Leel Gunasekara:

The perennial populist

By Kalakeerthi Edwin Ariyadasa

"The jungle and the people who lived in the Sinhalese jungle villages fascinated, almost obsessed me in Ceylon. They continued to obsess me in London, in Putney, in Bloomsburg and in Cambridge. The village in the Jungle was a novel in which I tried somehow or other vicariously to live their lives." Leonard Woolf - Beginning Again - 1964.

Dr. Leel Gunasekera

A harrowing preoccupation has kept on tugging at my conscience, without any let-up, for several months now. This troubling soul-tremor was brought on by a slight oversight, that can be put right. I put off far too long the recording of my tribute to my long - time friend and seminar-mate Dr. Leel Gunasekera. This expression "Seminar-mate", calls for some elucidation. In the past few months, the two of us - Leel and I found ourselves seated quite often next to each other, at sundry meetings and conferences.

Prior to the start of such events and at the end of those, we had ample leisure to indulge in uninhibited exchanges of views, unconstrained by formal agendas. We were co-resource-persons too, occasionally.

At some of those get-togethers, Leel, would open slightly ajar, a little door to his substantial store of anecdotes, tales, fables and, would dole out some of them, to our amusement and at times to our inner enrichment. On such occasions, if he was in the proper mood, he would even serve a few juicy morsels of luscious gossip.

At the book launch, he kept the assembly (Leel by the president himself) spellbound by his, non-stop gush of experiences, enticingly marinated with spicy touches of humour.

With all that, if we went solely by his widely evident predisposition to humour and anecdotal versatility, we would have failed in doing proper justice to the true profile of this colourful personality, extensively known as Leel Gunasekera.

For nearly two centuries, a long line of civil servants and administrative officers, has kept on contributing assiduously, an impressive array of literary works, to the tradition of creative writing.

This line goes back to John D'Oyly (1774-1824), who acquired a remarkable mastery, not only over Sinhala, but also over Pali and Sanskrit, displaying an unusual linguistic dexterity. His poetic exchanges with Gajaman Nona, form a vivid segment of Sri Lankan folklore.

British rule

In the early days of British Imperial rule in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), the generality of civil servants who came over from Britain, was not persuaded by a compulsion to transform their administrative experience into inspiring creative works.

Some of them would have produced profuse writings. But then, their kind of exercise was, by and large, confined to extensive reportage and memoirs on matters considered momentous, from a high administrative perspective.

The imperial British civil servant, who brought about a profound change in this long-entrenched attitudinal conservatism of the average "White" ruler, was, of course, Leonard Woolf.

He entered Ceylon as a diffident young (24) civil servant. In his own words, back then, he "was a very innocent, unconscious imperialist." In the course of his brief tenure of office in Ceylon, an indelible obsession with the lost land and its people, got deeply embedded in his soul.

The impenetrable mystique, the irrepressible desire, the inexplicable revulsion all these, mixed together to form the indispensable ingredients for the generation of the ego-dynamism, that invariably fuelled his exceptional creativity.

This is part of Leonard Woolf's musings: 'As the night goes on the silence of the jungle grows deeper and deeper, but every now and again it is broken by a soft, sibilant shiver of all the leaves of all the trees for miles round one. This colossal whisper dies away as suddenly as it floats up out of the trees-"

It is from these unforgettable deep - seated experiences that The Village in the Jungle emerged, exactly a century ago, in 1913.

To my mind, this classic formed the template for the creative works of fiction, for succeeding generations of Sri Lankan civil servants and administrative officers, who turned to this literary genre. In most instances, this process may have been at work - whether they were consciously aware of it or not.

Creative writers

Writers such as Wimalaratna Kumaragama, Tissa Devendra, Sarath Amunugama, Edmund Jayasuriya and Sumithra Rahubadda (the list is too long to name them fully) figure among civil service - Administrative service creative writers of the indigenous ilk.

Then of course there is Dr. Leel Gunasekera. This civil servant, commands a perennial popularity because he creatively touched the most sensitive point in the lives of those grievously under-privileged rural masses. To them Petsama (The Petition) is the ultimate visa to a trouble-free life, in their modest, at the edge of their villages.

Strangely enough, Leonard Woolf himself was quite sensitive to the rural recourse to the 'Petition' as an unfailing source of relief for all their ills.

We could listen to L.W's Diary entry, for April 29, 1910, when Halley's Comet let up the Hambantota skies: "In evening rode Hatagala (West Giruwa Pattu) 14 miles where I camped. A large crowd of petitioners kept me until 7.30. the people informed me that they don't like the Comet".

Compared to this how simple must have been the petitions, Leel Gunasekera suffered. In his time, fortunately for him there was no comet, for the people to petition against.

National pastime

Incidentally, a wag quipped: "The national pastime of the Sinhala people is writing petitions against other people."

Leel Gunasekera had an in-bred empathy for the rural masses, who are perpetually buffeted about by endless privations. He was fully aware that he was the point where the 'buck stopped' as all other state officials, direct petitions to him as the last resort. The grievances of the frustrated rural folk are put in Sinhala verse. The verses say, that the helpless folk go to various people. They always direct them to him the Agent (Disapathi)

(Tamunnanseta Dunnai Kiwwa). "They say that the petitions have been given to you. Hon. Sir."

L. G. may have written only a handful of fiction. But, they steadily mark the interface between rural grievance and official apathy.

From childhood on he has been brought up to esteem life. He was raised in a rural backdrop. In consequence, he has been perennially sympathetic to the masses who suffer. Totally bereft of the characteristic arrogance of some at his level of bureaucracy, even today, L.G. is dedicated to serve those who are marginalised.

If he turns to fiction, at eighty today, he may perhaps, complement the Village in the Jungle with a work, that will have layers of meaning for any time, at any place.