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| Sunday, 13 February 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Sahithya Sansara Charika - 2 : For the love of literature Reviewed by Piyadasa Pitigala When literature is excluded from the school curriculum, students denied the basic knowledge in the subject. As a result there to occur a vacuum on the knowledge of literature. In such a situation it is an uphill task to write a column in a journal to make people appreciate literature. Nevertheless, it is a compelling necessity to make them aware of great literary works, both here and abroad. W. A. Abeysinghe, the well-known man of letters who has excelled in poetry, lyrics and critical analysis has ventured to fulfil this enormous task. He has presented two books Sahithya Sansara Charika volumes 1 and 2, containing columns on literature he has written to journals. The volume 2 reviewed here consists of the columns he wrote first to Meemansa supplement in Lankadipa and later to the literary page in Irida Lankadipa. As the name of the book implies, its contents are not a voyage for devotional purposes or a pleasure expedition. It is an exploration on literature. As literature is a boundless ocean, there cannot be a beginning and end to such a venture. As it is a voyage on literature there should be a Nadegura or a guide. Here Abeysinghe plays the role of the guide, and has selected some of the world-class writers and their works. They include the world famous literary giants like William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy and the not so well-known writers like Herman Hesse, Winguish Aithmathow and their novels. Abeysinghe presents their literary pieces in a very appropriate manner. He begins with some aspects of the personality of the author, then describes the opinions of literary critics on him and goes on to discuss his literary achievements. At the end . Abeysinghe presents the knowledge he had gathered from the literary works. This approach when taken as a whole appeals to the reader as if a mother or a grand-parent relating an absorbing story to a child. Although the reader might have enjoyed the translations of the works of Shakespeare and Tolstoy, he may come to know about Herman Hesse and Winguish Aithmathow from the contents of this book. Abeysinghe asserts that Siddhartha the acclaimed novel of Herman Hesse as a Jathaka Tale is relevant to the 20th century. He translates and presents some fascinating scenes from Siddhartha. The way Abeysinghe analyses the gist of the novel in several articles creates an urge for the reader to fetch the book and read it. Winguish Aithmathow, the great Kirgish writer came to the forefront as a result of the Russian revolution. When Kirghistan formed a part of the Soviet Union, Winguish Aithmathow gained recognition as a Soviet novelist. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kirghistan became a separate republic. Kirgistan was predominantly a country of migrating shepherds. In several articles Abeysinghe discusses the life of Winguish Aithmathow and his outstanding work. The Early Cranes translated into Sinhala as Welasana Kokku Avith. The reader would be pleasantly surprised to see references to Sri Lanka in this celebrated novel. The second part of Sahithya Sansara Charika - 2 is devoted to acclaimed Sri Lankan writers - Munidasa Kumaratunga, Martin Wickremasinghe, Sri Chandraratna Manavasinghe, Prof. Ediriweera Sarathchandra, G. B. Senanayake, Madawala Ratnayaka, Mahagama Sekara, Wimalaratna Kumaragama, Cyril C. Perera, K. Jayatilleke, Siri Gunasinghe. Gunadasa Amarasekera, Ven. S. Mahinda, Ananda Rajakaruna, Ven. Udakendavala Saranankara as well as the literary greats in the world - R. K. Narayan, Alexander Solzenethsin, Arundathi Roy, Ernest Hemmingway, Omar Khayam, Rabindranath Tagore and highlight fascinating pieces of their works. When one cannot understand something spoken or written, he would ask "What is this jargon?". Literature is indeed a jargon to the present generation. This is because those who spoke of a Dharmishta (righteous) society kept literature out of school. Sahithya Sansara Charika - 2 would help to create a love, respect, attachment and a desire for literature among those to whom literature has become a jargon. The book is published by Sarasavi Prakashakayo, Nugegoda. Priced at Rs. 225. ************* The Lotto Workbook For Beginners English : A novel way to learn English Reviewed by Carol Aloysius Teaching young children to learn a new language can be a daunting task for any teacher. The biggest challenge is first, to be able to win the learner's attention, and then to sustain it. The question is how? What tools for example, can be used to motivate a child, learning English for the first time in a manner that is both pleasurable and informative without even being aware of it? Ms. Maureen Wickremasinghe has provided an answer to this question in her new book, The Lotto Workbook For Beginners English. A pre-school teacher by profession, she has harnessed the knowledge she has gleaned over forty years of teaching young children, to produce an interesting