Face to Face:

Life and times of Ouida Keuneman

by Ranga Chandrarathne

Ouida and Vivian affixed slogans to their sarees and at the police station, they were asked to remove them. They refused to obey the request and they were grilled for some time at the police station. A police officer pushed Vivian down and put his boot on her while a woman police constable pushed Ouida against the wall and pulled at her saree.

Ouida Keuneman recalled that her husband had been worried about the burning of the Jaffna library and had expressed his desire to donate his entire collection of books to the library, perhaps, to compensate in a little way for the great loss of knowledge. Most of the books of Pieter Keuneman's private collection consisted of political literature and a lot of books by Indian authors on Indian politics and also English Literature. Later, Ouida flew to Jaffna and personally handed the collection over to the rebuilt library.

The top floor gallery not only serves to hang her paintings but also serves as a place for her Yoga classes which she conducts every morning and evening on week days. It is no wonder that her remarkable agility and good health is the by-product of her practising and teaching of Yoga.

Her day starts with Yoga classes in the morning from 9.30 a.m. to 11.00 a.m. and in the evening she conducts classes from 6.00 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. Most of the students who attend her classes are foreigners who have come to Sri Lanka for some research and those who are working in International schools and International NGOs.

For a class, she might have four or five students and she charges a modest fee from her students. She had learnt Yoga from Indian Swami Geethanandan who conducted a class in Colombo. It was curiosity that first prompted Ouida to attend Yoga class.

In retrospect, Ouida said that it had helped her immensely to keep in good health and Yoga is something that is good for every person, as people lead a hectic lifestyle today. Yoga is an antidote especially for office workers and those who work on computers, with aches and pains in the back and neck.

Before the Tsunami, she used to conduct Yoga classes in tourist hotels, especially, in the South. When the tsunami hit she was at Barberryn Reef hotel in Beruwala and she managed to climb on to the roof of a floating bus. After this horrible experience, she stopped conducting Yoga classes at hotels. She is of the view that Yoga and meditation could be taught in schools, as it is very helpful to children.

Ouida spent her childhood with her parents in Ratmalana.Her father was a planter and her mother a lawyer. Dr. C. D. L. Fernando and Prof. C. Q. C. who was a professor of Chemistry at the University of Arizona in U.S.A. were two of her brothers. Ouida's younger brother is Mahinda Fernando, a famous photographer and she maintains close contact with her sister.

Ouida fondly talked of her two daughters, Khema, a dancer and her younger daughter, a painter married to a Cuban and domiciled in Cuba. Her only son is in New Jersey in USA and works for AD& T Bell Company.

Though she had not been actively involved in politics, she used to go to political rallies along with her husband and was an active member of the women's wing of the Communist party.

Her political views are socialist in character and had been so even from her school days. Her husband Pieter Keuneman attended Royal College Colombo and then read his academic programme at Cambridge University. Returning from Cambridge, he worked, for a short period, as a journalist.

Then, he started the Communist Party paper, " Forward" in which he became the Editor-in-Chief. Ouida's involvement in politics was more or less confined to attending public rallies and working in "Kantha Peramuna.

She also participated in demonstrations. During a demonstration, Ouida Keuneman Vivien Gunawardena and Doreen Wickremasinghe along with a group of demonstrators were taken to the police station where they were manhandled. Ouida and Vivian affixed slogans to their sarees and at the police station, they were asked to remove them.

They refused to obey the request and they were grilled for some time at the police station. A police officer pushed Vivian down and put his boot on her while a woman police constable pushed Ouida against the wall and pulled at her saree. Later that police officer tried hard to persuade Vivien Gunawardena to withdraw the case that was filed against them.

The demonstration was held in front of the American embassy. The injured parties sued the police and won the case. Soon after the pronouncement of the judgment, three judges' houses were hooted and stoned by goons allegedly sponsored by the J. R. Jayewardene Government.

Colombo was a multi-party constituency and there were three MPs. Pieter Keuneman became one of them and later the communists lost their popularity among the people due to a vicious propaganda campaign.

The capitalists charged that the communists would burn the temples if they come to power. To support their campaign they misquoted Marxist sayings like "Religion is the opium of the masses" and that the communists had no moral values. The poor voters in Colombo believed this misinformation campaign carried out by the capitalists.

Ouida believes that the decision by the Marxists to join the SLFP in a coalition was a mistake as the party had to sacrifice some of its principles. A charming lady in her 70's ushered me into the house and led me to the top floor through the stairs adorned by her paintings.

One of the paintings which she described as one that was drawn by her daughter hung on the wall facing the bare top floor. It was a painting in bright colours of a shored fishing canoe with a woman. The rest of the pictures that hung on walls in the top floor were hers. She is Ouida Keuneman, art-loving widow of longtime communist party leader Pieter Keuneman.

Since the death of her husband, Ouida's world is occupied by her artistic pursuits. Years of practising and teaching Yoga has made Ouida healthy and an active woman, though she is in her mid seventies. One could not guess her age by her appearance.