Thirty eminent Lankans immortalised

Viyat Muvadora
Author: Sumudu Chathurani Jayawardena
Sarasavi Publishers, Nugegoda
Reviewed by Daya Dissanayake

About the Paris Review, a critic had once said, it is “one of the single most persistent acts of cultural conservation in the history of the world”. The founding editors of the Paris Review in 1953, Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton, “found another alternative to criticism - letting the authors talk about their works themselves”.

We do not have such a journal in our country, but Sumudu Chaturani Jayawardena has fulfilled the need of the Sinhala reader to learn about the lives and works of eminent Sri Lankans, through a series of interviews she had conducted for the Punkalasa magazine in the Sunday newspaper, Silumina. Now a collection of thirty such conversations have been published as ‘Viyat Muvadora'.

There was a time when interesting newspaper articles were collected by readers, who filed or pasted on scrapbooks, but today most people would not have the time and patience to do it. Storage of such a bulky file is also a difficulty in most compact homes today. Until we are ready to accept digital publications, the best solution is to have such interesting and useful articles collected into a printed book. Of late it has become a trend to have the columns and articles published in newspapers again as books, but many of them are not worth a second reading and deserve a place in a library, because they discuss contemporary issues which become outdated by the time they get published in the form of a book. Viyat Muvadora is a book with an all time value.

Eminent Sri Lankans

At such a time it is difficult to pick the grain from the chaff. Viyat Muvadora is a good grain that has to be picked and preserved. We can read in ‘Viyat Muvadora’ many little known facts about 30 eminent Sri Lankans, in many fields of arts and culture, ranging from fiction, poetry, drama, music and dance. Getting an opportunity to interview an eminent person is not an easy task, except with those who yearn for publicity. Sometimes the journalist has to persist for a long time, as did Sumudu Chaturani who had tried for over three years to obtain an appointment with an academic, and she had finally not only succeeded, but written an insightful article based on their conversation.

The word she uses is ‘Sallapa’, and the English word conversation does not convey the idea, because at times Sumudu is really in communion with the interviewee. Since all 30 personalities written about in this book are held in the highest esteem, it is not possible to mention a few names in a brief article like this. Let it suffice to say that there are venerable bhikkhus and professors in various fields, literati in English, Sinhala and Tamil.

It has to be highlighted, that the author has always done her homework before she met her interviewee, be it archaeology, literature, music or poetry, as is evident from the questions she had asked them, and the way she had summarised the responses to fit into the limited space in her column. It is regretful to note the author has missed a good opportunity to add more details of the conversations, in her book, where space would not have been a restriction. By printing the newspaper column as it is, the readers had probably lost much more information which would have been useful.

Technology

It is also obvious and commendable that the author had not done the interviews by telephone, or by e-mail, which could only be justified in the case of a person living in some far away country, but even then today's communication technology allows the journalist to have a face-to-face discussion. Getting an e-mail response to a set of questions sent by an e-mail would never be a proper interview, because it is not just the words that tell the story of the interviewee, but his face, his reactions, gestures, which tell a lot more than the empty words on a paper or the computer screen.

It is only when the interviewer is familiar with the subject, and has infinite patience that an interview or conversation could be successful. Sometimes the interviewee dominates the conversation, does not even allow any questions to be asked, or does not respond to the question asked. Another difficulty which has to be faced is condensing a conversation of several hours, into about one thousand words, while covering all the important and interesting issues and avoiding any misreporting.

Viyat Muvadora is a book that should be read by our younger generation, our students still in school, or in the universities. Most of them may have heard of the people in this book, but would not know more about their lives or achievements.

This collection should encourage students to read the works published by these academics and scholars. It is for this reason that the book should be made available in libraries. The book is also a timely publication, as some of the people in the book have already passed away, and if Sumudu had not had her conversations with them and recorded them, it would have been a great loss.

The days are numbered for printed books of this nature. Sumudu Chathurani can now upload all her articles on the worldwide web, so everyone could read them on-line and they would also be stored for easy access from anywhere on earth. Till then let us read the printed book.