English middle class fiction and poetry in present day Sri Lanka - The Wadiya Writers Circle

By Wilfred Jayasuriya

Presentation at the International Conference of Commonwealth Literary Associations at Vancouver, Canada, on the theme “Literature For Our Times.” August 18th, 2007

Abstract:

English literature in Ceylon developed under colonial rule and reached its brightest efflorescence in the immediate aftermath. However with nationalist cultural policies its growth was suppressed and national language culture flowered. In the 1980s economic and political changes, opening Sri Lanka up to the world, also fostered an English revival.

These events have been documented by me in Sri Lanka’s Modern English Literature-a Case Study in Literary Theory (Navrang, New Delhi 1994). In the 1990s and post 2000 years novels, poetry, scholarly studies in the social sciences and drama, newspapers and magazines, have dealt with Sri Lankan themes in English in larger numbers.

An English speaking middle class has raised its head. It expresses itself through informal groups such as old boys/girls, sing for joy, learned societies, travel, religious and professional groups etc.

Since more than half a decade has passed since independence the English speaking middle class has revived connections with English language creativity, American as well as non-American, and makes bold to express itself in traditional forms on themes which are insistently national and local.

It is the English language that gives them an aspect of universality but the metaphors would involve Pop Eye eating spinach with a vegetable woman selling green leaves in the village fair.

In the context of the rather heavy seriousness of the presentations made at this ACLALS international conference in Vancouver a somewhat light hearted talk may be welcome.

Unlike professionals whose stock in trade is literature, studied in academic contexts, and the various theories about how to interpret literature, the writers whose work I wish to present are just amateurs whose livelihood does not depend on their literary or academic performance.

My difficulty however is to persuade a possible audience of professionals to take interest in what I have to say. Will I bore the serious by attempting casualness? On the other hand though I may try to be casual the writers whose work I present are dead serious about what they have written though their livelihood may not depend on it.

Let’s begin with a quote from “A Matter Of Taste,” a story about two gentlemen cockroaches, Kikko and Pippa, going out for dinner. The scene is Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.

“Where do you intend going Kiko?”

“To our favourite joint down the road, of course.” “Why not? - I’m delighted,” Pipa whispered. “Let’s go right away.” He wiped his feet on a dirty rag on the shelf, spread his wings and headed for the floor. They finally arrived at their destination, and entered through the rear of the Kush-Kush Hotel.

“The door hasn’t even been shut today”, they both whispered to each other - “how inviting!” They crawled into the kitchen as fast as their feet would carry them.

Everything seemed quiet inside and the moon shed it’s light all over. The unwashed plates and dishes were heaped unevenly in the sink. Below this stood the bin, which brimmed with left-overs - meat, chicken and fish, mixed with rice and vegetables - all smelt stale and sour. Pipa gave a broad grin and shook his head.

“Oh Kiko, dear Kiko, you couldn’t have chosen a better place for us to dine tonight. Isn’t this smell irresistible? It’s heavenly! just heavenly!” he said, as he shut his eyes and breathed in the aroma. “Aren’t we lucky that the waiters have gone off to sleep today without cleaning up?”

In this allegorical tale, Beatrice Balaratnarajah, the lady author, has managed to be light hearted and serious at the same time. The two cockroaches, enjoying their dinner in the garbage bin, narrowly escape internment when the garbage van takes away their favourite eating joint, the garbage bin.

Through the comedy of the cockroaches Beatrice Balaratnarajah is able to talk about the bitter sweet life of the Colombo dweller, whose existence appears often as precarious as that of cockroaches, dominated as Colombo is by the tension and incomprehensible causes and effects of the environment of war.

The writers’ group I speak of called the WADIYA Group meets regularly at a beach hut in Colombo and read their stories and poems to each other with the sound and colour of the sea beside them, and the occasional roar and thump of the passing coast line train to give a pause to the reading.

Every year they have put out a magazine titled WAVES , which presents selected writings of that year. This amorphous group has lasted almost a decade. To some extent it represents a spontaneous desire to protect and foster values associated in ex-colonies with the English language.

I leave the listener to make up his or her own mind about the literary value of these writings and proceed with my presentation of samples of their work. In her collection of short stories titled “Dancing With The Dogs” Anthea Senaratne shows the brighter side of life, by resolving conflicts in a light hearted fashion, laughing them off.

The comic or satiric depends largely on class attitudes. Each class likes to laugh at the other. One must be secure in one’s own station in life to find life funny.

