Finding Lakdasa Wikkramasinha

 In an article titled “Shakespeare in a takarang shed” in this newspaper, I made reference to Lakdasa Wikkramasinha, the poet. I described Lakdasa as “a man of few words, with a disdainful stare that made lesser mortals uncomfortable, [wearing] his shirt halfway buttoned that displayed his hairy chest, the sleeves rolled up just below the elbow.” 

To accompany that article, I needed a photo of Lakdasa. I Googled, only to be shocked by the images that popped up: his gravestone, streaked with a black stain that obscured some markings, and a photo of the Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, mislabeled Lakdasa.

I then wrote another article titled “Searching for Lakdasa”, in which I detailed my attempts to trace his family members, classmates, and others in my search for Lakdasa’s photo. I am pleased to say that I am now able to present a photo of Lakdasa, not in the “badass” appearance I described, but more formally dressed, perhaps for a wedding. He must have been in his twenties.

Lakdasa Wikkramasinha 3.8.1941 - 18.3.1978

The photo was sent by his then wife Shanthini, who now lives in Zurich.  She was “thrilled reading [my article] and also quite amused by [my] descriptions of Lakdasa; in fact, quite an authentic description of his personality.”

More good news. I am told that a collection of his poetry both in English and Sinhala, with translations of the Sinhala poems into English, is in preparation for publication. The collection will also include previously unpublished poems.

Finally, we'll be able to read Lakdasa’s poems in a single publication. A long awaited recognition of one of our foremost poets writing in English.

July, 2021

Searching for Lakdasa

 A few weeks ago, when I wrote an article titled “Shakespeare in a takarang shed” about the English department at Kelaniya University in the 1970s, I mentioned Lakdasa Wikkramasinha, the poet. Lakdasa did not teach in the English department – he was an instructor in the sub-department of English, which conducted English language courses for all undergraduates – but he was very much part of the scene. In the article, I recalled playing carrom with him at the Senior Common Room, and how we both escaped severe injury, perhaps death, from a mob that was coming to attack campus students.

In the article, I described Lakdasa as “a man of few words, with a disdainful stare that made lesser mortals uncomfortable, [wearing] his shirt halfway buttoned that displayed his hairy chest, the sleeves rolled up just below the elbow.” In other words, a bad ass.

To accompany that article, I needed a photo of Lakdasa. I Googled, only to be shocked by the images that popped up. The most prominent was his gravestone, streaked with a black stain that obscured some markings, and a photo of the Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, mislabeled Lakdasa. Other search engines also came up with the same images.

Surely, someone, somewhere should have Lakdasa’s photo. Thus began my search. Lakdasa had been my senior at Maharagama training college, so I reached out to his classmates for a photo. One, who said he had been the best man at Lakdasa’s wedding, did not have a photo. Another, a photography enthusiast, could not be contacted because of the lockdown. Two other classmates of Lakdasa did not respond to my messages.

I was told about Lakdasa’s sister, who had built a house on Heerassagala Road, Kandy, but my attempts to trace her petered out. A friend of a friend, who said that she may have a photo at her office, was also unavailable, due to the lockdown and a death in the family. Tracing Lakdasa’s genealogy, I contacted a second cousin of Lakdasa’s, without a response. An appeal to the head of an academic department, where Lakdasa’s wife had taught, has gone unanswered. That is understandable, because she last taught there 40 years ago, and my attempt was a desperate shot in the dark.

When I first knew Lakdasa at Maharagama, in 1970, he was known as “the poet”, although hardly anyone around him may have read his poetry, (I hadn’t). In those days, poetry meant Wordsworth, Blake, and Keats to us. Also, at that time, Lakdasa’s poetry hadn’t received much critical assessment, or much read for that matter, because his poems had been self-published in limited editions. He was courting his classmate Claire, and I would see them seated on the corridor leading to the library and chatting for what seemed hours. Lakdasa’s collection titled Fifteen Poems (1970) carried the dedication “For Claire”.  But, they didn’t marry. By the time his next collection, Nossa Senhora dos Chingalas (1973), came out, the dedication was “To Shanthini”, who had become his wife. She taught Chinese at the University of Kelaniya.

Lakdasa’s stature as a poet hit me full in the face, so to speak, only in the early 1990s, when I read Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, a rollicking memoir of Ondaatje’s Ceylonese lineage. Chapter 3 is titled “Don't Talk to Me about Matisse”, and Lakdasa’s poem of the same title is quoted there. I was in the USA at the time, and could not access any of his poetry.

Some years later, in Hong Kong, I was introduced to the chairman of a university English department. When he realized I was Sri Lankan, Andy blurted out, “Did you know Lakdasa?”, and seemed to disbelieve when I said “Quite well”. Later, I realized that he, a British/Australian, was an ardent fan of Lakdasa’s poetry. When Andy published the volume World Englishes (2007), two of Lakdasa’s poems were included in the accompanying CD, read by Prof. Thiru Kandiah.  

In personality, Lakdasa was eccentric. His philosophy was an enigma. In 1965, he stated that “to write in English is a form of cultural treason” and called English the language of the “most despicable and loathsome people on earth”. But, just four years later, he was training to become an English teacher, and went onto “commit treason” by teaching English at the university.

