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| Sunday, 10 November 2002 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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An old debt, dead friends and memories sunday essay by AJITH SAMARANAYAKA This essay should have been written last month but was crowded out by the inexorable parade of events. For it is by way of repaying an old debt. For it was in October 1981 that the 'Sunday Essay' in its original form made its appearance in the pages of the 'Sunday Island' that brave bright banner of a newspaper launched by Upali Wijewardene into the petrified forest of newsprint almost entirely controlled by the then UNP Government of his uncle President J.R. Jayewardene. And the man who inspired the essay and gave it its title was the late M.E. Sourjah, one of the most under-estimated journalists of our times who along with the present writer left Lake House to join in Upali Wijewardene's experiment down sleazy Blomendhal Road in the underbelly of the swollen city of Colombo. A quiet, big-made, balding man who used to go very red in the face after a convivial tot at the now extinct York Club down Canal Row (then the favourite watering hole of a past generation of hard-drinking Lake House journalists) Eshan Sourjah was an all-rounder. Newspaper folklore has it that he was a clerk in one of the departments of the old 'Times of Ceylon' in the late 1950s or early 1960s and used to contribute the occasional article to the 'Times.' It took some time for the Editor (most probably the late Tori de Souza) to discover that his free-lance writer was actually an employee hidden away in the bowels of his own establishment, an impressive tower of a building in the heart of Fort by the standards of those times. So Eshan Sourjah came up to the sacred upper floor editorial to join a galaxy which combined both the 'Times' and 'Daily Mirror' (the later daily morning addition the 'Time' being an afternoon paper) and consisted of such stars as the dignified H.E.R. Abeysekera, the late Fred de Silva, the unorthodox D.B. Udalagama (alias Gamarala), the flamboyant Reggie Michael, the colourful E.P. de Silva, the quiet S. Sivanayagam who nevertheless wielded a pugnacious pen D.S.C. Kuruppu (who wrote several internationally-renowned crime novels under the Pseudonym Stephen Christie, and many talented others such as Karel Roberts Ratnaweera, the late Rita Sebastian, the late Prema de Mel, B.H.S. Jayewardena (later an Editor of the 'Daily News), the irrepressible Anton Weerasinghe, the sober late Victor Gunawardena, who as Chief Sub Editor was the last bulwark of defence, S. Muttiah (who has been honoured by the English Queen as the chronicler of Chennai, his adopted city) and many others. Sourjah migrated to Lake House in 1968 (one of the influx drawn by the magnetic Denzil Pieris) and by the time I came to know him in 1975 as a cub reporter was with the late M.M. Thawfeeq (the father of Sadi, the present 'Daily News' Sports Editor and one of the most loveable men to lumber down the corridors of Lake House in his own fashion) virtually in charge of all the feature pages of the "Sunday Observer.' He 'subbed' my first feature article, a short impressionistic piece about Vesak. The features desk occupied a different room (the same as they do now) and keeping Sourjah company in this room adorned with a Photograph of the late Jeanne Pinto in the flower of her youth were Roshan pieris (the grand dame of women journalists today), Rajitha Weerakoon and master cartoonist Wijesoma then as now puncturing the pomposities and pretensions of politicians of all hues. By September 1982, however, Lake House was beginning to pale for us. There was excited talk in the corridors of newspaper offices and the pubs patronised by the scribes about the new newspaper which Upali was planning to launch. He would double our pay it was said and the Editor would be an Englishman from the 'Times' of England no less. Vijitha Yapa who was then handling press relations for Upali in his capacity as Chairman of the Greater Colombo Economic Commission (GCEC, now the BOI), was seducing journalists from Lake House and the 'Times' and there was a steady, if rather furtive, flow from Colombo to Blomendhal Road which was like the back of beyond to most of us who had grown up in newspapers based in the Fort. The Independent Newspapers run by the Gunasena family and now extinguished was able to hold but there was a massive haemorrhage of journalists from Lake House and the "Times' to both 'The Island' and the 'Divaina,' the two new Upali newspapers. Among the English journalists who left were Gamini Weerakoon (the present Editor of the 'The Island' daily), Wijesoma, T.M.K. Samat, the late Vijitha Amarasinghe, Peter Balasuriya, Sourjah and myself. The toll of Lake House Sinhala journalists was heavier. It included Edmund Ranasinghe and Dayasena Gunasinghe (then respectively the