Overall celebration of humaneness

Reviewed by Padma Edirisinghe

"Learning from Life" Rukmani Samaranayake

could easily be taken as a title of one of those umpteen books that market education these days not only in book shops but even on pavements. One only wishes that the writer opted for a more innovative and uncommon title for her collection of short stories.

A book title can be as important as the book itself. The reviewer remembers Cyril Perera, the prolific translator, mourning that his translation of Charles Dicken's "Christmas Carol" earned meagre readership since the title Nattal Geethaya prevented would be readers, mostly Buddhists from purchasing it under the delusion that it was a conversion snare perpetrated by the Vatican. Actually the miserly Scrooge who later reforms himself is more akin to a character in Buddhist literature, striving to fulfil the Dana Paramitha.

Coming back to "Learning from Life" its author is an educationalist cum successful writer. Her books "Good bye Zinto" and "Achchiamma's promise" have won State Literary awards. She has also done a series in English to develop the language creativity of schoolchildren.

This book takes a different path where memorable scenes from her long life's journey are woven into vibrant literary pieces. The Educationalist in her (as a member of University staff) makes each a carrier of a salutary message that may or may not detract that literary value of each. The message transmitting is more or less entrenched in our indigenous literature and Rukmani is perhaps only sticking to the traditions.

It is clear that the author has had a taste of both urban life as well as rural life and hence creeps into the nooks and crannies of each with her pen, cutting across as a wide spectrum of subjects as alcoholism, plight of migrant female workers and even murder most foul, the last based on a true incident. Here is a quote from the Foreword itself.

'An overall celebration of humaneness pervades the narratives which even in their most violent, morbid and tragic outcomes are encompassed by a writing style that is infused with tinges of humour, satire and comedy as transpired in "Murder most foul". Strangely the foreword has been written by a student of the author that demonstrates the humility of Rukmani. However my own favourite story is "Elisabeth and Charlis - 1915", a cross between history and biography for Elisabeth and Charlis are the author's grand parents embroiled in the 1915 Riots. The actual historical details, the author admits have been culled from "Hundred days under Martial Law in Ceylon in 1915" by Mr. Armand de Souza, editor of the Ceylon Morning Leader. These incidents spring to life via the story told by the author. It is a cue that young writers could take up.

Armand de Souza himself earns this tribute from the author, "A Goanese Indian by birth, he had the humanitarian concern and the courage to address the imperial authorities at the height of their power, to seek justice for a people who were not his own".

The ramifications of a writer's mind know no bound, which truth is empty illustrated by this work.

Analysis of judicial review of Bills

Reviewed by L.I. Keerthisinghe LLB, LLM Attorney-at-Law

Methsiri Cooray in this book, which is a revised and an updated version of the dissertation submitted to the University of Colombo in partial fulfillment of the course work required for the award of the Master's Degree in Law, traces the history and engages in a constitutional analysis of the concept of pre-enactment judicial review of Bills presented in the Parliament of Sri Lanka.

The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, under Article 120 is vested with the exclusive judicial review to examine the consistency of such Bills with the provisions in the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka. The relevant Constitutional provisions are examined in Chapter 1 as an introduction to the discussion. While Article 121 provides for pre-enactment judicial review for unconstitutionality to be challenged within one week of the Bill being placed in the Order Paper of Parliament, Article 122 spells out the procedure for review of Bills certified as urgent in the national interest by the Cabinet of Ministers. Questions relevant to the discussion have been raised in the introductory Chapter, the answers to which are found in the concluding chapter. Chapters II to IV deal with the historical aspects commencing from the time of the ancient Sinhala Kings up to the enactment of the first Republican Constitution of 1972 and the establishment of the Constitutional Court.

The significance of the period during 1978 to 1994 subsequent to the enactment of the second Republican Constitution of 1978 is discussed in detail in Chapter V. The challenges to the Bills presented during that period have been discussed comprehensively and the findings of the Supreme Court in each case have been analyzed. The comments made by the Supreme Court on the inadequacy of the time limit of one week for a citizen to petition the Court regarding the unconstitutionality of a Bill, the deliberate withholding of the Gazette Notification containing the draft bill from the public in some instances, the by passing of even the limited time frame in the case of bills certified as urgent and the short time granted to the Court to arrive at a decision which enables only a cursory examination to be made indicate the shortcomings in the pre-enactment judicial review process provided for in the 1978 Constitution. It is preferable that the said drawbacks should be remedied either by an amendment to the present Constitution or in the enactment of a revised Constitution resulting in the guaranteeing of the sovereignty of the People of Sri Lanka. The author states in the concluding chapter that the Supreme Court has played a significant role during the period 1978 in pre-enactment judicial review, although in a restricted sense.

