and fluctuating sensations trying to harness them in a disciplined and skilled way, lest they get derailed, overwhelmed by their surfeit. But then, I believe that it’s a critic’s responsibility to think about what one sees and hears and feels by posing questions that might open up a train of thought for oneself at first. This is not like revealing hidden meanings, but rather, understanding how something works or doesn’t, its aesthetic logic and feelings, pulses, and how they might connect with some other thing through a style of writing, hoping that readers themselves might take it yet in another unforeseen direction.
sivamohan’s main characters, Rex, Kanthi, Lucky and the quiet Mala, are created and act in such a way that not all their feelings are transparent, nor are all their motivations explained or even explainable. They have an interiority we can sense but to which we don’t have a privileged access and I suspect that the director also might feel that about the people she has created. This may sound strange as sivamohan has said that she modelled Rex, in part, on Rocksamy’s history in the film industry and that Lucky was modelled on the well-known musician Anthony Surendra, the son of Master Anthony, himself a musician. That they have in various ways suffered greatly as Tamils in the film and music industry is an important fact, which sivamohan builds on, with some of the best dialogue I have ever heard in the Sinhala cinema, for sure. And I am thinking here especially of the serious ‘Civil-War Films’ by some of our most talented, senior filmmakers. Some of them have crafted a new ‘anthropological type’ it would seem, with the silent, traumatised young Tamil women doggedly following former soldiers without uttering a word. Here, I don’t wish to comment on these films except to say that they appear to have constructed ‘The Tamil Woman’ as an enigma in her silence. Why Sinhala male directors are drawn to create such figures is something the Sinhala cinephiles and critics themselves should really take up, making a sustained study of the films, especially because now, sex, whether consensual or coercive as in rape, is permitted on the screen by the National Censorship Board.
sivamohan does assiduous ethnographic research for drawing her characters, but they are not Bio-Pics of these particular artists and nor are they phantasmatic figures, but appear to be composites of several real persons in the film and music industries. Hers is not the problem of ‘Realism in the cinema,’ which codes expression in the three-act drama I referred to earlier, and which Stefan Brecht (cited at the beginning) rejects. Within the known historical discrimination suffered by the Tamils of Lanka, sivamohan (who has lived through civil war years both in Jaffna and the South and lost a sister and close friends to it), has created her characters themselves with a degree of opacity, with regard to their subjectivity (reminiscent of Robert Bresson’s Models) but none of them is enigmatic. For me, this is part of the charm and subtlety of these characters who form a multi-ethnic Lankan family. The different ways in which Kanthi and Lucky sing the same song, his ‘mother’s song’, adds a rich affective density to their characters and the ballad-like song itself. Rex at first seemed the simplest, the most transparent, with his open smile, and yet gradually he too becomes much more complex, dark (as he faces direct racist violence), lashing out at those closest to him in despair as his soul is destroyed.
‘Ammi, did he kill her to stop the music?’
Rex and Kanthi
Shamala Kumar (in her hauntingly personal account in the island), on seeing Sons and Fathers with Malin her thirteen-year-old son, tells us that he kept asking her questions loudly while watching the film, to which she had to say ‘I don’t know.’ She says that about the many incomprehensible events of racialised violence shown, including the burning of the film director Venkat in his car. Later at home Malin had asked his mother, ‘did he kill her to stop the music?’ The mother comments on her child’s thoughtful question saying, it was as though he was pleased to be able to piece together a tentative reason for why Lucky fired that shot in a movie theatre. Lucky had come to a cinema where the film of the opening song and dance sequence is repeated in colour, this time round showing us an utterly absorbed audience in a few shots. Lucky, standing at the back of the theatre appears to take a gun out and point it at the screen. Though no gun is visible, we infer that it is one because we see the familiar gesture (seen in countless Westerns and Gangster films), hear the shot and see the dancer on the screen falling down. Some viewers rise up in consternation, one which we share. The reverse shot cuts to a close-up of the bleeding singer who appears to be ‘real,’ rather than a projected image, but films can wound us, make us cry as in life. The next cut shows a singular image, a painterly shot of a splash of red on a white surface. The entire series of shots are hard to make clear sense of, hence the child’s considered question to his mother. It is a puzzle for me as well, because it doesn’t quite compute as a sensory-motor action, say, as a shot fired in a gangster film would be. Usually such a generic shot is clearly motivated, the gun essential to the action as are the hero and villain. I feel a bit like Malin, baffled and startled by that scene. And each time I try to work out how it works, it slips away but returns to me unwittingly just as I drift off into sleep. I feel I can’t quite compute it. But slowly I was able to see why it’s a scene that troubles the mind in a manner quite different from the horrific sequence of the burning of Venkat in his car.
Through this comparison, it dawned on me that sivamohan shifts planes of action and composition (in all three of her films), at certain critical violent moments. She plays with fire; there is the burning tea bush in Ingirunthu which does not turn to ash, and in A Single Tumbler, the single metal tumbler catches fire in the microwave, a truly disturbing, scary image. The fire power of Lucky’s gun shot is slightly different, but all three instances shift gear, so to speak. They do something which impels our minds (if receptive like that of a child), to return to the scene repeatedly. What is it about these sivamohan scenes that make our minds to return to them irresistibly? They are not played out on a clear realist spatio-temporal plane, though these films have a precise sense of historical space/time.
On a meta-cinematic plane, Sivamohan is paying tribute to the process of Montage which created the magical appearances and disappearances, what Eisenstein called, the defining cinematic act of the medium of film. These singular scenes puzzle the mind because their violence is not like the realistically presented violence of say, burning a man alive or the mass destruction of buildings and property with fire. The violence of shooting at the image of the dancer (but not the flesh and blood actor/dancer), enacts a form of ‘counter-violence,’ as response to the normalised violence of racism, exploitation, torture and murder, which we have become all too familiar with as Lankans (we hear a victim of the pogrom say, ‘last time we lost all’). How many more times will history repeat itself with such horrific violence, one wonders.
A beautiful scene honours actual persons from the film industry, the editor Aliman (a Muslim), with his old editing machine to cut (the now obsolete) celluloid film, expertly handling the film, searches for the 28 missing shots with the director Siva (a Tamil). These two men from the film industry, with their dry humour, were well known personnel who did pass away quite poor.