The story “The Lesson” is about money and class, and about how to live. Gihan and Kolitha are two Sri Lankan computer people working in USA. Gihan enjoys spending and Kolitha is a miser. They are both successful at work and Kolitha has brought a wife over from Sri Lanka. Gihan tells the story.

“Managed to get a good catch from Sri Lanka machang.” He nudged my elbow and rolled his eyes, “good dowry and house and money here and there also.” He squeezed my arm making me squirm...Leesha was small made and had dark twinkling eyes and a smile that lit up her delicate elfin features.

How the hell did he get such a good catch?... Maybe he had changed his miserly ways. But in spite of his good fortune and professional ability Kolitha remained a miser. Gihan feels sorry for Kolitha’s wife, Leesha, and invites them to a sumptuous meal at a trendy restaurant, where Kolitha declines to eat everything except the cheapest items on the menu while Gihan and Leesha enjoy the best and the most expensive.

Finally when the bill comes Gihan’s Visa card turns out to be unacceptable and Kolitha is left to pay a huge bill while Gihan makes good his escape from the scene. [Kolitha] was examining the bill as the waiter leaned over his shoulder. Leesha placed her elbows on the table and cupped her face in her hands.

“So lovely to meet you Gihan,” she held my hand briefly, squeezing it ever so gently. “Do keep in touch-hope we see you again soon.” Her eyes had an unmistakable twinkle in them as she spoke. (Dancing With The Dogs 2002 p 111)

Like the gentlemen cockroaches, in Colombo, depicted in “A Matter Of Taste” these Sri Lankans, in a foreign land, settle matters somewhat amicably at a restaurant. Anthea Senaratne’s skill as a story teller lies in her simple descriptive style, depending on vivid, illustrative gestures by her characters and identifying speech to bring life to every scene.

The story is beautifully structured and ended. The WADIYA group sees her as representative of its achievement. A non-Sri Lankan audience may however miss quite a lot of the fun, since it depends on an understanding of non middle class Sri Lankan viewpoint represented by Kolitha. Sisila Cooray is a lady poet. She writes about private emotions. In her poem “Silent Sounds” she speaks of spiritual loneliness and the arrival of Christ into one’s being.

The knocking on her door
Was steady and insistent
She felt impelled
To unbar-to unlock...
Light streaked in
Through half inch of open door
And cut the thick darkness of her room.
“Let Me come in.” He said, “I am Light,
And you shall sit in darkness no more.”

(Waves 1997 p 15)

In a multi-religious society like Sri Lanka the WADIYA Group provides an opportunity to expose one’s intense personal feelings to others who may not share one’s beliefs. This by itself is a sufficient reason for its existence. The English language is a neutral vehicle to convey a somewhat distanced religious emotion among Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

Vivimarie Vanderpoorten’s poem like Sisila Cooray’s expresses a religious desire for enlightenment and peace of mind.

Haiku: Protesting Faith, September 2006
New custodians
In this temple of the Tooth
Soldiers wielding guns...
Alms need to be scanned
For bombs by a computer Trays of flowers searched...
Public body check
Before going inside
To purify the mind

(Nothing Prepares You 27)

Faith Ratnayake’s short story “The Two Edged Sword” is about a female office executive, Seelawathie, who has a very attractive exterior but whose heart is rotten to the core.

Traditional middle class values of honesty and truthfulness come to the fore in passages of description, which are reinforced by a moral judgement.

“Seelawathie walked in state up the main staircase, after signing the book downstairs. Her bright orange Kandyan style sari and her thick gold chain and bangles dazzled the eyes.

She was plump and fair, with thick black hair wound up in a konde that bobbed loosely at the back of her neck. Her main feature was the two deep dimples that adorned her cheeks, and together with her smile and flashing white teeth, she had the look of an outsize cherub.

Truly she considered herself to be an Angel, not a Guardian Angle but a Recording Angel, who kept the record straight by always telling the truth. At least about other people.”

Seelawathie’s exploits include poisoning the mind of her bosses’ wife by passing on innocent information from his office diary as if it implied guilt. She keeps the entire office on pins because of her hidden power.

“Sweeping into the outer office, she arranged her bag and lunch packet on the side table, and rang the proud brass bell on the desk. Siyanoris, the peon, ran in with the cup of tea that he must make specially for her every morning. He sped the hundred yards dash without spilling a drop, and breathed again freely, until Seelawathie thundered, “Too hot you fool. Get me boss’ diary.”