The author quite rightly points out that due to the restriction placed by the provisions in the present Constitution, the Supreme Court cannot be blamed for the said position. As post enactment judicial review has been barred by Article 80(3) of the Constitution it is advisable to remove the severe restrictions placed on pre-enactment judicial review so as to enable a more comprehensive analysis to be made by the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of a Bill before such enactment.

As Sir Granville Rarn stated 'A Bill is forged on the anvil of the draftsman's table, while politicians and civil servants swing their heavy sledges.'

This may be true in the United Kingdom where judicial review of legislation is not permitted but in the United States the limitations placed on such judicial review is minimal or non-existent. In Sri Lanka, the position is in between the said two extremes. Relevant case law has been referred to in the text, among them significant Sri Lankan cases such as Queen vs Liyanage (1965) 68 NLR 265 Bribery Commissioner vs. Ranasinghe (1964) 66 NLR 78 and Piyadasa vs. Bribery Commissioner (1962) 64 NLR 385 and significant decisions both in the UK and USA have been referred to. As pointed out by the author there is a paucity of publications dealing with the subject area of his research.

Thus there is a lack of footnotes and the literature survey is brief. Hon. Saleem Marsoof Judge of the Supreme Court in his inaugural K.C. Kamalasabeyson PC oration delivered on 25 August 2008, available on the internet, subsequent to the publication of Mr. Cooray's book, makes some valuable comments on the subject area of pre-enactment judicial review.

Justice D. Jagath de S. Balapatabendi who wrote the foreword and Dr. Sunil F.A. Cooray who wrote the Introductory Note, make some valuable comments on the subject of pre-enactment judicial review.

The book is eminently readable and provides a comprehensive and lucid overview of the pre-enactment judicial review process presently adopted in Sri Lanka. Mr. Cooray's book would undoubtedly be of immense value to students and teachers of the Law as well as legal practitioners and judges.

The general public who wish to be informed of the constitutional provisions and the procedure to invoke pre-enactment judicial review would greatly benefit by perusing the book.

Foundations in Language Learning

'Foundations in Language Learning' by Dr. Neelakshi Chandrasena Premawardhena is the result of extensive research conducted by the author locally and abroad, and experience gathered during two decades of teaching German as a Foreign Language, English as a Second Language and Linguistics.

A background knowledge of Linguistics, functions of language, intercultural communication and an insight into language, culture and society provide one with a firm foundation to embark on effective language teaching and learning.

Despite numerous works on second and foreign language teaching being available today, there is a dearth of work related to Sri Lanka where our own learning traditions and culture as well as learner difficulties are in focus.

Thus this book was written obliging many requests from students of foreign languages at the Department of Modern Languages and MA in Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, and participants of numerous teacher training sessions, guest lectures and international conferences. The emphasis here is more on practical aspects than on theory with an aim to provide useful hints to understand our learners better and design language lessons for more effective results. All topics related to language and language teaching discussed in this work are supported by authentic examples from local sources. Contents of the book are as follows: Functions of Language,Verbal and Non-verbal Communication, Human Communication, Animal Communication,Introduction to Linguistics, Language and Culture, Intercultural Communication, Unique Features of Languages, Universal Features of Languages, Aspects of Language Teaching, Second and Foreign Language Acquisition, Testing and Measurement, Effective Language Teaching and Interactive Computer Aided Language Learning.

Dr. Neelakshi Chandrasena Premawardhena is a Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. She was the Head of Department of Modern Languages, University of Kelaniya from 2002-2007.

Dr. Premawardhena obtained her BA(Hons) in Linguistics and German and an MPhil in Linguistics from University of Kelaniya and a PhD in German Studies from University Siegen, Germany. She is privileged to be the first and only Sri Lankan to date to have earned a PhD in Germanistik from a German university. She is also a holder of the Diploma in Teaching German as a Foreign Language (Deutschlehrerdiplom), Goethe Institut, Munich.

Dr. Premawardhena has a wide range of research interests including contrastive linguistics, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, foreign and second language teaching, intercultural communication, language typology and discourse analysis. She has published several books and over 30 research papers in German and English, and her research articles have appeared in many international publications including the Dialogue Studies series by John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

She is engaged in collaborative research with several German universities, being regularly invited as a visiting scholar and guest speaker at Universities of Siegen, Stuttgart and Ludwig Maximilian University Munich.