Allegory as Counter-Violence
There is a large body of philosophical and programmatic writing on revolutionary- violence in anti-imperialist national struggles, as a form of ‘counter-violence.’ I am trying to use the idea differently though, not by citing chapter and verse from, say Lenin’s What is to be Done, or Che Guevara, beloved of the JVP of the April ‘71 rebellion. Rather, I want to understand the precise imaginative ways in which the shooting of the dancer has been staged allegorically, rather than realistically, which I would argue to be an ethico-aesthetic decision by sumathy in her film, which is also about the State sponsored pogrom against the Tamils in July 83.
sumathy’s allegorical scenes are not cliches that she whips up to resolve her films when the situation becomes unendurable, when the violence reaches a level of horror and ‘The Scream’ appears to be the only expression available. It’s the internal dynamics of the fascist violence of the State and of reactive terrorism of the LTTE which is displaced in the movie theatre, with an allegory of cinematic violence, countering the sure-fire ingredients of ‘Action, Sex and Violence’ (mentioned as desirable by a producer in the film), as ingredients of exciting marketable films now. The process of countering these violent logics of actions and reactions is linked to how the theatre scene is constructed as an allegory, what I am calling an enactment of ‘counter-violence’ through a film-allegory.
The Lens as A Brush
Godard, when asked once why there is so much blood smeared liberally on his characters, in one of his polemical post 68 experimental films famously snapped back, ‘It’s not Blood, its Red!’ Similarly, the striking splash of red on a white surface (which appears soon after the dancer is shot down bleeding profusely on the floor), punctuates the scene emphatically and calls attention to its minimalist painterly gesture. Why is this striking singular painterly shot inserted there between shots of the bleeding dancer on the ground? A white surface, whether a wall or the screen itself is not visible there in the theatre. We have heard Lucky being repeatedly called a ‘tiger cub,’ even by his best friend and the other Sinhala musicians refuse to work with him as the suspicion against all Tamil young men as potential terrorists intensifies in the South.
This trend reaches a peak when his ‘girl-friend’ Champa, on hearing Lucky sing his ‘mother’s song (Tharaka Hanga) at the club, asks him what it is and if he would teach it to her. Like the sweetly naive person he is, he agrees gladly. But instead of waiting, Champa goes to Lucky’s house and learns the song directly from his mother herself. As he returns home they meet unexpectedly at his door and sees her guile when she tells him that she is off to India to be trained as a singer. As she walks away Lucky shouts out her; ‘My father is not a Terrorist. I am a Terrorist. I will carry the Tamil newspaper gladly.’ His mother has previously warned Rex not to be seen carrying a Tamil newspaper. The sense of the crescendo of Lucky’s surprising outburst is muted as it’s a Tamil newspaper which he thinks to carry, not a weapon of choice for a terrorist of any ethnicity! It’s the repeated branding of Lucky as a terrorist by his peers which makes his persona as a ‘terrorist’ in the movie theatre credible. There, Lucky is presented as an actor in the ‘film within the film,’ who acts out an allegorical scene of shooting at an image. Because, if he is an actor playing a Terrorist, then his sole imperative is that he must kill. But if it’s an allegorical action, then the question as to motivation can have no realist answer. The splash of blood-red on the pristine white screen is a sensuous abstract image of ‘pure’ violence, enabled by Lucky’s equally abstracted gesture of shooting an image with an imaginary gun, in the film within the film Sons and Fathers that we have been watching for over an hour by then. So, I read the entire scene of Lucky shooting the dancer and the audience watching it, as a film-within-a-film (a meta-film) crystalising, in an abstract image of violence, the discussions on the need for racial and cultural purity, also encoded in the song Jaya Pita Deas. The sonic montage, the contradiction between the hybrid image and sound, and between images themselves, is the kind of sequence which Eisenstein called ‘Intellectual-Montage.’ They cut across the compartmentalised brain. These conceptually sophisticated audio-visual montage techniques, stimulating feelings and thoughts all at once, would have been why Sons and Fathers received the prize for music, at the Jaipur International Film Festival in 2019.
The different views expressed about Sinhala cinema and the desirability of ‘cultural purity’ appears as an open question here. Historically, these questions were resolved in favour of the Nationalisation of the film industry according to the recommendation of the Royal Commission into the Lankan Film Industry in the 1960s. The examination of the successes and problems of that policy, in the creation of a ‘truly national (Sinhala) cinema’ by instituting the State Film Corporation of Lanka, is best left to historians. But the question of whether the significant new national cinema, created in its wake, also ignored Lanka’s ethnic minorities from the desired national identity, is also one for our film critics to worry over. The allegorical gesture of Lucky, shooting down the film image, in the guise of a Sinhala persona allegorised as a Tamil Terrorist, still remains tantalising to my mind despite what I’ve written here. But we Sinhala critics will learn much, I believe, through serious scholarship and critical writing on Lankan cinema and exploring how sumathy’s cinematic project might be theorised within its dynamics. Such work will require interrogating the long-standing (taken for granted) Sinhala idea of sanguine ‘generational change’ among talented men, because ‘history’ is not a natural event.
The Mother’s Song and its Loss
Towards the very end of the film we see Rex, Kanthi and their daughter absorbed in something on their TV. For the first time we see them in large close-ups (rare in this film), while the camera tracks between them, bringing each of them very close to us. A cut to the TV reveals Champa singing Lucky’s ‘mother’s song’ with orchestration, in a polished, well trained, sweet voice, dressed tastefully in a matching sari and blouse, producing the requisite well-rehearsed gestures and artfully-wistful smiles for the camera. What we have heard and seen so far is of this song’s unusual circulation from a mother to a son whose childhood was nourished by his mother singing it often. We see its social circulation when Kanthi is invited to sing a song by her guests who appreciate her voice and the song. She sings with ease and grace, dressed now in an Indian sari, wearing a pottu and her knee length hair in a single braid. But we also hear the song at intense moments of fear and sadness, as when Kanthi sings it to herself after having looked at a photo album. But on the television it appears as a song ‘stolen’ from the family by Champa, without a thought for royalties, having violated something above and beyond the provenance of a song. As the threesome watch Champa’s polished performance of their own song, Kanthi begins to mouth it silently, while Rex looks on utterly bereft but still beating time to the song he composed for his beloved wife, while the camera rests on Mala who looks straight at us for the first time, as the shot ends. Was she angry I wondered, trying to read her contained intense expression. The careless, cool ease with which Champa becomes a professional singer and sings the song publicly contrasts starkly with a singular rendition of it by Lucky. While in his bedroom (with a blurred poster of John Lennon on his wall), Lucky spits out a snatch of Rock music, but in the club, he sings his mother’s song almost to himself, in a caressing whisper, before the band has to strike a ‘Happy Birthday’ with the sound of breaking glass in the distance; a complex sequence in montage.