But suddenly Seelawathie dies. She meets the devil, a very fair, handsome man with a healthy blush of pink on his cheeks. He greets her warmly. He smiled a knowing smile, his white teeth gleaming...Suddenly in great embarrassment Seelawathie realized she was naked. It was useless to try and hide. She was completely open now for all to see.

“I am extremely pleased that you have been doing my work on earth. You proved my point that there are lies, statistics and damned lies and those with the gift to spread them.” His smile dazzled her and Seelawathie soundly surprised, did not know whether to smile and flash her dimples, or just keep quiet. For once, as long as she could remember, she was at a loss for words.”

The Sinhala name “Seelawathie,” which denotes a rural or non-Anglisised origin, immediately alerts the reader to the possibility that she is an upstart in a power structure which is derived from colonialism. Faith Ratnayake combines humour and irony with fantasy and moral evaluation in a nice bit of class based story telling.

In Punyakanthie Wijenaike’s recent prize winning short story the speaker is a teenager whose mother has gone to the Middle East, from Sri Lanka, to work as a housemaid.

The husband abandoned by his wife impregnates his teenage daughter. The skill of the story teller lies in the gradual unfolding of the shameful reality, presented through the daughter’s monologue.

While the theme of the horrors of broken families, through employment as housemaids abroad, is ever present in Sri Lankan minds, focusing on the emotional torment is not accompanied by comment on the State and society’s failures-such as division among the major communities-which force people to work abroad. Instead the Central Bank reports that the largest foreign exchange earners, topping both tea and garment exports, are these very housemaids.

Wilfred Jayasuriya has been a Sri Lanka government executive who had worked in many jobs as an administrator. His stories about work among the villagers also draw on accounts of work done by British public officers (Government Agents) recorded in work related diaries.

In a forthcoming novel titled “The Joys Of Our Youth” he includes a story called “Elephant Drive” where he tries a dialogic mode, telling the story of how his hero took the risk of driving elephants, when he worked in a large agricultural project, to his grandson Dino and granddaughter Emily, in California, who have been demanding a “real” story from him.

So I worked in rice farming.... we had to give lots of water to grow the rice. We make canals to take the water to the paddy.” “Canals are like aqueducts Grandpa?” “Ah! You are a clever guy Dino! Like trains going along viaducts in your train set. But there were lots of elephants in the jungle nearby to eat the paddy.

The farmers were very angry. They told me to come and chase the elephants..” “So? What?” Dino’s eyes were becoming quite big and focused on Jayantha’s face. Emily snuggled close to him.

“I told them to go and chase the elephants themselves!” “Ha! Ha! Very good Grandpa” Emily clapped her little hands vigorously and Dino wriggled with excitement. “So did they?” “They did. And one of the farmers was killed by an elephant.” Jayantha looked at their faces. They didn’t quite know what to make of that. Had he gone beyond their understanding? Did they know what death was?

Jagath Kumarasingha and Asgar Hussein are scriptwriters in the advertising trade. The advertising companies coach their personnel in standard composition practices like clustering, brain storming and other inventive methods. They provide services not only in English but also in Sinhala and Tamil, the native languages. These different language applications on the same subject must be cross fertilizing each other.

Jagath was a Sinhala advertising script writer and Asgar is an English language advertiser. Jagath, who is also a prize winner claims that he adopts the cluster method as opposed to the linear or logical method, in composing his narratives. Lets look at one of his paragraphs for evidence.

This is the opening paragraph of “Pop Eye Is A Yankee.” which is a story in Jagath’s book of short stories titled Kider Chetty Street. “Beef never becomes bulls. The bulls become beef. Would you knife Baba in the way you knife that calf for the most tender cut of beef? Baba who loves Pop Eye while Pop Eye loves spinach.

Because Pop Eye depends on spinach like those bulls depend on greens and grass. Spinach is an expensive item among the greens that Baba’s grandmom sells. Her greens are various. Take gotukola. Those leaves are as round as little cart wheels. This is how Baba feels. And the other greens like mukunuwenna - those leaves are long and look like spikes.

Moreover the drumstick leaves - by nature they are laxative. Those leaves have the ability to purge you, as Grandmom says, like the Mahaveli river inundates. The drumstick leaves can purge you in tremendous bubbling yellow.” (Kider Chetty Street 2005 p 85)

The thought process is circular moving by association of ideas. It derives its vitality from the unexpected items that emerge with each sentence or part of a sentence.