and informative workbook for those learning English as a second language. The book is different from most other books written on the same subject for several reasons. First, it doubles up as a workbook as well as a game. Second, it uses only words that are already familiar to learners. These words (there are around seventy of them) have been grouped into six different categories, namely: animals, food, household items, sky, road and garden. Third, it contains a host of do - it - yourself activities which encourages the beginner learner to think on his own without resorting to rote learning. Starting with Animals (a favourite subject of children) and Food (an equally interesting topic of conversation for both young and old), she goes on to list these words in sets of nine, allocating a separate square complete with a picture to each animal, food and household item. Once the learner is able to identify the pictures by name, he/she is expected to fill in the blank squares accurately. Other activities include: colouring of pictures, cutting out name cards and matching words to pictures; puzzles, crosswords, and very basic writing exercises. Once the reader has gone through all the lessons, the author gives the learner a check list of the words he or she has learned on the back cover. She also provides a scoreboard to allow the learner to evaluate his knowledge. What is unique about this book is that it can also be converted into a game, in this case a Lotto game. This is by cutting out the pictures individually and mounting them on strong cards. The blank squares can also be mounted together on a card. The children are given a blank card of 9 squares and one person calls out the picture names for identification and matching. "This game can be altered to suit the child's development", the author notes. Her objective is to both educate and entertain. As she says, "the book has been designed to give maximum pleasure in learning some of the familiar English words". Priced at just Rs. 75 to make it affordable even to readers on a shoe string budget, with an eye catching cover by Neelika Edirisinghe, and printed by New Kelani Printers. Ms. Wickremasinghe's recent publication is a welcome addition to the few existing workbooks, that are capable of initiating new learners of English an easy and uncomplicated way to learn the language. Now that English is back in the classroom, it deserves pride of place in every classroom where the subject is being taught for first time learners. This book is invaluable to those learning the language for the first time. ************* Propitiations : The samsaric traveller Reviewed by Jean Arasanayagam In this first collection of his poetry, Propitiations, Carl Muller travels both roads, but even when he takes these routes, he often goes off the beaten track to arrive at unknown, unpredestined and unpredictable destinations. He continues travelling, making his detours, taking diverging paths that lead the reader through complex labyrinths, mazes and routes through strange terrain, inhabited by the phantasmata of mind-thought. He grapples, wrestles with the reality of human experience, at the same time investigating thought and emotion through existential ideas and theories. All religious rituals, deities, demons, fantastic tales; the church, the kovil, the temple, the mosque, the forests, the waterways, the village, are etched in the mindmap and mindscape of his poetry. He takes the reader "to the brink and beyond." Propitiations breaks new ground in the arena of contemporary Sri Lankan writers in English writing, that not only explores myth, legend, beliefs, rituals that sustain life, but is at times irony-laden, even iconoclastic towards society, morality and long-held traditions. The collection focuses on multivarious and multifaceted themes - the mystic, the esoteric, the deep delving into the subterranean cave of the psyche, piercing through layers of the unconscious. In 'Layers' he speaks of: Compressed images - Sanni dancers swirling in outdoor rituals... come, Amuka, end these fevered spasms, in outdoor rituals... come, Amuka, end these fevered spasms, They come, they come, eeling out of piling layers of jungle floor, undergrowth speckled like hypocrites' tongues... ("Layers") or again: Bulging eyes painted on moulded plaster, the nose breathing flames, licking down the sides of the doorway... Two cobras strangle an elephant and a demon raises two more by their trunks into the air, grinning with his flaring boar-tusk fangs. ("Makara") Powerful and evocative imagery emerges in Kalukumaraya, where the planets cause such mystic uproar... surfacing against in Spirit Messages: Eyes like pools, blacker than the heart of night... Talking to Carl Muller about his latest collection, he said: "I just wanted to put down my thoughts on things from the past, my childhood... the ideas planted in the mind of a child on goodness, fame, wealth, ideas of adults..." and again he says of his work: "I write unconsciously." Would it perhaps, as an interpolation or interjection, be pertinent to say that Carl Muller writes consciously of the unconscious; and