Lucky is presented as a tender, generous and most vulnerable young man, and through his allegorisation as The Terrorist, at the movie theatre, we might be able to see how even such a person may become a ‘terrorist,’ cornered, crushed, with avenues for professional movement all blocked for him and his family. In doing this the director makes an exemplary figure of a Lankan artist whose cultural heritage is mixed, hybrid, not monoculturally pure. It’s nothing to do with his ‘pure blood’ (Sinha-ley,) but rather a matter of access to learning, fair opportunity and a shared understanding of a rich multi-cultural world (including India), open to the outside world. That it is a Sinhala actor who is personified as a Tamil Terrorist (who in his actual life sings in Tamil), is significant, because some of that brutalising process is ‘demonstrated’ through the political device of allegory. There is no ‘conversion’ of Lucky into a Terrorist because we see both Lucky and the persona of the Terrorist in his gesture of shooting at an image, with an invisible gun. In the movie theatre, he is not a symbol or a metaphor, but functions as an allegorical body. Allegory makes us see double, and stays with the unresolved duality, and lets it trouble us, as it did Malin and me. That splattered red on white appears as both blood and some red paint, and the white background both a movie screen and a pure white surface, both at once. Such a mode of allegorical viewing goes against our habitual and ingrained ways of consuming films.
Some of us, who have spent all our working lives teaching film and have also grown-up watching lots of all kinds of films (in a long-ago vanished Ceylon in my case) believe that when it’s time to take leave, the Angel of Death will arrive and give us a chance to see just two film clips one last time. Now, I will unhesitatingly choose Dharmasena Pathiraja’s film Ponmani, made with his Tamil friends, while he was teaching Sinhala literature and Media Studies at the Jaffna University in the ‘70. It’s the haunting funeral procession of Ponmani, with her coffin in a horse-drawn glass carriage, led by a slender man in shorts, filmed in a formal long-shot against a lagoon and an expanse of sky, with her father walking alone some distance away from the mourners, as his Vellala family was estranged from her. For having violated caste taboos, she was shot dead by a killer hired by her betrothed, as she came out of a church with her new kin group. The Karnataka song we had heard sung repeatedly, by a group of seated female singers (about longing for Krishna to appear), plays across this desolate shot one last time.
The other clip is of the seemingly every-day banal high-angle-shot of the family of three walking towards us on a railway platform. In long to medium shots from Sons and Fathers, we see Rex, Kanthi and Lucky as a boy, walking between them carrying small suitcases of their possessions. The couple has just got married at a registry (with minimal formality, with just four smiling in-laws) and are coming home to live with Rex. Kanthi is dressed in a Kandyan sari and Rex has long curly hair tied at the back. Seeing that shot of the threesome, who are being observed by an adult Lucky leaning on a railway bridge (a pensive ‘recollection image’), it becomes an iconic shot for Sinhala cinema, suggestive in its promise of rich potential for our art and much else. Variations of this shot, of them climbing the long steps of the station, are repeated several times like the refrain of Lucky’s beloved mother’s song.
sumathy wrote the lyrics for two of the four songs in the film. Vantharu Vanthachu (‘He is coming’ with apocalyptic events of bombs destroying the earth, elephants in trees, wrapped in a love song), is sung in Tamil. The Mother’s Song, written in English, is translated for the film by Amarakeerthi Liyanage, a Professor of Sinhala and a specialist in Comparative Literature. Anthony Surendra, the Tamil music director of the film, wrote, composed and sang My Heart (Ma Hade) in the film at a recording studio and is the song Kanthi hums to Rex’s accompaniment at the keyboard (and also to an infant Kamala), in a most unusual romantic scene. When asked, sumathy said that she was thinking of Desdemona’s Willow Song while writing what she calls ‘The Mother’s Song’ for the film. The Shakespearean ballad was given to Desdemona by her mother who had received it from her maid. She makes a significant change in her song, the ‘betrayal’ there is no longer sexual as in the original folk ballad sung by Desdemona before Othello kills her in a fit of jealousy. But in the film, it becomes Champa’s thoughtless, cunning betrayal of Lucky and his mother.
The way Sumathy presents Rex Periyasami, Mudiyanselage Kanthilatha, Lakshman and Mala as a multi-ethnic family, makes one feel that they will survive the fire that set Lanka ablaze then, stronger in the essential values that bind them together, but no doubt at great cost to their livelihoods and futures, in creating the hybrid music, their very life-blood, which Kanthi says emphatically, ‘saved them’. Sumathy’s Sons and Fathers is her poetic tribute to those values that bind that family and the ethnically diverse Lankan popular film and music industry where those values also flourished, once.
However, Malin’s singular question to his mother, and Mala’s last look to the camera, perhaps of anger, make an old critic like me imagine that they must be big by now. And in so doing, I hear faintly Rukmani Devi singing, ‘mavila penevi rupe hade …swapneya chaya …’ (in my heart emerges a dream-image … of life) as I fall asleep, perchance to dream. (Concluded)
Pilleyan, a key element in that drama now arrested for political expediency?
The LTTE killed two Karuna loyalists on July 15, 2004 in the Batticaloa Prison. The dead included Satchi Master. The killer was an LTTEer serving a short sentence for jewellery theft and assault. The killings in the Batticaloa Prison caused anxiety among senior government officials. On Aug. 24, 2004, an LTTEer shot dead another Karuna loyalist, P. Jayakumar, in the Akkaraipattu Magistrate’s Court. A jail guard and a court clerk sustained minor injuries. The police arrested Jayakumar, along with another LTTE dissident, Saravanamuthu Shanthakumar, at a road block, at Akkaraipattu, on May 19th, 2004. They were in possession of a pistol, one hand grenade and 15 rounds of ammunition. Shanthakumar was killed on July 15, 2004 at the Batticaloa Prison along with Satchi Master.
Against the backdrop of one-time LTTEer Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, alias Pilleyan’s arrest on April 08, 2025 and subsequent detention under Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) over Eastern University Vice Chancellor Prof. S. Raveendranath’s disappearance on Dec. 15, 2006, whose life was actually under threat from the TIGERS several years after Karuna and Pilleyan broke away from it, various interested parties started commenting on the role played/atrocities perpetrated by Pilleyan and Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, aka Karuna Amman, during the conflict, and after.
