Pathiravitana's 'Cameos' a tender gaze on nation and citizenry
I parachuted into journalism. I didn't do the hard yards. I was
picked from nowhere by Manik De Silva, Editor, Sunday Island about ten
years ago. He said I could be his understudy. He did his best to turn me
into an all-round journalist. He tried to impart some reporting skills.
I still remember Manik telling me to write a news story about interest
rates. He gave me the facts. I wrote a quick comment on 'fictional
commodities' after Karl Polanyi. Manik said 'I say, I asked you to write
a news story not a bloody commentary', but carried it anyway.
We learn from those who came before us. They clear paths and do it so
well that we forget that previously there was thicket. I am grateful to
Manik, my first and best teacher in newspapers. I am grateful also to
Gamini Weerakoon ('Gamma') who was the Editor of The Island (i.e. the
daily paper), who would often call me into his office and give me what
he called 'unsolicited advice'. Shamindra Ferdinando was another
unobtrusive teacher. I was taught by the layout people, the 'readers',
the sub-editors, the peons, drivers, the advertising people and Simon,
the tea-maker. And I learnt from those who wrote. And those who write.
A little over a year ago, Nihal Ratnayake, veteran journalist and one
my father's oldest friends (so old that he can claim to have known me
longer than I have known myself), sent me a book to be reviewed. It was
called 'Cameos of Ceylon and other glimpses,' authored by another
veteran scribe, S.Pathiravitana. It was a fascinating collection. Easy
reading. Entertaining. Utterly, utterly enriching.
It was clearly a carefully selected set of essays penned over a half
a century for the Sunday Observer, Daily News and The Island. I flipped
through some articles and was flipped by the cameos. Then I lost the
book.
Shifted house, lost book. A chance conversation with an internet
reader of my articles ended with me visiting her father, the author of
this lovely book, a couple of months ago. He gave me a signed copy and
brushed aside my apologies with a wonderfully understanding smile.
'Cameos' gives us glimpses of a mind dedicated to exploration, a
heart unburdened of hard convictions and a human composite that is
endowed with wit, patience, humility, thirst for knowledge and that rare
ability to touch without touching, inhabiting without appearing to do
so.
The interesting thing about such collections is that you don't have
to read from beginning to end. You can turn to a random page and read.
This is what I did. As a result I was educated about Buddhism in Western
Literature and immediately afterwards I was made to reflect on consumers
and consumerism in ways I had not imagined were possible. The collage of
subject, personality, event, history, philosophy, literature and
innumerable other 'things' that is this book throws a colour-mix never
before blended.
He writes about the most ordinary of things in ways that make your
mouth water. Like the lowly papaw ('The fruit that tempted Eve'). 'One
spoonful and you really begin to taste the fruit of national freedom,'
he writes about woodapple jam (the Marketing Department version).
He puts 'English in its place'. He writes about penguins, pelicans
and ptarmigans. He writes about ancestor worship (in Britain!) and tells
us about Munkotuve Rala who gave us the 'Sangarajawatha' which,
according to him, 'records the story of the heroic recovery of the
Buddha Sasana through the magnificent almost single-handed effort of the
great Welivita Sri Saranankara Thera'.
What struck me most, reading 'Cameos' was the erudition of the
author, not as a veteran journalist but from the time he was a junior
scribe. The reading, reflection, ability to synthesize, and the
unlimited curiosity that persuaded him to graze on a wide range of
subject-grasses and literatures, are hardly housed in one personality
even in fraction today, I realized. I do understand that a human being
gathers a lot of information, sorts it all out in ways that make for
relatively easy access and acquires analytical frames that help make
sense of things and processes.
I do understand that some are endowed with word-skill that makes it
possible to lay out conclusions in ways that are palatable to a wide
spectrum of readers. And yet, Pathiravitana remains a stand-out. I am
strained to name anyone among my contemporaries who would not be out of
depth in such a range of subjects and also have the ability to treat
material with such finesse. Rajpal Abeynayake comes to mind and that's
about it.
People ask me often how one learns to write. I never had any formal
instruction, except taking the odd mandatory writing course as an
undergraduate. If I am pushed, I would say 'read'. Read as much as
possible. Pathiravitana is very well read.
That is necessary but not sufficient. One needs a reflective mind and
needs to resolve oneself to a life-long exploration of the word and its
unlimited potentials. One has to be cognizant of audience, the social,
cultural and political nuances and indeed 'moment', the need of reader
and the need of self to explore, explicate and share. Pathiravitana's
'Cameos' is to me something that can be recommended as 'essential
reading for the would-be writer'.
'Cameos' shows how language can be used, how economy is exercised,
how language and tone are employed to convince without being
overbearing. Pathiravitana is not an in-your-face writer. He is almost
like a bystander glancing at his own hand, own pen and the scribbles
these produce on paper. Perhaps it is this distancing-without-leaving
quality that makes him such entertaining reading. We end up concluding
with him without feeling we've been led. Or had.
The richness is striking. I felt that any student of the social
sciences or humanities can turn to a random page and find many gems
which are crying out for cut-and-polish. There are so many pregnancies
within these 400 pages. So many thoughts that can be birthed and so many
off spring from those that this writer has so generously and with so
much love delivered for his readers.
He claims that all he has done (without really planning to do so) was
to 'hold a mirror to our foibles, i.e. those which prevented us from
becoming the true heirs to the heritage of this country'.
That's something (this matter of mirror-holding) that journalists
would do well to emulate. It is not easy to hold up a mirror because we
find it tough to stop ourselves from telling what the mirror says and
advocating correctives. Pathiravitana does it gently.
It is a book I will return to again and again with the conviction
that I will learn something new each time I read. It is a book that
every library in every school should have, even in these times of
watered down, anything-goes apology for English instruction that is
called 'English Our (sorry 'Indian') Way'.
Not just for the English, but for the secrets of essay writing it
contains and of course for the edifying potential. It is a 'must' for
every media institution and probably an excellent text-book for
journalism/mass communication curricula.
It is a companion for lonely days and a photographic capture of a
nation and its many wonders.
Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at
[email protected]
|