does his poetry take twists and turns, forming new patterns and designs in the kalaedoscopic images engendered in his imagination? What the reader will constantly discover in Carl Muller's work is that the landscape and mindscape he describes is certainly not the conventional or predictable. Together with powerful imagery, his mind flows along ratiocinative lines as well. We have the writer's soul-searchings, his self-quest on his saga journeys where he encounters the mystic and the esoteric, whether it be in the Khumba Mela or the Sufi dancers. Mundane, prosaic thoughts, belief and ideologies are shed by the wayside and we enter realms hitherto unexplored in the occult exorcism, Zen Buddhism, Tantric thoughts and beliefs, Sufism, Biblical interpretations, contemporary thought... "It's all a kind of test to expand my own mind," says Carl Muller. The scrutiny of ritual and propitiation is interlinked with philosophies, religions and in all the ramifications and circumlocutions of mind-soul-thought. One of Carl Muller's most striking poems is found in the narrative of the monk of Giritale, To the Brink and Beyond. A beautiful and haunting tale: "This death is so peaceful," he would whisper, "It is a passage to a place beyond description." When he awoke for the last time, he asked, "Tell me truly... is there anything I have left undone, that I need to do? Tell me for I must know..." Carl Muller's reading of traditional fairy tales gives us an individualistic and psychological interpretation of the darker side of everything from childhood's duality to the conflict between "bad" and "good", "love" and "hate" - the sexuality of "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Rapunzel." There is the deep structure to the surface structure, the reading between the lines, the emergent revelatory moment of truth about life, love, hate, revenge... the whole gamut of human emotion found within the human body and soul.... We, the readers, are involved in Carl Muller's search, a search that takes into the secret and often abysmal recesses of heart, mind and soul. ************* The art of clinical medicine It is the duty of teachers of medicine to impart to students their experience in the practice of the art and science of clinical medicine. This is particular by important in an age where clinical medicine is threatened with extinction. Computerised laboratory investigations and sophisticated procedures are being widely used to make a diagnosis without a careful clinical examination. It is much more satisfying to the clinician to make a diagnosis of a lung abscess or hypothyroidism on clinical history and examination and confirm this by appropriate investigatory procedures, rather than through the reverse. The Art of Clinical Medicine, by Dr. S.D.K. Consulting Physician, Teaching Hospital, Ragama, makes a determined effort to give the details of eliciting the history and physical signs and their interpretation, with illustrations and useful differential diagnoses. This book should prove to be a useful aid to students who are now studying medicine and to those who wish to re-learn the art and science of clinical medicine. He concludes by listing the complete investigatory procedures that need to be done in different clinical disorders. A medical student who has the ambition to pursue clinical medicine to its logical conclusion must remember word by word Dr. Perera's accurate instructions. Judged from the little knowledge I possess of the vagaries of body and mind, Dr. S.D.K. Perera's erudite exposition on clinical medicine merits commendation, as it is a valuable contribution to the relevant field both here in Sri Lanka and in the international sphere. The 321 pages book with 250 pictures and Cd-Rom colour demonstration is published by Saraswathie Publishers Divulapitiya. Prof. U.S. Jayawickrama (MD FRCP) ************* Contributions for Channels The English Writers Co-operative of Sri Lanka will be publishing Volume 12 Number 2 of the CHANNELS magazine, towards the first part of 2005. The EWC is now collecting material for this issue, and invites entries for short stories, poems, plays and translations. The closing date for entries is March 15. Rules: All work submitted should be original and previously unpublished. Short Stories: Maximum 2,500 words of creative writing. Poems: Maximum 40 lines of creative writing. Plays: Maximum 3,000 words of creative writing. Translations: (only from Sinhala or Tamil) Maximum 3,000 words. Written permission must be obtained from the original Author (if he/she is alive) or from the Trustees of the Estate of the original Author (if he/she is deceased). Copy of authorisation should be submitted with translation. Format: Manuscripts to be neatly typed on one side only, on A4 paper, double spaced with a margin of one inch all round. Pages should be clearly numbered, with the name, address, telephone and e-mail details of the author at the beginning and end of each story, play and translation,and on each page of poetry. Please edit your own work so that the material submitted is the final product of the author. Pages should be stapled