Both Karuna and Pilleyan entered mainstream politics before the successful conclusion of the war in May 2009. Pilleyan is the current leader of TMVP (Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal).
In a way it is a pity that the police are now trying to pin Pilleyan for the disappearance of Prof Raveendranath, obviously to please the current political masters.
Comments included their role in LTTE terrorism and what they did after switching their allegiance to the government in March 2004. Let me stress that they daringly rebelled against the LTTE during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s tenure as the Prime Minister. The UNP has repeatedly claimed the credit for the unprecedented schism in what was considered a monolithic terror organisation and some asserted that the LTTE engineered Wickremesinghe’s defeat at the 2005 presidential election to avenge the catastrophic split.
Pilleyan’s arrest caused a political storm with his counsel Udaya Gammanpila alleging that an attempt was being made to compel his client to confess complicity in the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks. Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) leader and former Minister Gammanpila is no stranger to controversy, but he has remained unscathed when it comes to his integrity.
In spite of vindictive attacks on him, Attorney-at-Law Gammanpila declared that nothing could be as ridiculous as accusing Pilleyan, who had been detained at the Batticaloa Prison for a period of five years (Oct. 11, 2015 to Nov. 24, 2020) of arranging National Thowheed Jaamaath (NTJ) to bomb churches and hotels on April 21, 2019. Having granted bail to Pilleyan and four others held in connection with the Christmas Day, 2005, assassination of TNA MP Joseph Pararajasingham on two personal sureties of Rs. 100,000/- each, the Batticaloa High Court acquitted and released them on January 13, 2021.
It would be pertinent to examine the devastating split caused by Karuna in March 2003 and its impact on the Eelam War IV (2006 August to May 2009).
Karuna’s move
Having received information that ‘Colonel’ Karuna decamped, the Kilinochchi-based leadership acted swiftly and decisively to neutralise the impending threat. The LTTE planned to take hold of both Karuna Amman, responsible for Ampara-Batticaloa sector, and his colleague, Sivasubramanium Varadanthan, aka ‘Colonel’ Paduman, in charge of the neighbouring Trincomalee District, to Kilinochchi. The Kilinochchi-based leadership, or Vanni leadership, wanted to ensure that those deployed under the command of Karuna and Paduman remaind loyal to the organisation. Both Karuna and Paduman had held the rank of ‘Colonel’ at that time, though Karuna was in the limelight due to his involvement in negotiations with the UNF government.
The Kilinochchi command cleverly used the Defence Ministry and SCOPP (Secretariat for Coordinating Peace Process) officials to arrange for an SLAF chopper to fly Karuna Amman, along with Paduman, to Kilinochchi. SCOPP records prove that on the authorisation of the Defence Ministry, it directed the SLAF to pick Paduman from Trincomalee and then touch down at a pre-arranged location in the Batticaloa District, on March 2, 2004, to take on board Karuna.
Fearing that he would have to face a firing squad in Kilinochchi, Karuna declined to join Paduman. Instead, he set in motion a strategy, which finally debilitated the LTTE’s conventional fighting capability. The writer disclosed the LTTE’s counter-move in a Sunday Island report headlined ‘Prabhakaran plotted Karuna capture’ in its March 28, 2004, edition.
Both Karuna and Paduman, at that time, confirmed the LTTE using SCOPP/ SLAF to arrange their transfer from the East to Kilinochchi.
The UNP and the Norwegians never bothered to raise the issue with the LTTE at that time. The Defence Ministry continued to provide chopper rides to the LTTE and did everything possible to appease the outfit, even at the expense of national security.
Norwegian peace facilitator and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), too, had been aware of the LTTE request for an SLAF chopper ride for top Tigers in the East. Had Karuna got into that chopper and ended up in a secret LTTE detention camp or executed, Eelam War IV would have taken a different course.
The Vanni leadership used Paduman, on several occasions, to counter reports of a debilitating split in the LTTE. The LTTE never allowed Paduman to leave the Vanni throughout Eelam War IV. Paduman surrendered on May 15, 2009, four days before troops killed LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon.
Karuna caused the split just over a year after the LTTE quit the negotiating table. President CBK, PM Wickremesinghe, and the co-chairs of the peace process, agreed that the LTTE should be allowed to deal with the situation. They allowed the situation to develop into a bloody confrontation. They failed to realise that Karuna’s revolt caused irreparable damage to the organisation by dividing the LTTE’s fighting cadre on regional lines. The crisis denied the LTTE recruitment in the Batticaloa and Ampara sectors, while its operations in the Trincomalee District, too, experienced difficulties due to the detention of ‘Colonel’ Paduman, the senior man in charge of the area. ‘Colonel’ Paduman, too, was perceived as a threat due to his close association with Karuna.
Karuna acted swiftly to ensure his protection and that of the eastern cadres. The well-proven battlefield strategist felt that his security, as well as the safety of the Batticaloa fighting cadre, depended on an understanding with the Sri Lankan military. Karuna pushed for a separate agreement on the lines of the Norwegian arranged CFA between the GoSL and the LTTE in February 2002.
The Island dealt with Karuna’s move in an exclusive headlined ‘Rebel Karuna wants separate deal with government’ in the March 5, 2004 issue, which was based on information provided by Varathan, an aide to Karuna. The then Army Chief, Lieutenant General Lionel Balagalle and DIG Nimal Lewke confirmed what Varathan had to say on behalf of Karuna.
Karuna offered to negotiate a separate ceasefire in the Ampara-Batticaloa sector, though both the Norwegians and the government promptly rejected the move, while reiterating their commitment to the CFA. But, an influential section, within the establishment, supported Karuna’s move. Varathan alleged that a wave of killings in the Eastern Province, in the wake of the CFA, and a demand for 1,000 more cadres from the Batticaloa-Ampara sector for deployment in the Northern Province, too, had contributed to Karuna’s decision to break ranks.
Wobbling goverment
An unprecedented crisis caused by Karuna sent shock waves through the LTTE and its supporters. Among the affected parties were the TNA and the Tamil Diaspora. The LTTE struggled to contain the developing crisis. In spite of specific government orders issued to the Army not to intervene, at certain levels the military cooperated with Karuna.
Karuna wanted the Army to prevent a group of senior cadres, who had been under his overall command, from crossing the entry/exit point at Omanthai, north of Vavuniya, back to the Vanni. The LTTE dissident also urged the Army to facilitate an operation to help his men, deployed in the Northern Province, to return through Army lines on the night of March 3, 2004. The government prohibited the Army from supporting Karuna’s efforts, hence a group of senior cadres, including ‘Colonel” T. Ramesh and their families, crossed the entry/exit point. Immediately after their arrival in Kilinochchi, ‘Colonel’ Ramesh was declared as Karuna’s successor.