The Sinhala words are not given English translations. Instead they are explained by comparisons with known things like cart wheels and spikes and “tremendous bubbling yellow(!).” One could presume that the advertiser’s art is in use. The audience is addressed directly: “Would you knife Baba...?” Now lets look at a verse paragraph of Asgar Hussein’s poem “Yalpannam.”

“Jaffna” is personified as a woman and speaks in epic verse mode. She speaks of the endless suffering she has to endure. The theme of time is implicit.

Unroll the past
And try to understand
I am more than a battle ground
For myths, for tongues,
For genes fighting to extend
Their jurisdictions
More than a vessel holding
The dreams of old kingdoms
The deliriums of glories past....
And yet how many ordeals
Must I suffer to realize myself?
See the burns, the blisters on my skin
The explosions of fratricide,
Mines waiting to blow open new wounds,
The gangrenous spread
That has invaded my soul;
See the truth shrivel in my sand dunes
Exiled by lagoons of hate

The skill of the poet lies in combining the theme of history with metaphors derived from the geography of the Jaffna peninsula. If one has visited Jaffna one realizes how the last two lines “See the truth shrivel in my sand dunes Exiled by lagoons of hate” infuse emotion into a physical feature: the lagoons and sand dunes, that are characteristic of the Jaffna landscape.

Jaffna as the homeland of the Sri Lankan Tamils for centuries, has created a singular civilization which is said to be different from the civilization found in the main Tamil land of Tamilnadu. It is this special identity that Asgar Hussein tries to define in his poem.

But Jaffna is real and not a mere personification. In a novel written by an expatriate Jaffna Tamil academic, titled “Lost In Transit,” the last chapter of which was presented at the WADIYA, the middle class hero, Kumaran, who has found a life for himself in USA, returns to his parental home in Jaffna and faces a crisis of conscience.

“His father, after having given Kumaran his freedom to make up his own mind about so many matters in his life had found in the end that he could not reconcile himself to Kumaran living abroad, marrying outside the community and not participating in the life of the country.

“So, you don’t have any feelings for the life of our people?” he would say, and Kumaran would reply, “I don’t know who my people are. Why should I think that the people of Jaffna are my people anymore than the people of New York?” “I don’t understand that or you. What does that mean? The people here speak your language, practice your religion and are kind to you,” his father said.

“No, Appah,” Kumaran said, “I don’t speak their language — at least, not very well. I have no religion. We are all strangers here, as well as there.” “There you are again, going philosophical. It is fashionable, but it’s still nonsense,” his father said.

“Why nonsense?” Kumaran asked.

“We are strangers, but some are less strange to each other than others and that is all we can expect,” his father responded.

“Okay, Okay,” Kumaran said. “I don’t think we can resolve this. It is too late for me, anyway. I have a career, a wife, a son and a home in New York and there is no returning.” “Yes, yes,” his father said bitterly. “You were not here for your mother’s funeral and you will not be here for my funeral either.” Kumaran fell silent at this. It was clear to both his father and himself that Kumaran would not be able to come back to Jaffna in time to perform the last rites if his father died while he was in New York.

“I come regularly to see you. I would rather see you alive...” Kumaran had said as he walked away.”

Since the title refers to “English middle class writing” what is specifically middle class in all this? The short answer is that if you write or speak in English in Sri Lanka you are middle class. However that is not the answer you expect.

My conclusion is that the kinds of attitudes that English speaking middle class people have to certain areas of life activity are not in any way definable as monolithic.

They are highly varied and though their writers can be identified economically as comparatively well to do, the divisions in Sri Lankan society make possible a multiplicity of views. To some extent the WADIYA Writers’ Circle represents that multiplicity.

Distinctly American William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was born on September 17, 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey. He knew from an early age that he wanted to write, making the decision in high school to pursue a career as doctor and writer. Williams studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

He was a major poet of the Imagist Movement but later abandoned the movement due to the values set forth by the other poets involved in it.

Williams married Florence Herman in 1912.They moved into a house in Rutherford which was their home for many years.

Shortly afterwards, his first book of serious poems, The Tempers , was published. Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a fully blown literary career.

A poet who had an immense influence on 20th century poetry, Williams wrote in varying style and technique and was often radically experimental.

His work is fresh and clear, rejecting sentimentality and vagueness. Although Williams wrote a significant amount of prose, his poetry is his marking point.

