The Sri Lankan reality:

Diversity is strength

An informative, exhaustive and rewarding journey through time:

Reviewed by Dr. A. D. Priyanka BADDEVITHANA

If promoted wisely, this incomparable book will be a great boon to Sri Lanka’s diplomatic and international missions as it renders the reader an understanding of the world’s most vibrant civilization, unique for its uninterrupted recorded history spanning over two thousand five hundred years.

The Department of Education should make this book compulsory reading in schools and universities as it gives a contemporary perspective to understanding the evolution of Sri Lankan culture, and its unique blend that holds a universal appeal.

The reader embarks on an adventure through the experiences of a young American academic by the name Andrew George, a professor living in Hampshire in the mid nineteen sixties.

His application for a Fulbright research grant to study cultural assimilation in a developing country, which had deep seated internecine conflicts, lands him in Sri Lanka, or the island in the Indian Ocean known to the west at the time as Ceylon.

The brilliance of Professor Ananda Guruge in achieving the impossible is apparent from the way he makes the reader accept the Sri Lankan genealogy of the protagonist Andrew George who confesses his shame in the opening pages of the book as to his lack of knowledge on Ceylon being a University Professor.

The book is unique in the way it approaches many subjects that are sensitive to the human psyche with astounding objectivity only Professor Guruge could profess. With the unusual rise to professional heights so early in life, Professor Guruge’s long years of active involvement and exposure nationally and internationally manifest as colourful experiences he shares with the reader through the protagonist Andrew George.

The sheer brilliance of the author shines through as he takes the reader on the most informative, exhaustive and rewarding journey through time with Andrew George to all corners of our resplendent land.

The use of many doyens of Sri Lankan history such as Professor G. P. Malalasekera as characters, and including himself in the real-life role of highly accomplished young civil servant Dr. Ananda Guruge of the times, the author renders authenticity and genuine real-life character to the protagonist.

The book has a mesmerizing quality with elements of great suspense and surprise page after page to sustain the reader’s interest and enthusiasm to get to the end without losing a single detail.

Andrew George ends up as any Sri Lankan of the modern times, a cultural byproduct of historically deep-rooted internecine conflicts, which he wished to study in the first place.

Therefore, the author turns the objective academic interest in the beginning of the book to subjective reality by the end of it. It is the most successful book in a league of its own running into nearly seven hundred pages of comprehensive history, geography, culture and drama spanning three continents of America, Europe and Asia.

Professor Guruge has produced this masterpiece with such ingenuity that surpasses the art of the possible by painting a believable and credible picture with multi-colours of facts and fiction to illumine and entertain the reader’s intellect.

Professor Ananda Guruge’s love for Sri Lanka has inspired this extraordinary literary work and he has performed his duty to the utmost as a model citizen. It remains our responsibility to make maximum use of this masterpiece to develop an understanding in our emerging generation for the unique strength of cultural diversity we possess.

The only way to do this is to integrate this literary work to our system of education. While benefiting from personal tutelage of Professor Ediriweera Sarathchandra as a mature student in the early nineties in the roles of ‘Prince Paduma’ of ‘Loma Hansa’ and student ‘Dappula’ of ‘Pemato Jayati Soko’ I came to realize the value of compulsory literary work in ones early education.

Such groundbreaking work would not have been preserved and sustained without compulsion in the system of education. Any reader of “Serendipity of Andrew George” would agree with me that it is refreshingly original and groundbreaking work.

Therefore, I reiterate the importance of making it compulsory reading for our young generation. One has to consider in the same breath, the present unrest among university students and the dearth of inspiring literature that develop vision and hope in the young generation.

Faced with global challenges, we need to rediscover the innate strength that holds out hope for a future as rich and illustrious as the proud and colourful history of our great nation. Government patronage is important since “Serendipity of Andrew George” opens our eyes to the Sri Lankan reality that “diversity is strength.” Hence, it would indeed be good governance for the relevant authorities to promote this book locally as well as internationally.

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Profile

Professor Ananda W. P. Guruge is Dean of Academic Affairs, Director of the International Academy of Buddhism, and Editor of Hsi Lai Journal of Humanistic Buddhism of the University of the West, formerly Hsi Lai University Los Angeles, County, California.

He is also: Adjunct Professor of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Peace Studies at California State University, Fullerton, Vice-President and Liaison Officer to the United Nations (UN) and UNESCO for the World Fellowship of Buddhists, Chairman of the World Buddhist University Council, and Patron of the European Buddhist Union.

He was the former Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary of Sri Lanka to UNESCO, France and USA (with non-resident accreditation to Spain, Algeria and Mexico) (1985-1994).

He was also the former Senior Special Adviser to the Director General of UNESCO (1995-2000).

He is author of 50 books in English and Sinhala and 175 research papers.

The Gratiaen awards night:

Lots of poetry and women, but...

By Typewriter on Fire

In the end, poetry and women should have won the day. Poetry swept the shortlist off its feet, and women dominated the finalists and in the panel of judges.

But unfortunately, both poetry and women seemed to be less than favoured when it came to getting a bit of the limelight, because most of the awards night was spent on the bluster and the squabbling of the male species.

The chairman of the panel of judges was a culprit: he led the audience, impatient with anticipation for the final announcement, on a long-winded journey of the judging process, laying bare every bit of boring unpleasantness on the way.

We were forced to hear all about the arguments, the dithering and the jostling of egos, which, to be fair, is a natural part of any judging process, but at awards night, should have been consigned to history and to personal experience, not inflicted on an audience that was dying to know who the winner was.