Undaunted by the government’s refusal to back his revolt against, what Karuna called, the treacherous Kilinochchi leadership, he ordered public protests in Batticaloa. The first of a series of protests was held at Kiran, Karuna’s home town, where a crowd of over 2,000 people gathered in support of Karuna. Some of them set fire to effigies of Prabhakaran and Ramesh, while Karuna reiterated his demand for a separate CFA with the government. Much to the glee of the LTTE and the Norwegians, the government rejected Karuna’s call for cooperation out of hand. But, the military continued to extend support to Karuna.
In spite of the LTTE’ pull-out from negotiations in April 2003, the government reiterated its commitment to a non-existent peace process thereby bending backwards to please the LTTE and the so-called peace facilitator with its own ultimate agenda coinciding with those of the LTTE.
The LTTE ordered the Tamil media not to provide space for the rebellious group. No one dared challenge the LTTE, though Karuna, too, exerted pressure on the media. Undergraduates from the Northern Province, studying at the Eastern University at Vantharamoolai ,returned to their villages amidst rising tension.
Regardless of the government directive that the military kept its distance from the rebel faction, an influential section of those in the military, who were earlier deployed in clandestine operations behind enemy lines, threw their weight behind the former LTTE field commander.
Batticaloa’s hostility towards the LTTE increased after an LTTE operative shot dead eight Karuna loyalists, including Kuheneshan, widely believed to be a high ranker among the renegade group, at Crystal Terrace housing scheme, Kottawa, on July 25, 2004. They were slain in their sleep
Batticaloa Tamils defied an LTTE directive prohibiting public participation at the funerals of the three Karuna loyalists killed at Kottawa. Several hundred people paid their last respects to Pakyam Amarasevan, alias Tehvan, of Main Street, Kommathurai, Chennkalady, Ponnathurai Thurainadan alias Ruban of the same address, and Kandiah Annandakumar of Kattankudy. The LTTE distributed leaflets warning the public of dire consequences if they attended, what they called, traitors’ funeral. The LTTE made an attempt to prevent public participation, having failed to dissuade families of the victims from bringing the bodies to Batticaloa. Families, living in military held areas, accepted the bodies, whereas those living in the LTTE-controlled region had no option but to accept the directive.
It would be important to examine the circumstances under which the LTTE hunted down those given refuge at the Crystal Terrace housing scheme. They had moved in on July 13, 2004, and were in the process of trying to obtain passports to leave the country. The police quoted a neighbour as having said he heard gunshots around 3.30 a.m. As people used to light crackers to scare monkeys away, he had not taken much notice, he said.
In fact, the first indication of the LTTE operation, the biggest directed against the Karuna faction in Colombo, since the March 2004 split, came to light after the military intercepted a conversation between two LTTE personnel. Although they discussed a successful hit in Colombo, there was no clue as regards the location. The conversation revealed that those involved in the operation had reached Karuna’s successor, ‘Colonel’ Thambirajah Ramesh based in the Batticaloa district. The Colombo police took about four hours to locate the scene of the massacre.
Impact on CFA
The crisis created by Karuna quickly engulfed the entire CFA process. Those trying to save the CFA soon realised that they were fighting a losing battle. They understood Karuna’s action had caused irreparable damage and nothing could resurrect the Norwegian initiative.
The SLMM (Norway led Sri Lanka monitoring mission) suspended the monitoring process in areas under Karuna’s control. Overnight, the Northern and Eastern Provinces were divided into three sectors, under the control of the GoSL, the LTTE and the breakaway LTTE faction. The Norwegians and the SLMM rejected Karuna’s overtures to have a separate CFA negotiated between the breakaway faction and the GoSL. Karuna also emphasised that the LTTE should recognise that the Batticaloa-Ampara sector was outside its purview. UNICEF and the UNHCR, too, pulled out of Karuna’s territory.
Today only a few remember the dicey situation the country experienced at thatime.
The SLMM also turned down an SLA request to arrange for a meeting between the Army and Karuna. In spite of the Army chief, Lt. Gen. Balagalle, who held the post of the Chief of Defence Staff, personally pushing for a meeting, which he felt could help ease tensions, the SLMM refused to comply. The LTTE insisted that there shouldn’t be any interaction whatsoever between the SLMM and the breakaway faction. Erik Solheim ruled out a Norwegian intervention, thereby effectively ending any sort of mediation effort.
In a desperate bid to settle the crisis, the UK stepped in. The UK sent its top diplomat in Colombo, Steven Evans, along with its Defence Attaché, Lt. Col. Mark Weldon, to find a way out.
Efforts to isolate Karuna failed. Premier Wickremesinghe compelled Ali Zarheer Moulana to resign his parliamentary seat after the disclosure of his role in facilitating Karuna to leave the Batticaloa district. Before that, the battlefield tactician quickly won over the confidence of the Tamil-speaking people in the region. He took advantage of the situation by offering to discuss long standing grievances of the public. Then General Officer Commanding (GoC) the Army’s 23 Division, headquartered at Welikanda, Brigadier Vajira Wijegunawardene, recalled how Karuna moved swiftly to consolidate his power in areas under his control. Karuna offered to discuss the forcible takeover of land by the LTTE in the east. Soon, the UNP and the TNA realised that the crisis was having a debilitating impact on their campaign for the April 2, 2004 parliamentary polls. In fact, Premier Wickremesinghe had to avoid Batticaloa during campaigning in the East as the Defence Ministry couldn’t guarantee his security.
Vanni move on East
Under the noses of the Norwegians, the LTTE moved cadres to beef up its strength in the Batticaloa District to take on Karuna. The SLMM and the government facilitated the transfer of LTTE cadres from the North to the East in the run-up to the parliamentary polls. The CFA permitted transfers, though there had been restrictions as regards the number of personnel. The LTTE overcame the problem by sending groups in small batches across Army controlled entry and exit points at Omanthai and Uliyankulam. Although the Army had managed to detect some of those entering the East illegally, it couldn’t thwart the LTTE plans. Then the LTTE humiliated the government by launching a series of sea landings on the night of April 9, 2004 to wipe out the breakaway group. The LTTE operation had got underway a few hours after the service commanders arrived at Trincomalee. In spite of the Defence portfolio being under her control, President Kumaratunga did nothing, while the Prime Minister and the Norwegians looked the other way. A confident LTTE leadership told the government that it intended to use sea routes to mount an operation targeting Karuna. The government was told to keep the Navy out of the LTTE’s way. The government gave in to LTTE demands. Following urgent consultations in Colombo between the military and the President, the top brass summoned a meeting at the Batticaloa Brigade Headquarters, where senior officers, in charge of the region, were told to keep out of the fight.
