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| Sunday, 8 August 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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A writer of our generation Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake
Had he been alive today, Kithsiri Nimal Shantha would have been 48 years old on August 12. I myself did not realise this until his wife Thilina left a message for me asking me to call her and when I did, requested me to write a piece about Kithsiri's birthday which by some strange quirk of fate, falls two days after my own. When Kithsiri's death two years ago at the peak of his career hit all of us like a gale, I wrote a poem in Sinhala where I described him as the first of our generation to have fallen in love with newspapers. That was perhaps prompted by the image of his small-made body surmounted by an earnest bearded face which had made me think that he was older than his years. It was only when Thilina spoke to me that I discovered that it was I who was his senior by two years. All I can say in mitigation for the autobiographical touch of the preceding paragraph is that this is a very personal piece and in the manner of a memoir of our generation. We were the generation which was born after Sri Lanka attained formal political Independence, but was trapped between 1947 and 1956, the two crucial and fateful years of our still unresolved national tragedy. Formal political Independence was perceived by wide sections of the people as a more transfer of power from the British Raj to the Brown Sahibs, to use a phrase which formed the title of a book by one of the most distinguished editors of this newspaper, the late Tarzie Vittachi. The year 1956 was momentous in the sense that the large Sinhala-educated masses who had been outside the pale of the elitist politics of the time came into their own as a result of what was widely hailed as the Silent Revolution, but this phenomenon itself had unfortunate undercurrents. The Sinhala and Tamil nationalisms, which should have worked in concert to build the newly-awakened nation, were set on a tragic collision course from the consequences of which we are still suffering. Native tongue Nineteen fifty six, the year of Kithsiri's birth, was also the year when the larger masses were released into the political arena by an Oxford-educated Prime Minister, who, on his return to the country of his birth, confessed in public that he could not speak in his native tongue but mastered the language in a few years so that he could sway the hearts of his countrymen. There are still many people who believe and quite honestly too that Prime Minister Bandaranaike made Sinhala the official language as an election gimmick and while there was an element of political opportunism in it, it was also a recognition of the language of the people which had been relegated to the kitchen by the upper classes as a lingo only fit for the servants to be addressed in. It was after all no accident that the enthronement of Sinhala paved the way the same year for a remarkable efflorescence in letters and the creative arts; Martin Wickramasinghe bringing out the novel Viragaya, Sarachchandra his play Maname and Lester James Peries his film Rekhava, each in its own field landmark events. The tragedy, of course, was that this same efflorescence which should have been reflected in the indigenous Tamil culture was aborted and the Tamil people withdrew into a sullen sense of alienation. Kithsiri and I grew up in this heady post-1956 milieu where young people who had intellectual or creative interests read the more serious novelists and poets and watched the plays and films which were now being unleashed on the country through the momentum of what was seen in retrospect as more a cultural rather than a political revolution. Kithsiri had intimate ties to both the new politics as well as the new culture since his father Nimal Shantha Senior was the Chairman of the Village Council of his area. His native Habaraduwa occupies a special niche in Sri Lanka's politics as having been the seat of a robust Sinhala nationalism. Its MP at the time Kithsiri was growing to maturity was Prins Gunasekera one of the most colourful mavericks to be produced by parliamentary politics in Sri Lanka. Incorrigible rebels For long an Independent MP defying both the Dudley Senanayake and Sirimavo Bandaranaike Governments, he with the late W. Dahanayake and Mudiyanse Tennekoon constituted a triumvirate of incorrigible rebels in the 1970-77 Parliament. It was Prins Gunasekera, now a barrister-at-law in Britain, who invited the liberal peer Lord Averbury to Sri Lanka in the wake of the 1971 Insurrection much to the chagrin of the then SLFP strongman Felix Dias Bandaranaike. Educated at Mahinda College, Galle, Kithsiri was excited by the political and cultural events of his time. I first heard of him when his poems and occasional writings were broadcast over the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation's National Service when I myself was turning my hand to writing. Very much later, I got to know him much better when both of us joined two newspapers on the same road, Blomendhal Road, Colombo 13 which surely deserves a chapter of its own in any future chronicle about Sri Lanka's press. I had joined The Island started by Upali Wijewardene while Kithsiri, at the age of 25, was the editor Irida, a Sunday mini-tabloid newspaper begun by Harris Hulugalle who perhaps holds the record for beginning and closing the most number of newspapers in the country. Somehow the story began floating in political circles that the newspaper was directed against Anura Bandaranaike so that the late Mervyn de Silva was able to write in his Lanka Guardian that Anura would receive publicity 'but never on a Sunday' (Sunday, of course, being English for Irida.) But those Sundays did not last long and Kithsiri called me one day and suggested a meeting. It took place at the Premil Sports Club on Galpotta Road, a watering hole, the contribution of which to Sri Lankan unorthodox journalism has been immense. Kithsiri came in the company of fellow journalists Jayantha Chandrasiri an immensely talented avant guarde dramatist and film-maker today, Anura Solomons, the leader writer of the present day Divaina and W. K. D. Navaratne, one of the most competent Sinhala sub-editors of his time now with Sarvodaya Vishvalekha. As a result of that meeting, I was able to persuade the then Editor-in-chief of the Divaina (Wijewardene's Sinhala newspaper), Edmund Ranasinghe (who anyway did not need much persuasion) to recruit all four to his staff. Kithsiri rose to be the Features Editor of the Divaina until he joined the Lakbima started by the Sumathipala family. He was the Editor of the daily Lakbima at the time of his untimely death two years ago on January, of a heart ailment which had plagued him for some time. Imprint As Features Editor and Editor, he was able to leave an imprint on the two newspapers with which he was finally associated, which would have been the envy of much older editors. He had a breadth of interests and a seriousness of mind which coupled with his chaste Sinhala prose made for a heady mix. He was a true patriot who placed the interests of his country above all other petty and evanescent interests and all of us are the poorer due to his loss. To conclude on the same bitter-sweet autobiographical note, he and I, belonging to the same generation and enjoying a common landscape of memory, were only different in one respect. I had a wider education in English, having attended a traditional elitist school while he was a victim of the Sinhala exclusivism which was rampant in the 1960s and which did so much to defeat the hopes of those who made Sinhala the official language in all good faith. In that sense, all of us are the common victims of the tragic collision of languages and cultures which has constituted an irrevocable communal divide. But Kithsiri Nimal Shantha fought the good fight and marshalled all his mental resources into widening the horizons of the Sinhala-reading audience to which he addressed himself. Maybe in tribute to his memory, we can look forward to a time (which however seems sadly remote from today's perspective) where a new generation armed with the best ethos which Sinhala, Tamil and western culture will be able to provide will march in one step to the clarion call of a new dawn. |
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