Almost every year we hear how bad most Sri Lankan writing is, how badly presented the submissions are, and how difficult it is to find five entries to shortlist. This may well be true, and was also pointed out at the shortlist announcement a few weeks ago. But then it was done quite kindly and helpfully, with suggestions for improvement in merciful bullet-point-like brevity.

But at the final award ceremony, it should not be the judges’ business to put down the writers. This not just sounds tedious but mean-spirited, because it takes away with one hand the honour they are supposed to grant with the other. If the convention is to shortlist five, the general public does not need to hear that the judges only wanted to shortlist four.

Following criteria like that is a part of the discipline of evaluating anything, whether they are essays of ten-year-old language students or submissions for the Gratiaen. Granted, the inability to agree on anything is part of the process. But that is the judges’ duty to undergo it, a duty that comes with the prestige of being a Gratiaen judge.

Whingeing about the job of judging, and explaining every dithering step in the process of judging, even if it’s dressed up in elegant wit and erudite references, also made the judging sound incompetent.

This was the unfortunate impression that was created when the audience had to listen to all the dirty little secrets of the judges: how each one wanted to select a different one, and then could not pick a winner, so thought three should win, and then finally, probably after a rap on the knuckles by some sensible person, seemed to grudgingly concede: oh well, okay then, let’s give it to such-and-such because it has mass appeal. If the process of judging was so arduous, and this was how the final decision was reached, perhaps resignation from the panel should have been considered, instead of such a public and strenuous attempt to justify one’s incompetence.

And you’re left with another nasty little thought, because, this is, after all, too much information for the audience. If, at the end of the day, for this eminently qualified panel of judges, the “accessibility” of a text was the winning factor, wouldn’t someone with limited language skills, education and awareness have been a better judge?

I think our writers - the Gratiaen winner and the shortlistees - deserve a better endorsement than that.

The Gratiaen Prize 2007 was awarded last Saturday, April 26th to Vivimarie VanderPoorten for her collection of poetry “Nothing Prepares You”. The other four shortlistees were Ramya Jirasinghe for”A Map and a Compass Moon”, Chamali Kariyawasam for “Sylphlike Ether”, Malinda Seneviratne for “Threads” and Sivamohan Sumathy for “Like Myth and Mother”, all collections of poetry. The panel of judges comprised SinhaRaja Thammita Delgoda as the chairman, Maithree Wickramasinghe and Rama Mani.

Demythologizing King Kassapa

By Aditha Dissanayake

[email protected]
 

Candle lit book launches fortunately or unfortunately do not have the same romantic aura as candle lit dinners. Especially when it takes place in the room no bigger than a private bus reserved for book launches at the National library.

This may sound unbelievable but the premier library in the country does not have a generator to keep the bulbs and the air conditioner going when there is a failure in the electricity supply provided by the general grid.

If Prof. K. N. O. Darmadasa and Prof. Siri Gunasinghe had spoken for another ten or fifteen minutes the esoteric gathering at the auditorium of the National Library on April 28, during the six-thirty to seven power cut, would surely have reached a slow death from asphyxiation.

Prof. Darmadasa to his credit continued with his speech as if nothing had happened when the room was suddenly plunged into heavy darkness save for the glow of the oil lamp in one corner of the room during the later half of the program. As the microphone was dead his speech was lost on all those who were at the back of the room, me included.

Perhaps the darkness provided the appropriate surrounding for the topic under discussion. The mystery of Sigiriya. For, as Professor Gunasinghe writes in the opening chapter, of his latest venture Sigiriya: Kassapa’s Homage to Beauty; in spite of receiving much “attention from both scholars and laymen alike” Sigiriya “remains yet to be understood”.

And, according to Prof. Gunasinghe, “to understand Sigiriya one must understand Kassapa. To understand Kassapa one must understand Sigiriya. For Sigiriya is the reflection of Kassapa’s passions...(Page 11) He believes if “one were able to recognize Kassapa for what he was, there would be no need then to go beyond the outer ramparts of Sigiriya to understand it.”

Thanks to Prof. Gunasinghe’s attempt at demythologizing Kassapa I can now picture this great King who the Chronicler of the Mahavansa refused to acknowledge as “great” as an avatar of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Kassapa was anti Establishment. He turned his back on the system. He refused to toe the line. Therein lies his greatness.

Just as intriguing as the thoughts on Sigiriya, were the memories rekindled by Dr. Sarath Amunugama in his speech at the beginning of the program. Saying he had not come to make a speech, but to pick up a book which he was certain would provide enjoyable reading he said Prof. Siri Gunasinghe himself had always been a friend as steady as a rock.

Even though he had to attend a meeting with the President of Iran an hour or two later, Dr. Amunugama was happy to share some of his memories of the good old days at Peradeniya when Prof. Gunasinghe was a lecturer living in an apartment on Maha Kanda. Many were the trips they had made together, which needless to say included Sigiriya, in his volkswagen.

Dr. Amunugama concluded his speech by saying he expected to embark on a wonderful intellectual journey with this new book of Prof. Gunasignhe.

As the real story of Kassapa begins to unravel within the pages of this book, I could not help but wonder how the unknown chronicler of the Mahavansa would feel if he had been at the auditorium of the National Library last Monday. I could easily guess though, what Kassapa would have done had he been there. He would probably have given an order that a generator be installed at the National Library the very next day.