Homage to an extraordinary son to a yet more extraordinary father - Pitupadam Namaami

by Buddhika Kurukularatna

Reviewed by Prof. K. N. O. Dharmadasa

If one were to do an opinion survey about the most popular feature article in the Sunday Sinhala newspapers today I am certain that Buddhika Kurukularatna's Ambalangodayage Katha will be among the first three. Not only does he have an extremely rich repertoire of stories to narrate but also he is in possession of a unique style of delivery which keeps the reader spell bound till the end.

A man who has been a relative, friend, golaya or colleague of some of the most famous people of the 20th century Sri Lanka, Buddhika has been narrating for a very long period an amazing number of stories where these public figures appear and reappear.

What is most extraordinary is this man's memory: as a reader of Buddhika's writings will note, he remembers even minute details of things which are important to the narration. Yet, more extraordinary is the fact that even if they are unimportant for the story he has the knack of making such details etched in his memory important enough for the reader to feel that they are important.

Buddhika has been writing stories for a long time concerning the political life of Sri Lanka during the last 50 years or so. His vivid portraits of some well-known men and women, spiced with little known facts about them, have been a pleasure to read.

He has been a politician and an Attorney-at-Law, and, as he went along with his narrations, I was wondering whether he had anything more to talk about - whether his store-house of memories was getting empty. But lo and behold!

The man now comes out with a completely new set of stories. He has opened a new pettagama of memorabilia and the chief character is a yet more remarkable man, his father, the senior Kurukularatna, namely, Daluwatte Hewa Henry de Silva Kurukularatna.

Political career

The title Pitupadam Namaami is from the last line of the Pali stanza Buddhist children recite when worshipping their father. It means "I worship the feet of my father" and the earlier three lines describe the greatness of the father: "He (is the one) who embraced me, kissed me and nourished me with food and drink and established me firmly in the society of kings."

The lastly listed contribution of the parent to his offspring obviously has to be taken metaphorically. In the case of Buddhika who became a UNP stalwart, the first Secretary of the party's student organisation, an MP, and above all one of the most popular figures among the "workers" who toiled day and night for the party, being recognised by leaders such as Dudley Senanayake, J. R. Jayewardene and R. Premadasa, he was initiated into politics by his father, who used his influence with the local leaders in Ambalangoda to get a five minute speech for the boy at a public meeting attended by Dudley, J.R. and other party giants.

Buddhika, who was just 13 years at the time, got so enamoured of politics subsequently that there was no looking back. The father who wanted to make him a doctor, tried desperately to wean him away from politics but with absolutely no success. And Buddhika ended up being an MP of the Galle District in 1989.

Although he was an out and out UNPer blood relationships, family bonds and friendships, which were as important, made him one of the most popular figures of the area, and I believe, there were no regrets as far as he was concerned.

Unfortunately however, the father did not live to see all of this happening and most probably he would have been disappointed. So it was the father who initiated Buddhika into politics although regretting that step later.

But, as we learn from another story, Buddhika, who has been a good orator from his young days, had caught the eye of Dudley Senanayake two years earlier, when he was for a short time a student in Bandarawela St. Thomas Primary.

There, at the annual prize giving ceremony, being given a speech as the winner of the Sinhala oratorical contest, there was such a mischievous display of eloquence from this 11 year old boy that the audience which included the Chief Guest Dudley Senanayake was roaring with laughter.

The Chief Guest, whose father (D. S. Senanayake) and he were both old boys of the school, said in his speech that when he listened to the boy he realised that the capacity of the school to produce Prime Ministers will not be confined to the Senanayakes!

The father (Kurukularatne Snr.) himself had been a politician of sorts. He won a ward in the Ambalangoda UC twice, won it handsomely because of the powerful family support which backed him. That support came mostly from his cousin's (Buddhika's Dostara Mama's), family.

In this family saga Buddhika comes out with many interesting episodes where many of his remarkable relations appear in their intimate and unassuming guise. Dostara Mama, for example, was an England educated physician who knew S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike from his England days.

He comes to his dispensary, situated at the back of a Sillara Kade (which also was his own) in full suit, and once he had finished with the patients, would sit at the cashier's cage in the Kade because he enjoyed doing it. But his elder sister, who was living in Colombo did not like this at all.

On one of her visits home seeing the Dostara Mahattaya seated at the Sillara Kade she became so enraged, that she stormed the Kade and threw out all the groceries to the road protesting "Did we send you to England to sit in a Kade?" Dostara Mama (Dr. K. T. Samathapala de Silva), a kind and unassuming soul, just kept quiet.

