The early eighties
I used to walk down to the SLBC in the early eighties for my
programs. The sleepiness of the streets round Lakmahal had diminished
with the construction of Duplication Road, but Colombo was still pretty
much a quiet place.
Though it was a longer route, I preferred to go down Queen's Road,
which in those days did not have the schools that have now made its
upper reaches a mess, first Sujata Vidyalaya which Goolbai Gunasekara
started in emulation of the great days of the national schools her
mother had presided over, later Wycherley, when International Schools
became the vogue.
On the right, after Duplication Road, and the built up areas that had
once been the gardens of Maalyn Dias and his sister, Ira Fernando, were
what we always knew as Bank Houses.
They were ensconced behind bright red brick walls, which I think I
have only penetrated once, for a wedding, if I am right in thinking that
Ranmali Pathirana's reception was held in one of those, her aunt's
husband then heading the Commercial Bank.
On the left were old mansions that were open to sight, including the
grand edifice that had belonged to Sir Marcus Fernando. Fascinated as I
was by the early electoral politics of Sri Lanka, I knew the name well.
It was Sir Marcus who had lost to Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan in the
first election in which a Ceylonese took part, that for the Educated
Ceylonese seat on the 1912 Legislative Council, constituted under the
McCallum Reforms. Ramanathan had got a great preponderance of Sinhalese
votes to win, and one reason advanced was the caste factor, the Goigama
Sinhalese preferring a Vellala Tamil to a representative of the Karawas.
That may have been a reason, but more important I think was the fact
that Ramanathan had been an outstanding legislator before, deeply
committed to Ceylon as a whole, as his championing of a holiday for
Vesak had shown. He was easily the most active legislator in the days in
which all representatives were nominated by the Governor, which was
perhaps the reason he was tempted away with an official position in
1893.
He gave that up in 1906 and went off to India to meditate, but was
summoned back by a multi-ethnic deputation when finally the Ceylonese
were given a chance to elect someone. He was undoubtedly the better man,
of the two who came forward, and his eloquence in standing up for the
Sinhalese who were persecuted by the British during the 1915 Sinhala
Muslim riots, eminently justifies the decision of the electorate.
Further up Queen's Road was the house owned by Grindlays Bank, which
remained anonymous like all the other Bank Houses except for a brief
period ten years later, when the Bank was headed by an ostentatious
Englishman called Bradshaw.
He saw himself as a cultural catalyst, and he was in fact an
important influence in this regard. His support transformed classical
music in Sri Lanka, by virtue mainly of his patronage of Rohan Joseph de
Saram, who challenged the sleepy orthodoxies of the Colombo Symphony
Orchestra.
Bradshaw inspired colleagues as well to embark on sponsorship of
culture, and Rohan Joseph seemed to have so much money that the old
Orchestra was split, as gifted musicians crossed over to a body that
actually paid them. Relations were strained for some time, and the
atmosphere unpleasant, but all this contributed to an improvement in
professionalism. When the dust settled the CSO had also been transformed
from the days when it was governed by gifted amateurs such as Peace
Samarasekara's leading to the memorable review by Elmer de Hahn that was
headlined, "Peace Be Still".
All this was of course later on, as was Grindlays contribution to
literature, in helping with the Gratiaen Awards.
The trust was set up by Michael Ondaatje in 1993, to promote Sri
Lankan writing in English, and it began on a fairly small-scale, but
Michael's sister Gillian persuaded Grindlays to sponsor the first awards
evening. Bradhaw obviously could not resist someone who had just won the
Booker Prize. So that Gratiaen too then became a social event at which
anyone with pretensions to sophisticated social significance had to be
seen.
I think this helped in making Carl Muller respectable, in that he was
the first winner of the award, albeit jointly with Lalitha Witanachchi.
I am glad Arjuna Parakrama, who dominated the judging panel that
year, held out for Carl, because Colombo was still not sure whether the
man was a pornographer or an artiste. Arjuna could not however prevail
upon Ben Fonseka, appointed to the panel as the representative of the
ordinary enlightened reader, to have Carl alone selected.
History, in the form of the even better work Carl produced in the
next few years, suggests that at least that award, in 1993, achieved the
purpose of encouragement and promotion. Unfortunately Grindlays
collapsed soon afterwards, and the Gratiaen is now sponsored by others,
but I think that, without the effervescent Bradshaw, corporate
sponsorship of cultural activities would not have been quite as common,
or prestigious, as it is now. From the top of Queens Road one turned
right for a short stretch along Thurstan Road with its magnificient mara
trees, passing the university grounds where my father walked regularly,
and where Dennis Chanmugam had once persuaded me to go running, at grave
risk it seemed to my heart. Finally there was the beautiful walk down
Bullers Road, past a series of old colonial mansions which delighted the
eye of the passerby, before tall walls took them from sight.
Those I suppose will remain, but I was delighted that the walls on
the left, along the grounds of I think the National Film Corporation,
came down at the beginning of the year. Even more pleasing has been the
unveiling as it were of the Cinnamon Gardens Police Station, an
impressive building that for years had to be protected by ungainly walls
and barricades. Personally I am delighted that the public face of the
city has now been entrusted to the Ministry of Defence.
I don't blame them at all for what they had to do to protect us from
the eighties on, but I have no doubt that they will be more efficient at
restoring things, not just to what they were, but to what they should
be.
The SLBC, housed in what I was told had once been the lunatic asylum,
had a bureaucracy worthy of the past it had inherited. Multiple vouchers
had to be signed for payments to be made and I gathered that, before
that, your producer had to have multiple forms signed to allow you to
come into participate in a program.
If you were lucky, after several months you were paid, by the young
ladies at the reception, who painstakingly added up the tiny sums each
program was worth.
I cannot remember exact details now, but I believe the presenter
received less than Rs 50 for a quarter hour slot, and additional voices
something like Rs 5. I had to be very thankful then that Richard and
Yolande Abeywira and Jeanne Pinto were pure altruists as far as helping
me on my programs went.
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