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| Sunday, 25 September 2005 |
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Features |  |
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Martin Wickramasinghe Folk Art Museum : Realisation of a writer's dream by Ranga Chandrarathne
These were the impressions that the writer later immortalized in his novels, which have been translated, hitherto, into several international languages. The house in which the writer was born has inspired the Martin Wickramasinghe Trust to establish a folk museum complex, surrounded by a restored ecosystem planted with hundreds of varieties of indigenous trees and shrubs in which bird life abounds. The house and the surroundings bring to life a little part of Koggala, so vividly depicted in Wickramasinghe's writings.
Wickramasinghe's ancestral house Martin Wickramasinghe's ancestral house occupies a central piece in the seven-acre Folk Museum which depicts the life, the trades and tools that had been used by the villagers towards the tail end of the 18th century. The process of transition that this coastal village went through from feudalism to an emerging capitalist society was vividly depicted in Wickramasinghe's trilogy; Gamperaliya, Kaliyugaya and Yuganthaya. The section of the house in which he and his sisters grew up in the care of their parents has withstood the test of time and the partly renovated house, (The rear section is believed to be nearly 200-years-old), is a typical southern house with pleasing Dutch architectural features and cool whitewashed walls and floors paved with square bricks.
The grass-covered mound to the right of the house holds the writer's ashes, surmounted by a wedge-shaped rock from the Koggala reef, on which he spent many hours of his day during his childhood. The ashes of his wife Prema are also buried under this mound. An exhibition of memorabilia is housed in the Hall of Life, where one can observe Wickramasinghe's life through a series of photographs, awards and souvenirs. The Folk Museum was the writer's dream where he wanted to recapture the technology and cultural artifacts, which was part of his childhood. The museum was started with various articles collected during the lifetime of the author and was opened to the public in 1981. The Wickramasinghe Trust has developed the museum into a treasure trove of artifacts depicting the history of Sri Lankan folk culture. The museum is a fascinating collection of artifacts from ancient to modern times featuring Buddhist artifacts and portrays the development of rural technology in agriculture, agro industry, fishing, pottery, metal crafts and various artifacts from folk dances and religious ceremonies. The museum offers visitors a rare insight into Sri Lankan folk culture. It is no wonder that this unique piece of earth had nurtured and set ablaze the imagination of one of the country's great writers.
The great sage of Koggala It is an ideal place to understand the author more and a little bit of what Koggala and its people meant to him. Wickramasinghe's writing recalls vividly the frolicsome time of his childhood, exploring the marine life in the Koggala reef, playing with friends from his village and enjoying the rural solitude of his beloved Koggala. Martin Wickramasinghe was born in 1890 in the village of Malalagama in Koggala. As a village boy he first learnt Sinhala letters from an Ola Leaf alphabet, tracing the letters on a sand-board. The village hinterland, bounded on one side by the beautiful expanse of the great Koggala lake and on the other by a canal fringed sea teeming with marine life, kindled his curiosity and stimulated his imagination about the native and origin of living things and the world. His only education was in a village school for less than five years. At the age of fourteen as the sole breadwinner in a family of nine sisters and a widowed mother he was forced to leave his native village Koggala for Colombo and Batticaloa in search of employment. In spite of humble beginnings Martin Wickramasinghe taught himself not only Sinhala and English but also Sanskrit and Pali. He published his first book at the age of twenty three and in the last sixty years he has written over eighty books and innumerable articles and papers on the culture and civilisation of the Sinhala people, as well as novels and short stories, which have brought him his present recognition as Sri Lanka's foremost intellectual and creative writer. Martin Wickramasinghe's major achievement has been his creative writings in Sinhala and his novels and short stories. He was also credited for introducing a standard criteria in Sinhala literary criticism, and writings on science in Sinhala. Most of his works in Sinhala have been translated into English, and his original writings in English have been reprinted for the benefit of young readers. Dr. Lakshmi de Silva (former Head of the Department of English of the University of Kelaniya) has translated Ape Gama and Gamperaliya into English. The English translation of Ape Gama is already published under the name 'Lay Bare the Roots' and Gamperaliya will soon be published. The Martin Wickramasinghe Trust holds exhibitions at schools and Educational Institutes where the Trust makes available Martin Wickramasinghe publications at an affordable price. Seated on the threshold of Wickramasinghe's ancestral home, enjoying the bliss of his seven acre piece of rural paradise is an unforgettable experience that one should not miss. *** Martin Wickramasinghe Trust The Martin Wickramasinghe Trust started with the noble objectives of preserving the living legacy of this great Sri Lankan writer and for the promotion of discourse in Sri Lankan literature and folk culture, has maintained the Martin Wickramasinghe Museum of Folk Culture in Koggala and the Martin Wickramasinghe collection of over 500 volumes of books in the Hall of Literature and life house in the National Library. In addition the Trust also maintains a website dedicated to the writer |
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| Produced by Lake House |
Set against the pastoral village of Malalagama, the Martin Wickramasinghe
Folk Art Museum provides an insight into the carefree life of the great Sri
Lankan writer where in his formative years he spent amidst the flora and
fauna and the background of a rich village life in Southern Sri Lanka which
rekindled the imagination and aspirations of this great writer. 
The museum principally consists of five sections: The house in which
Martin Wickramasinghe was born, the Samadhi, where his ashes have been
interred, the Museum of Folk Culture and the restored eco-environment. 
With the outbreak of World War II, the Royal Air force ordered the
villagers to evacuate from the village within 24 hours and most of the
houses were destroyed to build an airport. However Wickramasinghe's house
miraculously escaped the fate of other houses in the village. The story goes
that this simple house with its subdued architecture captured the eye of a
female air force officer who made it her residence during the war. 
However a concerned visitor observed that the most number of children who
visited andshowed an interest in wickramasinghe's writing were from the
country's Muslim community and said that the reason attributed to this was
that the impact created on them when reading Sinhala literature was greater
than their Sinhalese counterparts as Sinhala happened to be their mother
tongue. 
