A flair for the exotic

By Shireen SENADHIRA

When the Yala wildlife sanctuary in the south of Sri Lanka was founded by the Game Protection Society (now, Wildlife and Nature Protection Society) in 1894, the first Game Ranger was H H Engelbrecht. He was an Afrikaaner and a Boer prisoner of war who was not returned to South Africa because he refused to swear allegiance to the British monarchy. He was made custodian of the Game Sanctuary around 1908. With his experience of wildlife on the veldt, the post suited him admirably. He administered the region fearlessly and with courage, using his whip to punish any miscreants. Many are the tales of his daring and prowess with the gun.

A few years back his story was televised in a teledrama called, Wanabima sirakaruwa ( a forest prisoner) about his life in the game sanctuary. The story unravelled that during his tenure as Game Ranger, there was a village family living in the outskirts of the sanctuary. The family had three or four daughters quite comely. One of the younger ones was a spirited lass and used to sit on the rocks that bordered Yala sanctuary and the sea.

Friendship

She enjoyed the sea and its movements. That is how the Game Ranger met the lass and they struck up a friendship. An unusual alliance for a village girl brought up in the culture and tradition of the Sinhalese to venture forth into the unknown. Here was a situation of a foreign man, rather wild in appearance, strong and fearsome looking, a man who was a strict Game Ranger and a lithesome damsel getting attracted to each other.

What made her look for the unusual when there would have been plenty of young men in her village. Is it a strong force that leads one to look beyond one’s surroundings? The teledrama continued with the couple getting married and they lived amicably in the Game Ranger’s home. The story went on further with the Game Ranger being imprisoned for a charge during wartime and being released later.

The fact that she sat on the rocks and stared at the sea, itself is an out of the ordinary action for her to do. That is because, there is so much to be done about a house whether it was small or big. The chores for a village girl is such that it fills her entire day. Unlike in a town, there are chenas to be tended as well as garden plots, wells, ponds or river to go for water, firewood to be collected and look after pets or farm animals.

Pull of the unknown

Perhaps it was the pull of the unknown, or maybe the stories she had heard or read made her think and imagine much more and beyond her village near the forest. Whatever it was, she made her way to the rocks and sat and gazed at the far horizon. It could be that she wanted to be a passenger in one of the mysterious ships that passed by. Anyway, she wasn’t like her sisters but used to get away to watch and listen to the wind above the sea and let her thoughts roll with the waves.

Sudu Kaluwara

In another instance, there was a film, Sudu Kaluwara (white darkness) that was screened some years ago. The intriguing title made one think. The film story was set during the British regime in Sri Lanka. The plot was of a British District Agent and a daughter of an important family in a village near his abode. The daughter used to walk in the forest glade near her home. Perhaps she had seen the District Agent previously and wanted to meet him.

They did meet in the forest very soon. He was attracted by her and her tinkling laughter and she with the unknown. They taught each other words of their own language and spent as much time as they could with each other. This strong mutual attraction led to the inevitable end and the girl found herself pregnant. What a commotion it created.

The men of the family and important members of the village went in deputation to accost the culprit, the District Agent, to tell him of the delicate situation of the girl and that he should marry the girl he made pregnant. He refused scornfully, implying that it was a privilege for the girl to associate with the likes of him. As the request came to a dead end the men left. As they left they insulted the Government agent by their action which was far worse than a slap in the face. It was fitting end for the film.

In the story, the District Agent did not marry the pregnant girl. She was fortunate that a relation of her’s who had always liked her, overcame the obstacles and was willing to marry her and give a home to illegitimate child too.

In the case of this film, the flair for the unknown was not successful but it can be seen that the daughter of an important family in the village was hankering after the unusual. The practice in those times was that the village girls were hardly seen by visitors and certainly not heard. They did their work and merged themselves with the background. This way of life did not curtail the girls in the village but kept them away from the glare and kept them protected.

They got about their day’s work and had fun bathing in the river with other youngsters and did join other group work. They did not live in oblivion but took part in the village and religious festivals and also school activities where they did meet people. The protagonist of the film however, was curious about the young district agent and made herself somehow meet him despite her family and the village folk who would never have allowed that to happen if they had an inkling about her whereabouts.

Paul Gauguin

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Is a painting by Paul Gauguin, a French artist in 1897 in Tahiti. What do you think of the title? What do you think of the painting?

It is a philosophical painting. It has been indicated that the paining should be read from right to left, with the three major figure groups illustrating the questions asked in the title. In the right hand corner the three women with a child represent the beginning of life; the middle group depicts the daily existence of adulthood; and in the left side, the final group, an old woman who is reconciled and resigned to her thoughts of approaching death.

At her feet is a strange white bird which is supposed to represent the ‘futility of words.’ The blue idol in the background is supposed to depict ‘the beyond.’ As can be seen, the painting is very profound and very thought provoking. It must be noted, however, that Gauguin painted this picture when his morale and physical condition were at low ebb. Though it was in such a state that this painting was done, it is not only the most colossal canvas he ever painted but it’s also the work that explains the entire philosophical and pictorial doctrine of the artist.

Gauguin himself was a restless man who couldn’t settle down in Denmark with this Danish wife and large family. He then travelled to South of France. There, he painted with the impressionists at the time. His childhood in Peru and travels while in the Navy would have given Gauguin a taste for the exotic and primitive culture. Known for his bold colours, primitive style and paintings of young Polynesian girls, he made a name for himself with his Tahitian paintings in Europe.