After Karuna’s decision to give up the fight on April 9, 2004, when the LTTE confronted his cadres on the banks of the Verugal River, many believed that Prabhakaran’s erstwhile friend wouldn’t survive.
Karuna’s decision has been influenced by the realisation that the sea borne assault was led by Batticaloa cadres, the majority of those who had fought under him. Had Karuna engaged them on the banks of the Verugal River, there would have been many casualties. Instead of fighting, Karuna ordered his men to leave the battlefield and return to their villages, while he fled Batticaloa with the help of UNP National List MP Ali Zaheer Moulana. Until Moulana acknowledged his role in Karuna’s escape, the UNP, a section of the medi, and even the Norwegians, blamed the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) for helping Karuna escape. Once the UNP had established Moulana’s involvement, PM Wickremesinghe demanded his resignation. He swiftly complied. Moulana sought protection abroad. After years in the US, he returned to the country to pledge his allegiance to President Rajapaksa.
Karuna loyalists killed five LTTE cadres, including ‘Lt. Colonel’ Neelan, the deputy head of the Batticaloa District Intelligence outfit before fleeing the area. A furious Kilinochchi leadership vowed to hit back wherever Karuna and his top men took refuge.
A spate of killings undermined SLMM efforts to restore normalcy in the Batticaloa-Ampara sector, where unidentified gunmen killed 10 LTTE personnel, in three separate incidents on April 24, May 2 and May 6, 2004. The LTTE accused the DMI of carrying out the killings, a charge vehemently denied by the DMI. The LTTE hit back. An LTTE operative shot dead Lance Corporal Wasantha Liyanage. He was shot through the head inside a private bus approaching Batticaloa town on May 9, 2004. The bus was coming from Chenkaladi.
The LTTE struck again on May 19, 2004, outside the Batticaloa hospital. Reserve police constable, Dassanayake (32658) of police intelligence shot through his head in broad daylight. The gunman walked out of the nearby post office and shot the policeman before walking away.
In spite of a change of government in April, 2004, the UPFA’s response to the LTTE, too, remained the same.
But the military responded to the LTTE threat by stepping up clandestine action, particularly in the East. A growing relationship, mutually beneficial to the military and the breakaway LTTE faction, gradually undermined the LTTE in the Eastern Province. By the time Eelam War IV erupted in Aug 2006, the LTTE had suffered a debilitating setback in the East.
By Shamindra Ferdinando
Use of colours in pre-historic era
Humans have been long fascinated by colour, which has played a significant role since the beginning of human civilization. Ancient people had painted caves even before they settled in houses. Cave paintings were created during the stone age from 10,000 to 40,000 years ago. Primitive artists used natural materials available to them to mark their territory, beautify their surroundings, and tell their stories. For thousands of years, paints were handmade from ground mineral-based pigments. Ochre, a natural pigment which comes in shades of red, yellow, orange and brown, was the first pigment used by humans, in the Middle Stone Age of Africa. Ochre, also called hematite, is found all over the world and has been used by nearly every prehistoric culture, whether as paint on caves and building walls, for staining of pottery or other types of artifacts, or as part of a burial ritual or body painting.
Man’s irresistible desire to create pigments was not without untoward consequences. For instance, in 1,775, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a Swedish chemist, invented a bright green pigment, but it was laced with the deadly poisonous chemical arsenic; it was cheap to produce, but dangerous for artists and patrons alike. However, the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was so fascinated by and passionate about this colour, he wanted his bedroom wallpaper painted with Scheele’s Green. Historians believe that the green pigment used in the wallpaper caused his untimely death in 1821 at the age of 51 due to cancer. By the end of the 19th century, Paris Green—a mixture of copper and arsenic—replaced Scheele’s Green as a more durable alternative, enabling Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir to create vivid, emerald landscapes. It is also toxic, and thus has also been used as a rodenticide and insecticide. The blindness which Monet subsequently succumbed to may have been due to the toxicity of Paris Green, which was banned in the 1960s.
The Egyptians artists added binders such as eggs, resins and beeswax to pigments so that the paint would adhere to plaster and began painting on it. Hence, Egyptian tombs made of limestone were covered with plaster that was painted using six colours: charcoal black, red ochre, yellow orpiment, brown ochre, blue azurite, and green malachite. Natural mineral pigments were dug from the earth and shaped into sticks that were used as chalks by artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt. Dyes made from plants were also used in artwork in the Mediterranean region. By the mid-nineteenth-century, watercolors became available for sale to the public. Since the 1940s, technological advances have produced synthetic pigments and chemical processes for paint making which greatly contributed to expanding the once mineral-based limited colour palette to all the colours of the rainbow. Since then, colour-based industries have grown progressively in the world and the worth of the paint and coatings industry and of colour cosmetics industries in 2023 amounted to around $ 180 billion and $ 80 billion, respectively.
Physics of colour and vision
In the 1660s, English physicist and mathematician, Isaac Newton, demonstrated that clear white light was composed of seven visible colours. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1810 published his treatise on the nature, function, and psychology of colours titled “Theory of Colours”. One of his most radical points was a refutation of Newton’s ideas about the colour spectrum, suggesting that darkness is an active ingredient rather than the mere passive absence of light. Though his work was dismissed by a large segment of the scientific community, it remained of intense interest to a cohort of prominent philosophers and physicists, including Arthur Schopenhauer, Kurt Gödel, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Colour springs from the alchemy of light and perception. Light, an ethereal wave of electromagnetic radiation, spans a spectrum visible to human eyes from approximately 380 to 750 nanometers. As light touches an object, it may be reflected, absorbed, or transmitted, with the reflected wavelengths crafting the hue perceived by the eye. This interaction is interpreted by the brain, transforming raw light into the rich palette of the world around us.
The human eye, a wondrous instrument, houses three types of photoreceptor cells known as cones, each attuned to different wavelengths of light:
S Cones: Sensitive to short wavelengths, peaking around 420 nm, endowing us with the perception of blue.
M Cones: Responsive to medium wavelengths, peaking around 534 nm, allowing us to see green.