together. Fee: An entrance fee of Rs. 50 per short story, play, or translation and Rs. 30 per poem should be sent with each submission. Please pay either by Cash or Cheque made out to The English Writers Co-operative of Sri Lanka. Money Orders and Postal Orders will NOT be accepted. The entrance fee is non-refundable. Manuscripts will not be returned, so please ensure that you have a copy for yourself. Entries should be addressed to: The English Writers Co-operative of Sri Lanka, c/o Ms Anne Ranasinghe, 82 Rosmead Place, Colombo 7. Envelopes should be marked CHANNELS on the upper left hand corner of the envelope. Entries should reach the above mentioned address by 15 March 2005. Late entries will not be accepted. The Editorial Board's decision will be final in the selection of suitable material for publication. ************* Ink On My Fingers : Sometimes acid, sometimes hilarious tales from the past In the sixties there were no partitions and cubicles in the Editorial floor at Lake House. There was one large hall with two rooms on either end, one occupied by the Editor Observer and the other by the Editor Silumina, the two Sunday papers. The staff of these two papers had their desks in this large hall, each staff at their own editors' end. In the other wing was another hall occupied by the staff of the two morning dailies. Daily News and Dinamina. There was give and take of news between the Observer and Silumina. We who worked on the Silumina could see and watch what was happening in the Observer and vice versa. There was Yogarani Thevathasan regaling her colleagues with some story or a bit of tittle tattle, with a glint in her eyes. She had a wide network of friends, relations and acquaints she gossiped with. She loved gossiping, as she herself admitted, in the little speech she made at the launching of her book Ink On My Fingers. Published by Godage International and Publishers (Pvt) Limited. She loved gossiping but it was NOT malicious gossip. In her 14 years on the Observer and on the Daily News foreign News Desk, she wrote on what she saw and heard. Hers was not straightforward reporting. Her articles signed 'Cleo' were, to quote the blurb on the back cover, 'hilarious skits on the foibles and frivolities of women' in the society she moved in. Yogaranee sees the funny side in most situations and can laugh at herself. Cleo's comments on the passing scene which she had kept safely along with Collette's and Mark Gerreyn's cartoons form the second part of Ink On My Fingers. The first as summed up in the blurb is 'A new life, and a new beginning in a new world.' When in 1973 she left her home in Colombo with two school going children to join her doctor husband in Wales, where he was already employed, she and the children were cold, miserable and home-sick. But she was determined to make a success of life. 'One step at a time we met the challenges of living in the west' and succeeded. Thirty years later she has brought out her memoirs of those early days in Wales, not as memoirs usually are, but as sketches written in her inimitable style. Yogarani writes as naturally as she speaks. There is no straining after the right word or phrase for effect. Her similes, metaphors and asides are typical Yogarani, and her descriptions graphic and amusing. One can see her as a 'merchandiser in a hypermarket during the Christmas rush 'climbing ladders and pulling jumpers all over myself,' and arranging them according to size and colour.' That was how she earned her first pay packet in Wales. After a short spell as a filing clerk in the Civil Service she was back in her chosen profession' working for the Abederdare Leader, a weekly newspaper published by Celtic Press, a subsidiary of Thoman Regional newspapers. From then on she found herself 'leading a double life, the journalist from 9 am to 5 pm enjoying every moment of the fun at work and 'Doctor Victor's Wife' the rest of the time, very sensible and proper." The third part of her book is People's Countries and Travellers Tales. Yogarani has travelled far and wide, to China, USA, Burma (Now Myanmar), Tunisia and Kenya's Game Reserve and many more places, and her travellers' tales are spiced with her comments sometimes acid, often hilarious, about her fellow travellers. But it is good fun reading them. Journalists don't write like this now. Their articles are loaded with facts and figures and very serious. Laughter has been blown away by the winds of change. Yogarani's articles published in the Observer and Daily News were not all skits. It must have given her immense satisfaction when she learnt that the Portuguese Embassy sent a donation to Austin Jansz, the bleary eyed cobbler, after her article Last of the Portuguese was published. Ink On My Fingers is a good companion for a weekend holiday, or to unwind oneself after a strenuous day in office. While it brings back nostalgic memories to us of Yogarani's generation, the young reader can see life as it was lived then in Sri Lanka. A post-script-the picture of Cargills' building on the cover intrigues me. Sumana Saparamadu |
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