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Sunday, 30 March 2003 |
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More Sri Lankan images in an Australian mirror Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake This week too we continue to dwell on Sri Lankan reflections in an Australian mirror. Although expatriate Sri Lankans (both Tamil and Sinhala) are now spread all over the world it is Sri Lankan Australians (to coin a term) who are well ahead in chronicling what Professor Wimal Dissanayake in his introduction to Sunil Govinnage's book 'Black Swans and other stories' has called the diasporic existence. The expatriates in Britain, Canada and other countries have been singularly silent in this respect the only exception being Namel Weeramuni's tele-drama 'Ratagiya Aththo' about Sinhalese in Britain.
Joining Sri Lanka's Australian saga this week is D.B. Kuruppu who has brought out a witty collection of short stories titled 'Lankavak Wage Punchi' and a book of essays 'Singaru Siritha' about his experiences Down Under. Singaru as Kuruppu explains is a hybrid combination of Sinha and Kangaroo,the respective national symbols of the two countries. The experiences in the two books often overlap and with his acute social perceptions and trenchant command of Sinhala Kuruppu makes an ideal chronicler and story-teller of the Sri Lankan condition in Australia. Kuruppu who on graduation taught Sinhala at Ananda College, Colombo later worked as a staff officer in a succession of Government Departments and public corporations such as the Official Languages Department, the Cement Corporation, the Ministry of Industries, the People's Bank and the National Institute of Business Management. Essentially a villager at heart what is fascinating about his stories is how Kuruppu uses his native insights to illuminate the diasporic conditions in his adopted home. It is this facility to cut between life in Australia and life in Sri Lanka which imparts its particular ironical edge to Kuruppu's short stories. Particular events and sights in Victoria inspire a train of thoughts and reminiscences which bring him back to his native country but these invariably culminate in a whimsical way which sheds light on both life in Australia as well as Sri Lanka. It is often the oddities and foibles, the vanities and pretensions of Sri Lankan life which he pits against the strengths of the multi-cultural and cosmopolitan Aussie order but this itself lends a poignant nostalgia to his best stories. In 'Nijabime Yahapatha Thakamai' for example Don Edwin Kariyaperuma while waiting to be conferred citizenship by the Mayor cannot help recalling a legendary Mayor of Galle Darlin Silva who had been something of an amateur poet. This in turn brings to his mind the Galle Fort, the Cricket grounds, the sea and the Gin Ganga to the north of the sea shore. It is while watching the women bathing in the river that Silva mouths a naughty verse. Mentally the protagonist compares the modest stage on which the ceremony takes place with the ostentation which would have attended such an occasion in Sri Lanka. One of the invitees, a State Minister, is slightly late but the ceremony starts without him. When he arrives there is no one to dance attendance on him as in Sri Lanka. In contrast is the behaviour of a Sri Lankan Cabinet Minister who comes to watch the World Cup match between Sri Lanka and England. Travelling in the same bus as the expatriate Sri Lankans he gets into an argument with one of them and tells his security guard at the end, 'Here you look after this fellow!' Here then is the gamut of Sri Lankan life in Australia laid before us for our inspection. There are weddings, funerals and birthday parties in which Sri Lankans using their peculiar genius for ingenuity combine their own customs with the Australian ethos. At a wedding all the customs of the poruwa are scrupulously observed except for the breaking of the coconut since the relations who had come from a Kurunegala village had failed to bring the coconut and the 'keththa' necessary for it. The wedding is so awash with native customs that even the Aussie registrar of marriages is unconsciously prompted to assume the role of the garrulous village orator at the wedding table when he speaks felicitating the young couple. In another story the narrator is impressed by the austere dignity of the funeral mass which he contrasts with the self-aggrandizement of the living which is found at funerals back home. What is fascinating are the similarities and the contrasts. The title story for example offers us a microcosm of Sri Lankan life in Australia where on a Sunday the Lankans gather at a home which is dubbed the 'kopi kade.' This is not only because coffee and hoppers are on offer but also because of the atmosphere of gossip and mild intrigue which marks the gathering so characteristic of local life. Here we see on display the vanities of the typical Sri Lankan expatriate, usually a Government official or similar professional who insists on clinging to the status symbols associated with home in the more egalitarian climate of Australia. The narrator on meeting one such person who had been an Assistant Director of Social Services enquires whether he knows his friend who had worked in the same office. Pat comes the reply, 'You mean the clerk?' The clerk in question had been the respected Chief Clerk of the Department for years. Later the narrator meets the former Assistant Director sweeping a railway platform and sidles up to him to whisper, 'Still doing social service, no?' But as another expatriate is quick to point out anybody who works in the railway station is called upon to sweep the platform. While clinging to tradition Sri Lankans in Australia also show a remarkable adeptness to adjust and innovate. In 'Uda Giyada?' the parents are intent on celebrating the 21st birthday of their daughter Samanthi in the best Aussie tradition. The invitees include both Sri Lankans as well Samanthi's university mates demonstrating that she is a popular student. They make speeches felicitating her which are full of wisecracks and the high point of the event is a traditional strip-tease with a difference in the sense that a young man performs a dance in the course of which the 'birthday girl' has to undress him until he is reduced to a pair of shorts. This Samanthi does with a poise which suggests that the new generation of Sri Lankans in Australia have become fully acclimatised to their new ethos. Similarly in the wedding which has already been described the bride and the groom surprise even the Aussie registrar of marriages by kissing each other full on the lips at the end of the registration even before the registrar's enquiry about the propriety of such a gesture could register on his audience. The purists might contend that some of Kuruppu's work are not short stories at all in the standard sense of the word but this has always been his strength as well as weakness. For he is at best in observing and recording life with an ironic thrust. A master of the language Kuruppu excels at shooting satirical barbs at the oddities and foibles of his countrymen exiled in the vast Australian outback. Yet this irony is also laced with a nostalgia for times past for Kuruppu's work is a salute to a way of life we have irrevocably lost. It was the settled way of life of the 1950-70's with its leisurely pace. It was a way of life moulded largely by the middle-classes which though bi-lingual like the writer traced their roots back to the village although they may have forsaken it long ago. Hence Kuruppu's constant harking back to the sights, sounds and figures of his village childhood and adolescence even in the midst of the scramble of modern life. All these qualities are well captured in the last story in this collection, 'Puhul Pana'. Here Saranapala sits down to write a letter back home in the month of May with memories of past Vesaks he had spent in Sri Lanka lying heavily on his mind. Beginning with the 'Puhul Pana', which his father had made out of a sliced papaw when he was a child his mind traverses the Vesak sight-seeing he had engaged in as a young man and even later with his wife and small daughter. But looking at the desk diary with the photograph of a Vesak lantern he cannot understand why this same daughter should have thrown the diary into the dust bin from which Saranapala had to retrieve it. However, looking at his self-possessed young daughter Saranapala baulks from posing the question. In this breakdown of communication between father and daughter we see reflected the larger vacuity of life in a new world for expatriate Sri Lankans, the spiritual void of the diaspora. |
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