The loom and the weaver

Reviewed by Carl Muller

Ransiri Menike de Silva who won the State Literary Award in 2007 for her debut collection of short stories needs little introduction. She stars in a family of writers and her firmament has given her all the space for her streaming creativity to nourish her readers. with her new book before me, I see a sort of restless narrative drive and an intimacy in approach.

Ten stories in 85 pages show us how well she can encapsulate her many themes and avoid stuttering over happenings. Each object must be sensibly patterned and with no over-enthusiastic mush that can become a deadly foe of accuracy. Her talent really hits a target so many have as yet to see and she does not give opinions. She writes the way Wordwsorth said of writers that in proportion to being good, or great, or original, they must create in themselves the taste by which their writing can be relished.

With all this off my chest, we shall look at 'Weaver at her loom'. This is not the title of any of the stories in this collection but we see how well it has been picked. The writer is the weaver. She is at her loom and out of it come the colours, the affections, the designs, the inward checking to augment the number of her ideas....and not just the spinning of rhetoric but each weave to mark the course of her characters, be it the little girl who loves her kindly rickshaw-man ('Love pp 18) and the little Dhammika who sees a murder recreated before her terror-stricken eyes ('A Headline Story' pp 9-20). Ransiri had transported this story from Scandinavia, placing it on her loom just as it had happened so far away.

Death in any form needs to be understood. Didn't Philip Larkin say that Death is no different whether you whine at it or withstand it? Culture has to shift across the warp and woof as well as character, be it high or low.

This is where her third story has scored so well. Such a giddy, self-important bunch to be sure - the kind who like to spend money they don't have on the things they don't want in order to impress people they don't like. Stupidity also has a knack of getting in the way and the so-called commonsense becomes a collection of prejudices, gushing voices drowning the music of saner opinion. This is a fun-story but woven artfully and with no holds barred ('Polato Couch and other Tales' pp 21-24)

As you read, you will find nothing contrived. Indeed, Ransiri has assured the reader of her responsibility for what is digested. The stories flow out of her world not because she looks for fame in her accomplishment but because she wants readers to know that she had them in mind. After all, she remains the instrument - the loom, if you wish it to be - that you must also use. It is not a deity, not some Gorgon with a Medusa head, or some Cyclopian tyrant. It is simply a beautiful bond between reader and writer.

I need to leave the rest of the story-weaves to you. After all, what I have done so far is to give you an aperitif in order that you can look forward to downing many more glasses of Ransiri's nectar. even Jonathan Swift did not feel it of any necessity in maligning or dismissing the work of a writer. "Whatever the book," he once said, "it is alive and talking to me."

You will hear the voice from the loom, telling of the nest in the garden and the nest a wife makes for herself...a terrorist who below himself up to make a woman a hospital heroine...Shiromini's dream of a grandiose ancestral home...It is all around you like a high breeze above the grass, knowing how the grass will bend as it passes over it.

I can only agree with the many who have commented on this collection" Anne Abeysekera, Chitra Ranawake, Tissa Jayatilleke, Gamini Seneviratne and Jean Arasanayagam. Ransiri's is the 'seeing eye - her reflections, thoughts, observations, situations, characters that ring so true.

Keep writing, Ransiri and let me dedicate these lines to you:

"When others will someday reminisce about you,

Tell stories of the things you did,

Recall something you once wrote,

Comment on your life in journals,

Publish the stories you left behind,

That is the sunlight of your life."

I give you the Canadian poet Raymond Fraser. No one I know can tell me of him but how can I not recall his lines?

Peni Valalu

Merryl Perera's latest book Peni Valalu will be launched at Gangarama Vihara premises, Hunupitiya, Colombo 2, on December 15 at 4 pm.

The launching ceremony will be presided over by Ven. Galaboda Gnanissara Thera, Viharadhipathi, Gangaramaya. Narada Nissanka will compere the launching ceremony.

Merryl Perera is the author of 'Ayubovan Armour Veediya' 'Divayine Visi Vasak' and 'Sebe Pattarakarayo'. 'Peni Valalu' is a Dayawansa Jayakody publication.

A calf in milk and milk chocolate

Gratiaen prize winner Jagath Kumarasinghe's latest book "A calf in milk and milk chocolate" will be launched at the National Library Services and Documentation Board auditorium, No. 14 Independence Avenue, Colombo 7 on December 15 at 4 pm.

The book is a Sooriya Publication.