The people loved him so much that as local politician he was elected the Chairman of the UC, and was so honest that he fell into trouble "trying to save two cents of public money." The respect he earned from the people can be gauged from the fact that when he died Ambalangoda witnessed the largest attended funeral of the town. That is just one character from Buddhika's family saga where the main protagonists are the father and the son.

Other colourful and unforgettable characters (mostly relations) appear as demanded by the encounters between the father and the son.

Reminding of Naipaul

Buddhika's character portrayals and his style of narration reminds me strongly of V. S. Naipaul, particularly his Tridadian stories like Miguel Street and Suffrage of Elvira. I wonder whether there is any other contemporary Sri Lanka writer who brings out in such vivid terms the lighter and lovable side of a small community of people.

His Ambalangoda is the village community about fifty or sixty years ago which was a close knit community.

The people Buddhika describes are almost all relations and close friends. They help each other in their pleasures as well as sorrows, the children grow up together passing from one house to the other. For parents of one child the other children are also like theirs and that is how Buddhika finds shelter in several households when he runs away from home unable to bear the beatings of his father. "I do not know," he declares at one stage," any other son who has received so much beatings from his father."

I will mention just one more episode from Buddhika's narration which resembles strongly the kind of stuff you come across in Naipaul's Trinidadian landscape. Immediately opposite Buddhika's house on the other side of the road was Richard Siiya's house and garden. In that garden was situated a shrine to a local deity called Kiirti Aachchi (Grandmother Kiirti).

She was a woman of the Kalu Marakkala and Saunda Marakkala clan of the nearby Manimmulla village who had been deified after her death and her Kovila, a small building with a triangular roof was encircled with a wall and there was an altar inside to light lamps in her honour.

There was a rumour that Kiirti Aachchi was reborn as a cobra and visited the Kovila sometimes. Although she was a patron deity of her particular clan, other people of the village sought her protection in times of infectious diseases called Ammavarunge Leda such as chicken pox and mumps.

Interestingly Buddhika's father bought the land where the Kovila was and built a two storied house in it which was rented out to the magistrates of the Balapitiya courts. The Kovila was allowed to remain and some litigants, who wanted to impress the magistrates as to how religious they were, used to visit the Kovila decked in white clothes and carrying flowers, incence sticks and other ritual paraphernalia!

Child abuse

Let me come back again to the father and son relationship. As people make such a big commotion nowadays about giving corporal punishment to children, I wonder if Buddhika's father was alive today what his reaction would have been to the term "child abuse" which we have coined to refer to this practice.

Kurukularatne Snr. would beat up his one and only son indiscriminately, whenever it suited him and in any location. Once Buddhika was given a heavy meal including an ice cream dessert and brought out of the house, tied to a tree in the compound, and beaten up with a stick until he was bleeding.

Father beat Buddhika on the road, in school, in front of trachers and even in public places: on one occasion it was in Colombo at the Gunasena bookshop, in the presence of Martin Wickramasinghe, a family friend. The father's philosophy, as usual with many men of that generation, was Gahala hadaaganna (discipline by beating).

No doubt there was much to be disciplined in the son (as we realize from the many pranks he has been playing) but the man who was trying to discipline the son was in dire need of rehabilitation himself! Because, if we are to believe the son, the father was an inveterate alcoholic.

"I do not know" says Buddhika "any other child who has undergone beatings form his father as much as I have." And he continues to state "when he wants to show his affection, he keeps me on his lap and kisses my face. He assaults me only when he is drunk. But, because he was almost always drunk, I got beaten up almost always." (p. 148).

The funniest aspect of the story is the religious piety of Kurukularatne Snr. "However much he drank" reports the son, "my father was extremely pious. He would take a drink from the bottle of Black Arrack which was kept in the ornate almira in an inner room and goes straight to the shrine room. Worshipping the Buddha statue with hands clasped on top of the head my father ever and anon renews the fifth precept." The fifth precept is "refraining from intoxicants."

With such imperfections however, Kurukularatne Snr. had some highly admirable qualities as well. For example, once as payment for a contact he was overpaid with a sum of Rs. 25000, which by today's standards would be something like two and half million.

The moment he realized that there had been a mistake he rode back to Hambantota in his car and returned the money and Buddhika says that according to what he learnt later the shroff by whose fault the overpayment had been made, went on his knees and worshipped Kurukularatne Snr. for saving him from trouble.

With this brief survey of Pitupadam Namami I believe the readers will get an idea of what kind of work Buddhika has brought out. I have touched only on some aspects of the family saga. Other aspects of the story like his relationship with his mother and with his teachers are also extremely interesting and moving. I hope Buddhika will not stop here and will continue to entertain us with his narrations told in an inimitable style.