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| Sunday, 27 February 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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In praise of a quiet aesthete Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake
When Benedict Dodampegama died on February 19 last year I was in Canada and even on my return in early March 1 could not compose a memorial for him. That was a serious dereliction of duty for not only was Benedict Dodampegama one of Sri Lanka's best journalists but he was also one of the early Sinhala film critics and what is more one of the most decent men one could hope to meet in the jungle of contemporary journalism. Lake House True Ben, as he was popularly called, had left that jungle for the relatively calm haven of the United States Information Service before that under growth could become really nasty and brutish. Ben came to Lake House from the Peradeniya University in the late 1950's at a time when a graduate was a rare bird in the newspaper thickets. Neither of his first Editors (Denzil Peiris or Meemana Prematilleke) for example had passed through a university. They were men who had won their spurs in the rough and tumble of the newspaper world. Although coming from the more genteel world of academia Ben did not shirk or flinch from the rough and ready a side of the newspaper trade. While most of the graduates did not last the pace or retired into writing editorials or columns Ben chose to be an investigative feature writer, one of the first of that breed. middle path As a newspaper writer on the 'Silumina' (which apart from his family was the love of his life) Ben struck out on a middle path between hum-drum daily reporting or the sensational scoop and the more genteel kind of feature writing done often from a comfortable office seat. One of his best remembered pieces is the in-depth study he did when the disputed island of Kachchativu became national news in the mid-1960's on account of both Sri Lanka and India laying a claim to it. It is worth recalling that in the 1950-70 period there was a series intellectual and cultural aspect to journalism which has become drastically eroded in later years. There were two sides to it. The first was that there was a kind of newspaper writing which was serious without becoming didactic or bookish. Journalists such as Regi Siriwardena, Fred de Silva, S. Pathiravithana, A. J. Gunawardena, Mervyn de Silva, Edwin Ariyadasa and Nihal Ratnaike to name only a few were able to write intelligently on topics ranging from foreign affairs to the arts in a serious way without being guilty of producing dull treats. Academic world The other side was that there were journalists who were constantly passing into the academic world after serving fruitful periods in newspapers. A. J. Gunawardena became a Professor of English while R. Dias Gunaratne who worked on Lake House Sinhala newspapers was at his retirement Professor and head of the department of Philosophy at Peradeniya University. Jayantha Dhanapala whose first employment was as a feature writer on the Daily News went on to become a highly successful diplomat and international civil servant. Ben was a good exemplar of this kind of journalism. As a feature writer on a Sunday newspaper he was concerned with offering good weekend reading without deteriorating into the fiction and sensationalism which characterises this kind of journalism today. It is said that he took an innocent delight on returning to Colombo from a remote assignment in reading the posters already put out advertising that weekend's feature story which he would pressed to write on his return home so that it would be ready for the press the next morning. That was the time when at Lake House the Volkswagen was the vehicle for any occasion and there were celebrated drivers such as Ariyaratne and Jayatissa (two brothers) who could be banked on to bring the traveller home safely although they did resort to some daredevil antics behind the wheel. Revival It was this same approach which propelled Ben in his film criticisms. In the 1960's and 1970's there was a revival of interest in serious cinema following the emergence of some serious Sinhala films is the wake of the production of Lester James Peries' Rekhawa. One great asset of the time was that this new set of discerning film-goers were drawn from an urban bi-lingual stratum which was fully exposed to the best intellectual and cultural currents emanating from the west. For them film-going was almost akin to a religious rite. One of them, Cyril B. Perera, perhaps the best film critic of his generation, has recalled how Neil I. Perera, one of the most dynamic organisers of the Film Society movement, would somehow contrive of a week-end to find the funds for both of them to watch a film replete with two bottles of beer and a packet of cadju nuts. Privileged They were able to read English books or watch western films without either a sense of cultural guilt or inferiority although they had come from the village or belonged to less privileged classes of Colombo society. These societies were active in a crop of Sinhala magazines and weekly publications such as 'Dina Dina' and in the Film Society Movement which was exposing a new generation to the more avant guard French and Italian films and the works of Satyajit Ray. Ben's contribution to the Sinhala cinema was twofold, as a script writer and a critic. Along with Lester James Peries and K. A. W. Perera Ben wrote the script for Sandesaya, Peries' hugely popular second film. He is also popularly credited with having inspired the idea of Nidhanaya which is perhaps Peries' best film. Later he had also been responsible for the stories of the films 'Kulageya' and 'Mandakini' and the yet to be shown 'Manmulavel'. As a writer on the cinema his book 'Chitrapata Asvadaya' written in 1957 was one of the earliest books is Sinhala on the subject. It is saddening to recall that almost the whole of that generation of film critics and writers on the cinema by represented by Ben and others is now extinct. Some of them wrote only in English and some of them only in Sinhala while yet others wrote in both languages. Some of them were more comfortable in a western cultural million while others were basically Sinhala-oriented. But whatever sets they may have belonged to they were immersed in the best currants of western culture and were able convoy a bread outlook through their writings without the surrendering to the kind of cheap nationalism which stalks the land today. The result of the extinction of this elder generation (compounded by the death of some of the year writers such as Gamini Wijetunga who belonged to a succeeding generation) is the drastic intellectual and cultural barrenness which we see all around us. For the point is that Sri Lanka has never had a tradition of robust magazines or periodicals dealing with intellectual, cultural and aesthetic issues. Cultural debate There have been publications in Sinhala such as Sanskruthi, Mavatha, Roopana and Sameepa Rupa, but their lifespans have never been very long. The same has been true of English publications such as Community and Sankha and New Ceylon Writing. The result has been that serious journalists such as Benedict Dodampegama have had to encourage the intellectual and cultural debate through the pages of popular daily and weekly newspapers where this naturally is not the first priority or even a significant imperative of such publications. But with the extinction of that bilingual generation there has been a palpable vacuum in serious journalism concerning arts and culture. The new generation is either handicapped by their paucity of knowledge of English or has succumbed too easily to the temptations of popular culture. Artistic judgement It is also saddening that nothing was done to make use of the services of persons such as Ben to initiate the new generation into a desirable aesthetic culture of kind which would foster a sense of discrimination in artistic judgement. In a situation where the country is lacking in any central institute of training in journalism and creative writing, courses in creative cinema or the appreciation of cinema the services of an older generation which is now steadily on the eclipse have not been tapped. After the death of Regi Siriwardena there was such lamentation that his critical writings had not been translated into Sinhala for the benefit of the exclusively Sinhala readership. Although there is much boastful talk of new directions in culture those will remain as empty pieties unless there is a new dialogue among the generations to which the few remaining members of the older, now dwindling bilingual generation, are still capable of making a contribution. Voracious reader As for Ben he led the last years of his life in the bosom of his family contributing the occasional article to the Sunday newspapers. He was as always a voracious reader and led an active life of the mind. Tall, upright and well-dressed the bespectacled Benedict Dodampegama had always the look of impossible intellectual integrity. By religious conviction he was a Catholic, by choice a Sinhala writer and by the circumstances of history a bilingual man of letters. He saw nothing inherently contradictory in any of these tendencies which made him a man for all seasons and an embodiment of his cultural times. |
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