He travelled to Tahiti to live there because he was searching for artistic redemption. He did say that anyone willing could find new strength in faraway places. He though a comeback to the primitive and the exotic would help him to find a way to purify his art. In Tahiti, Gauguin felt liberated, free of any artistic or social corset. Trying to separate himself from any vestige of European society, he left Papeete, the capital of Tahiti and moved to the middle of the country. Perhaps he was searching for his fabulous valley of eternal freedom.

Social conventions

Free of these social conventions, Gauguin created a new Artistic Eve, using Tahitian women as his models. The artist never suppressed his penchant for the Tahitian women and boasted about them to his friends during his French intermission. The girls were the prominent figures in his works such as, the “Queen of Beauty’ and ‘Girls with mango flowers.’

He painted in sensuous, decorative and symbolic style and created his paintings with bold expressive areas with flat tone. He evolved his own painting style, synthetisme. Prominent among the colours he used were, cadmium, chrome yellows, yellow ochre, viridian and emerald greens, ultramarine and cobalt blues, cobalt violet, red lakes, vermillion and white.

Gauguin is also considered a Post-impressionist painter. His bold colourful design oriented paintings did significantly influence Modern Art. Artists and movements in the early 20th century inspired by him were Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Andre Derain, Fauvism, cubism and orphism among others.

Thus, it can be seen that he was not only an artist of great repute but also an artist that was always seeking the unknown and the exotic. This trait in him didn’t give him much reprieve but consistently egged him on in his work till his life ended.

Jane Johnson

There was an interesting article in the Daily Mail of the United Kingdom on September 25 about Jane Johnson. The article began as follows:

“My best friend stared at me as if I had announced that an asteroid was about to obliterate life on earth. I had just told her that I was moving to Africa to marry a man I had met only six months previously, and her reaction was typical of the skepticism which greeted me whenever I told anyone about my exciting plan.

‘You’re utterly mad,’ she said. ‘You hardly know him. He could be a rapist, a conman, anything.’

Jane was a good looking woman over 40 years and a successful publisher in Britain. She was and had always been unconventional type of person who had been involved with poets, actors and singers. She found them charming and handsome but not the sort of men who one would want to settle down with. It was no surprise that her best friend reacted the way she did at Jane’s announcement. Jane had just told her that her intended husband was Abdellatif, who was a Berber tribesman from a mountain village in south west Morocco. Also that he looked impossibly exotic in his native turban.

Primary language

To tell you more about this out of the ordinary alliance, neither of them spoke the other’s primary language. They had known each other for a short time. At that time, there were constant stories in the newspapers about middle-aged women going on holiday and losing their hearts to good looking young foreigners on the hunt for a European passports and boosted bank account. Jane had always thought such women to be gullible and delusional.

But now the same thing was happening to her. Maybe she wondered whether she was delusional too but as always, one thinks of the exception to the rule and that one is prettier and cleverer and wiser than the rest.

Abdel, however, was a few years younger than Jane and seemed hardly a sensible choice for a 44 year old career woman who was going up the ladder in a much liked profession in which she had toiled for nearly 20 years. She really liked her job as publishing director for a major London publishing house, acquiring and editing authors, nurturing their careers and creating bestsellers. She was good at negotiating good contracts and cherished the intimacy of crafting texts with her writers. She enjoyed living in London among friends and family. But, she says, that there was an emotional void at the heart of it though she had remained single out of choice. That was how she had turned to writing.

She was a keen mountain climber too. She and a friend climbed a mountain in Morocco and found themselves in a mountain village Tafraout, 800 miles south west on a whim. But the weather was against them with rain and freezing cold and other hazards, they stopped at this village and took refuge in a restaurant.

There, they were greeted by a turbaned man with hawkish profile, brilliant dark eyes and a kingly air. Jane could not take her eyes off hi m and he seemed equally intrigued by her too. Thus was the first meeting.

The next day they continued the gruelling climb and descent and they returned to the restaurant. Jane and Abdel exchanged about 20 words in broken French, also a bow and a Berber greeting as well as their telephone numbers. After leaving Morocco, Jane and Abdel conducted a friendship over the phone and Jane went again in summer to meet him using all her holiday leave. Their friendship developed. Abdel too had never married because he was busy providing for his family as his father died young and he had to work to put younger sisters and brothers through college.

He was an educated man and did not need a British passport or Jane’s money as he had his own restaurant and great pride in his heritage. A few months later, they married in a Muslim ceremony in 2005. Now seven years on, they have proved the doubters wrong. They feel like two pieces of a puzzle which have somehow found one another despite being continents apart. They divide their time living in both countries. Jane has found Abdel’s wonderful country, warm and rich since it has provided her with much inspiration for her writing.

Elusive

Why do you think it all happened this way to Jane and Abdel? Perhaps it was the seeking for the unusual by Jane. She seems to have got all she wanted on a plate even though it did take time.

To me, she already had an exciting enough life working in a publishing company meeting all sorts of writers and book people from all over the world. But somehow, it wasn’t all satisfactory and she was not content in just living the life she had. She yearned for something else which seemed to be quite elusive. She didn’t give up her quest and was rewarded in a most amazing way.

All the above situations show that a flair for the unknown, the exotic, is inherent in us. It is only the brave and daring who would go seeking it. The modest ones stay content. It is the same as one grows up with dreams. It’s rarely that such dreams are realised. The individual manages well with other situations and other environs that he or she is placed in and some become very successful.

But one in many, have this restless yearning and they never let it quell. There is romanticism attached to the unknown. It’s this streak that made Gauguin the great artist he was and Jane Johnson to live her life the way she envisioned it.

It’s the same, if you see a place in the television or read about it, you yearn to go there and if you can manage to do so, you would. Anyway, as I did read somewhere, never cut out your dreams, for what are we without them?