L Cones: Tuned to long wavelengths, peaking around 564 nm, revealing the red hues.
Human beings can only see the colours that these receptors can receive. Together, these cones create a symphony of signals that the brain harmonises into the countless colours we perceive, enabling us to distinguish millions of shades.
Nature’s creatures possess a diversity of vision, often surpassing human capabilities. Birds and insects, for instance, enjoy a tetrachromatic[DC1] vision (having four types of cone cells in the eye to perceive colour), with an additional type of cone sensitive to ultraviolet (UV) light, unveiling a hidden spectrum invisible to human eyes. Many bird species use UV signals for mating, navigation, and foraging.
Colours are ‘illusions’
People are quite interested in and passionate about colours; thus, they generally make an initial judgment about a product, person, or environment within 90 seconds, and a significant proportion of this assessment, i.e. 60-90%, is based on colour. This shows how strong the influence of colour on perception and decision-making is. Despite this extraordinary experience of colour perception, all colours are ‘illusions’ in the sense that they do not belong to objects independently of how these are perceived. Neither objects nor lights are coloured ‘in themselves’, but are seen as coloured as a result of neural processes and perceptual mechanisms. In fact, the physical properties of colours are different from the way colours are perceived. For example, take a yellow sunflower; it absorbs the blue, red and other colour energy waves, and then reflects back wavelengths that appear yellow. The colour receptors in our eyes then translate the flower’s wavelength into its colour and send that to our brain.
Blue colours in animals are not caused by chemical pigments, but rather by physics and the way light bounces off a surface. Blue-winged butterflies have layered nanostructures on their wing scales that manipulate light layers, cancelling out certain colours and projecting the fluorescent blue colour that we see; thus, they are called structural colours. Another classic example of structural coloration is the peacock’s feather. The microscopic structures in the feathers manipulate light to produce brilliant blues and greens that shift and change as the viewing angle alters. Thus, blue butterflies, roses, and peacocks aren’t actually blue and our eyes have duped us (Fig. 1).
Effects of colour on human behaviour and wellbeing
People have long understood the power of colour over moods and well-being. Colour was used in ancient Egypt, China, and Greece to evoke emotions, aid in spiritual practices, and treat a variety of conditions. Many ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians and Chinese, embraced the belief that colours possessed healing properties and could be harnessed for therapeutic purposes. This practice, known as chromotherapy, involved the use of specific hues to treat various ailments and promote overall well-being.
Colour is a multidimensional concept which goes beyond visual appeal and aesthetic beauty. It encompasses physical, psychological, cultural, symbolic, artistic, aesthetic and scientific dimensions, including physiological. The aesthetic beauty of colour has added a mesmerizing and exciting tapestry to nature and it is inconceivable to imagine a world without colour. Leigh Hunt (1784–1859), prolific English poet and journalist, said “Colours are the smiles of nature”.
Colour can affect humans in manifold ways ranging from psychological, physiological, cognitive to emotional, behavioural, healing etc., thereby having a profound influence on their mood, creativity, productivity, health and happiness. In addition, it has a remarkable power not only to heal, rejuvenate and inspire, but also to instill a sense of peace and harmony in us. Colour is also a powerful means of communication and a defining aspect of human experience, influencing our perceptions and preferences, and interactions with the world. Therefore, extensive studies have been carried out on those aspects which have led to the emergence of disciplines such as Colour Psychology, Colour Chemistry, Colour Therapy and Visual Ergonomics. Colour can potentially be a powerful source of inspiration, delight, tranquility and solace when used in the right manner for the right place for the right purpose.
However, people generally apply colours purely based on the visual and aesthetic appeal, without a proper understanding of the profound impact that colour can have on people – their performance, experience and wellbeing. Therefore, the use of the right colour for a given place is crucially important in order to provide a more relaxed, congenial and harmonious living environment which goes beyond the aesthetic appeal. Here, it is important to explore the world of colour psychology without diving into technicalities
The colours you choose for your walls, furniture, and the decorations of your bedroom can influence your mood. A bedroom painted in calming tones, e.g. in light blue, might help you to unwind, and create a feeling of serenity. It is not recommended to paint the bedrooms in dark shades of blue as it could interfere with sleep. Similarly, the blue light emitted by electronic screens could produce a similar effect. Therefore, it is not advisable to work on the computer or watch film on electronic screens for long hours prior to retiring to bed. Because the blue light gives the impression to the brain that it is daytime, the body stops releasing the sleep hormone Melatonin. On the other hand, light shades of amber may promote the release of Melatonin helping us to wind down and prepare for sleep in nature’s way.
Feeling relaxed
As blue light causes people to feel relaxed, it has led countries to add blue street lights in order to decrease suicide rates. In 2000, the city of Glasgow installed blue street lighting in certain neighborhoods and subsequently reported the anecdotal finding of reduced crime in these areas. A railroad company in Japan installed blue lighting on its stations in October 2009 in an effort to reduce the number of rail suicide attempts (Fig. 2). Blue is often associated with calmness and serenity and is not naturally associated with food; hence, it can make food appear less appetizing and appealing and reduce the desire to eat. Therefore, blue is generally considered an appetite suppressant and eating off a blue plate could help to reduce overweight and obesity.
Walls of cafés are generally painted in warm, earthy tones like brown or terracotta which evoke a sense of comfort and homeliness. It helps the customers to settle in with a cup of coffee and a good book to spend some relaxing and rewarding time in a congenial ambience. On the other hand, some fast-food chains use red and yellow in their logos and external and internal walls in order to create a vibrant and exciting environment. It not only attracts attention, promotes quick decision making and creates a sense of excitement and urgency, but also stimulates appetite and encourages lively discussion. Though such colours attract both children and adults to fast-food restaurants, they may not wish to stay long in such an ambience after partaking of food, unlike in a coffee shop. Similarly, a kitchen with lively colours could energize you during meal preparation. (Figure 2)
Blue-winged butterfly (Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/butterfly-insect-animal-142506/) (left) and peacock (Source: https://www.photowall.co.uk/peacock-feathers-poster ) (right)
Even when designing websites, careful attention is paid not only to aesthetics, but to emotions that need to be evoked. When a company designs a new website, it carefully selects colours with this in mind. They might use blue for trust, green for growth, and orange for enthusiasm, creating a website that feels inviting and reliable while encouraging action. Architect William Ludlow advocated pale pastel blues and greens in hospitals for therapeutic purposes. The walls of hospitals are often painted in soft, calming colours like pale green or light blue which help to reduce stress and create a healing environment.