Editor and Deputy Editor of the 'Silumina'), Upali Tennekoon (the present Editor of the 'Divaina' daily), Gamini Sumanasekera (the present Editor of the 'Divaina' Sunday), Dayaratne Ranasinghe, Wimal Weerasekera, the late Stanley Premaratne, Dharmaratne Wijesundera and many others. Anyway there was no Englishman sitting in the Editor's chair it being occupied by Vijitha Yapa who although having no national newspaper experience rose magnificently to the challenge of creating a newspaper out of virtual chaos. However there was Peter Harland of the London "Times' overseeing the production and George Darby who came to produce the special supplement 'The Island' bequeathed on the Queen when she visited Sri Lanka shortly after its launch. In his famous autobiography titled Good Times, Bad Times "Harold Evans the renowned editor of the 'Times' and 'Sunday Times' describes Harland as an ex-provincial editor then in charge of the editorial side of the new technology. (These were the early days in Fleet Street when hot metal was giving way to linotype). Darby is described as one of a team of experts who produced the "Times' supplement on the Royal Marriage, the fairytale wedding of Prince Charles to Princes Diana which was so sadly to turn sour and become curdled in time by tragedy. So as always the flamboyant Upali Wijewardene, the wonderboy entrepreneur, had gone for the best and spared no expenses. But to return to Sourjah it was he who suggested that my regular contribution to the 'Sunday Island' should be the 'Sunday Essay'. One of the most memorable was about Sepala Ekanayake, the only Sri Lankan to hijack an international airliner for the love of his son. This prompted a letter from Ekanayake smuggled out of the remand prison and for whose trial special legislation had to be framed. Another essay about Manik Sandrasagara prompted a law suit which mercifully has run out on the sands of time. (We are now good friends). Sourjah was a versatile journalist, one of the best, and an all-rounder. Feature writer, lay-out man, Sub Editor he was also an elegant writer. He wrote scintillating limericks and unusual short stories. Very few will remember that in the 'Times' he (being a Malay) wrote a weekly column on the arts under the pen-name 'Guttila'. Needless to say he was covering Sinhala literature, drama and the cinema. One person who does remember is Lester James Peries who in a recent conversation with me recalled many such arts columnists of yore such as Jayanta Padmanabha (the Oxford-educated onetime Editor of the 'Daily News') and the late A.J. Gunawardena who wrote to the same paper later as 'Rasika'. Others who wrote a little later were Nihal Ratnaike (later an Editor of the 'Daily News') as 'Viranga' and Gamini Haththotuwegama, the father of street drama, as 'Kalpana'. The tragedy of journalism which is written to a deadline and is a dead letter next day is, of course, that it is so flimsy and ephemeral. In one of his memorable lines, T.S. Eliot evoked the image of newspaper pages scattered by the wind. So is our writing. Both Sourjah and A.J. are gone and with them their prose. Perhaps this is why Bandula Jayawardena (a very senior dramatist whom I greatly respect) said rather unkindly I thought on a recent memorial programme for A.J. on Rupavahini that A.J. had not contributed much by way of writing. This was paradoxical because Jayawardena himself used to write regularly to the 'Daily News' in the 1950s when he was working for the Buddhist encyclopedia from the Peradeniya University and later to 'The Island'. Certainly A.J. wrote no books but as 'Rasika' in the 1960s and as 'Jayadeva' until his untimely death he wrote regular cultural commentaries to the press. It was columnists such as A.J., Sourjah and Nihal Ratnaike who introduced the newly-flowering Sinhala theatre, the serious cinema and wholesome Sinhala literature to the English readership. It was still a bi-lingual time when even the old English-educated were turning towards indigenous culture, a time when the best of tradition had begun to intermingle with the best currents emanating from the West. It was the time when Sarachchandra, Sugathapala de Silva, Lester James Peries and Chitrasena were dominating the theatre and the screen. It was the time when G.B. Senanayake, Gunadasa Amarasekera and K. Jayatilleke were bywords in Sinhala fiction. It was the time of Mahagama Sekera's lyrics and Amaradeva's and Nanda Malini's melodies. And while they performed the columnists chronicled. But when a columnist dies his art (if it can be called that) naturally withers with him. He is hardly anthologised although a new generation of admirers such as Sunil Mihindukula of the 'Sarasaviya' have begun to bring out the film criticism of Cyril. B. Perera, Leslie Boteju and Gamini Wijetunge. But these are rare moments. Generally no monuments are erected to dead columnists. |
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