He experimented with many different styles, including terza rima and free verse. Stylistically, Williams preferred the line over the sentence. Williams was also influenced by many “-isms,” two of which effected him greatly are Dadaism and cubism.

His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations and correspondence. Williams’ most anthologized poem is The Red Wheelbarrow, considered an example of the Imagist Movement’s style and principles. He was a major writer in the modernist movement, helping to create a clear American style. He didn’t use traditional meter in most of his poems.

He saw his poetic project as a distinctly American one; he sought to renew language through the fresh, raw idiom that grew out of America’s cultural and social heterogeneity, at the same time freeing it from what he saw as the worn-out language of British and European culture.

Williams tried to invent an entirely fresh form, an American form of poetry whose subject matter was centered on everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people.

He then came up with the concept of the variable foot evolved from years of visual and auditory sampling of his world from the first person perspective as a part of the day in his life as a physician. The variable foot is rooted within the multi-faceted American idiom.

This discovery was a part of his keen observation of how radio and newspaper influenced peoples’ communication and represents the “machine made out of words” (as he described in a poem in the introduction to his book, The Wedge ) just as the mechanistic motions of a city can become a consciousness.

Williams had a heart attack in 1948 which was followed by a series of strokes, forcing him to retire from his medical practice.

He continued to write until his death on March 4th, 1963. Williams was a highly acclaimed writer, two of his many honours include the National Book Award in 1950 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1963.

Compiled by Ishara Mudugamuwa

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A narrow escape

by B. J. Perera

The School had just closed for the Christmas vacation and all the students were in a boisterous mood. I was walking with my gang along the railway line to the Kalutara railway station. Near the station was the railway goods shed. Workmen were busy loading a huge petrol tank onto a trailer.

This was during the height of the Second World War and a Japanese invasion was considered imminent. The empty tank was being transported to Matugama to store petrol, in case the Japanese cut off supplies.

On the spur of the moment I picked up a stone and threw it high into the air so that it would fall on the tank and give the workers a good fright.

It never occurred to me that the stone could fall on one of the workmen, and that was just what happened. Fortunately the stone missed his head and struck the back of the hand disabling him for the day.

With some very obscene words which were not very complimentary to our parentage the workmen pursued us, for, we had already started running. Fear lent us wings. As I ran a text book slipped off my hands but I dared not stop to pick it up. Fortunately the train had already arrived.

This was one of the three diesel trains sent to Ceylon as coal was had to shipped all the way from England. The trains were very fast and came to the Kalutara South station ten to fifteen minutes before the scheduled time. So the workmen had enough time to search the three compartments the train consisted of.

In the compartment I got into there was one empty seat and in the adjoining seat was a friend of mine who had my name and my surname, Joseph Perera.

He too was from Maggona. I quickly related to him what happened and that the workmen were searching the train for me. He took in the situation at once.

Taking off his hat he put it on my head and gave me a pair of highly tinted glasses. Then giving me the evening newspaper said, “Read this with your head bent as low as possible”.

Three workmen entered the compartment. My heart beat a pit-a-pat as one of them asked a boy at the entrance who Joseph Perera was. They had got my name from the book I had dropped during my flight to the station.

The workers approached me menacingly and asked me “Are you Joseph Perera” before I could answer my friend said that he was Joseph Perera. They showed him my book which I had dropped and asked if it was his. He replied that it had been his and that he had sold it to a second hand book shop.

All this while one workman was staring hard at me. I was sure that I had been recognised and retribution would soon follow. My knees knocked against each other uncontrollably as if they were afflicted by the Parkinson’s disease.

My friend turned to the man who was gazing at me and tapped his own head with his finger to indicate that I had a screw loose. The men smiled and went away. My friend told me”Man, you are holding the paper upside down.

My relief however was short lived. The workers smelt something fishy in the whole episode.

The look of terror on my face did not escape them and school boys did not wear hats and sun glasses. Back they came to me and demanded to see my exercise books. This I did nonchalantly for none of my books contained my real name.

The name there on was Yusoof. Our history teacher had told us that the Christians and Muslims shared many personal names. For example Joseph, David, Solomon, Alexander and John of the Christians were among the Muslims Yusoof, Davood, Suleimen, Iskander and Yohana respectively. Being more than slightly eccentric I adopted the Muslim name Yusoof.

The teachers welcomed this step as there were three Josephs in the class. They asked me if I was a Muslim. I said my father was. They accepted the fact that I was not Joseph Perera and quickly went away as the train had begun to move.