Colour can enhance or impair learning, morale, performance and the behaviour of students. It can affect students’ attention span, and perception of time. Visual stimulation rewires the brain, making stronger connections while fostering visual thinking, problem solving and creativity. It has been shown that the cold-coloured walls, such as blue and green, produced the highest levels of relaxation and pleasure, while the warm-colored walls such as yellow and red had the better attention and learning performance. And the white-walled classroom had the lowest subjective evaluation and the worst learning performance. Classrooms when painted with bright yellow — the colour of happiness and optimism – spark creativity and enthusiasm and makes learning more joyful. That’s why some educational spaces use yellow in order to foster a lively and energetic environment. School buses are generally painted yellow the world over for safety and visibility. Yellow colour is in the middle of the visible spectrum so that it strikes the cones (photoreceptors) of the eyes from both sides equally. That makes it almost impossible for anyone to miss a school bus even when it’s in one’s peripheral vision or under poor day light conditions or in bad weather.
Fitness spaces
Exercise rooms and fitness spaces are generally painted in bright orange which exudes energy, motivation and vitality, encouraging movement and activity. It helps to keep the energy high and spirits lifted. Studies have shown that red causes a significantly greater response in heart rate, respiration, brain wave activity, and other nervous system functions than green or blue. In addition, red decreases the perceived size of rooms and space and prompts a sense of warmth. Lush greenery in a park or a natural habitat has a refreshing and rejuvenating effect, creating a sense of harmony and tranquility. Besides, the choice of colour of clothing reflects and affects your mood and if you are feeling upbeat and confident, you might pick a vibrant red shirt or dress. On the other hand, if you seek comfort and tranquility, you may settle for soothing shades of blue, green, etc.
Choice of colour for prisons is of prime importance as it affects the mood of inmates. When colour is used properly in prisons and jails, it can lessen overall tension and conflicts and make the places more comfortable for the inmates to live and work in. Based on the research carried out, bright colours are recommended in the prison, with green and blue colours being the best rated because people perceive them as soothing, stimulating, pleasant and safe. Yellow is also acceptable because the prisoners perceive it as a bright and cheerful colour. Painting the walls of the room with soft shades of yellow and green (kiwi color) was seen by the prisoners as “refreshing”. In all these cases, colour psychology is at play.
Therefore, colours play a significant role in shaping how we feel and behave; thus, they are not just pretty hues, but are the emotions painted onto the canvas of our lives. Hence, colour psychology is like a storyteller that sets the mood and tone of a space, a product, or even a piece of clothing. It’s the silent language that whispers to our emotions, shaping our experiences without us even realizing it. However, these associations between colours and emotions are not universal, but are influenced by cultural, historical, and personal factors. Understanding colour psychology can help individuals and businesses harness the power of colour to evoke specific emotions and convey messages effectively. Whether in branding, interior design, fashion, or art, colour plays a central role in shaping our perceptions and experiences. It’s a fascinating aspect of our world that continues to intrigue and inspire creativity in various fields.
Further information in this regard is found in the book titled “The Power of Colour: Enhancing Human Wellbeing and Unleashing Human Potential” edited by Ranjith Senaratne and Raj Somadeva. It emanated from a conference conducted by the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science and includes contributions from a multidisciplinary team comprising artists, architects, engineers, biologists, environmentalists, psychiatrists, musicians and scientists.
Concluding remarks
Though the manifold effects of colour on humans have been recognized from time immemorial, there is very little appreciation and understanding of those effects on humankind and how these effects could be harnessed to enhance and enrich human wellbeing, including life experience, productivity, performance, satisfaction, memory and creativity. Because of the significance of colour on humans, disciplines such as Colour Psychology, Colour Chemistry, Colour Therapy and Visual Ergonomics have emerged which have assumed considerable importance in day-to-day life.
A good grasp of Colour Psychology helps to create a psychologically satisfying, aesthetically pleasing, vibrant and energetic space, or a calm and tranquil environment by selecting the appropriate shades of colours depending on the need and occasion. This is crucially important in a fiercely competitive globalized environment characterized by anxiety, tension, disquiet and chaos where people are leading a stressful, restless and agitated life in a fast-paced world. In the circumstances, creating a relaxed, congenial and harmonious environment at home as well as at the workplace by painting the living and working environment with appropriate hues is of prime importance.
This need is paramount and should be addressed as a matter of great importance. Then only could we embark upon a colorful journey and paint our world with appropriate vibrant hues in order to unearth the boundless potential and transformative power that lies within us. However, there is a dearth of competent professionals, particularly in Sri Lanka who can proffer the right advice and guidance to clients in selecting appropriate colours for specific places such as the living room, bedroom, dining room, reading room, exercise room etc. in homes and public places such as hospitals, restaurants, coffee shops, gymnasiums theatres, prisons etc. for the human wellbeing. This issue has been further exacerbated due to hardly any academic interaction and collaboration, particularly between the Faculties of Arts, Science and Medicine.
The course unit system (CUS) developed in the USA enables students to pick and choose course modules from diverse fields so as to create complementarity and synergy; this in turn, leads to producing well-rounded and well-grounded creative graduates equipped with multiple competencies to address real-world issues more effectively. Though the CUS was introduced in our universities over 20 years ago, because of the heavy compartmentalization and fragmentation, course modules for degree programmed of a given faculty have been selected mainly from among the modules offered by the faculty concerned, thereby not deriving the key expected benefits from the CUS. Consequently, Sri Lankan universities have been hardly able to develop any cross-faculty academic programmed such as Colour Psychology, Colour Therapy, Music Therapy and such like. Therefore, it is imperative to make necessary interventions so as to facilitate and promote interfaculty degree programmed in Sri Lanka universities, paving the way for the development of such academic offerings jointly by the Faculties of Arts, Science, Medicine, Architecture etc. Moreover, cooperation and collaboration between faculties are needed to effectively address complex real-world issues such as SDGs which demand a holistic trans-disciplinary systems approach. Hence, the earlier such interventions are made, the better.
by Emeritus Professor
Ranjith Senaratne
University of Ruhuna, (ransen.ru@gmail.com)
With his limbs ripped off in a blast,
Mounting challenges await the Gaza boy,
And though he will be winning good hearts,
When he cries that Mum can’t be held now,
The stony silence of the civilized world,
In the face of his stepped-up mute suffering,
Should be seen as another frontier of agony,
And herein we have the conclusive evidence,
That hearts are made numb by unending savagery.
By Lynn Ockersz
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