His poetry has been called masculine, and anger, eroticism, sarcasm, and satire were clearly on display. His originality and daring can be seen in lines such as “thick black coils of hair on her head, and Elsewhere”; “the great white hunter Matisse with a gun with two nostrils … Gaugin – the syphilis-spreader, the yellowed obesity”. And satire in “What does the Professor do? He plants brinjals all day”.  The soaring finale - “All roads lead to Rome!” - from “To My Friend Aldred” is matchless.

When he was being interviewed for admission to Maharagama training college, Lakdasa was asked what he had been doing in the past few years. He replied. “Growing cardamoms”. Indeed, he had, in the remote Yahanagala area in hill country. Usually, to interpret Lakdasa’s poetry, one may have to delve into history, the Classics, Latin, Sinhala folklore. But, the appealing simplicity of “In Ancient Kotmale” perhaps derives from those cardamom growing days.

 

In the beautiful principality, in Kotmale

I will build my house of the good soil’s brick

With the timber of the ringing forests,

And I will cover it with the tiles flat,

One on one, as the palms of the farmers ….

 

And in the morning will I see

The sun wounded as my heart with a million arrows,

Rise between the mountain ranges

And spread in the green valley its golden blood.

 

And I will go into the fields in the seasons ….

I will sow the grain, a stream between my hands,

I will cast the grain in falling nets.

It will stream up round the calves of maidens

From the viridian fire of that clay.

 

And in the kilns of my sun-wed fields,

And under the haven of passing clouds

As I repose, in those almost everlasting days,

In the time ordained, in green calendars

Will come my yearned harvest

 

Lakdasa was a trailblazer, a meteor, gone before he was truly appreciated. If ever proof is needed that poets are born, not made, that would be Lakdasa.

Over the years, Lakdasa’s poetry has drawn much analysis - in academic presentations, scholarly articles, an anthology here and there, theses, blog sites - and in the popular press. Some poems were also included in the English literature A/L syllabus. He has been acknowledged as one of Sri Lanka’s foremost poets writing in English. But, sadly, his poetry is scattered in various, little-known publications, and 43 years after his death, there is a possibility of his poetry receding into obscurity.

But, for now, we can focus on a more urgent matter, that of finding a photo of Lakdasa and placing it on the Internet. So, here’s my plea. If you have a photo, could you send it to me at Georgebraine(at)gmail.com? I am also on Facebook. Thank you.

June, 2021

Jude Chryshantha Nonis, RIP

My grandmother Engracia Nonis lived at Boralessa, a village 43 km from Colombo. Her older brother, Charles, who lived nearby, was married thrice, and his eldest son from the third marriage was Alexander. The Nonises were Catholics. Despite their English first names (Charles, Rita, Leander, Alexander, Georgina, Calista, Ignatius, etc), they were not English speakers. The men wore shirt and sarong, and the women a cloth wraparound and a “hattey”, a narrow jacket, leaving the midriff exposed. They were mainly sawyers, mill workers, carpenters, and masons.

I recall Alexander, a colorful character, from the time we moved to Boralessa in 1977. He was a frequent visitor to our home, “Pondside”. Both Fawzia and I liked his company, and that of his mother Puransina, sister Georgina, and brother Ignatius, who all lived down the road from us. Alexander knew the history of the Braines and related stories, mainly humorous, from the past. He did not seem to have a wife, but had a few children at Boralessa. He drank heavily, but, on the whole, was harmless.

All that background information leads to the protagonist of this story, Jude Chryshantha Nonis, who I will refer to as Chrys from now on. Chrys was Alexander’s seventh child, and I vaguely recall seeing him around in the late 1970s. He was shy, as most Nonises are, so didn’t leave an impression. However, when we began spending more time at “Pondside” after living abroad for years, we came to know him better. He was married by then, and was a carpenter. Alexander had died while we were away.

At first, I got Chrys to attend to various repair jobs at “Pondside” – fixing a door, replacing a window. As I got to know him better, I also heard parts of his life story. His father Alexander had begun to unravel when he was shot at and suffered grievous injury. Alexander lost his job, began to drink even more, and, fed up with his lifestyle, his wife left him, running off with a paramour. (She was the mother of 8 children at this time.) Most of the children left with the mother, and Chrys, a schoolboy at that time, was left to take care of his father. Chrys dropped out of school. (He didn’t talk much about his life during this hardship period; I heard about it from others.) His father and uncles had been sawyers of logs - they even went out in groups and camped for weeks in thick jungles for work - but Chrys took to carpentry and stayed in the village.

In the 1930s, Boralessa began to stage a passion play based on the famous Oberammergau passion play in Germany. Its hallmark, as in Oberammergau, was that all the roles were played not by professional actors, but by villagers – carpenters, masons, sawyers, and others – who had been trained. The prized role was that of Jesus. The chosen villager had to fast and pray, and abstain from tobacco, alcohol, and sex for months. This difficult role, which required the actor to stay “crucified” on the cross for a long period, was played by Chrys in the early 1990s, for three or four consecutive years. True to his nature, Chrys did not talk about his “acting days”.

In the early 2000s, when Fawzia and I returned more often to our Boralessa home “Pondside”, we met up with Chrys. He was married to Indra and had two children. When we decided to expand our house, Chrys undertook to task, building a master bedroom and a kitchen. By then, Chrys had about five carpenters working for him. The photo on the previous page shows Chrys seated on the deck he built for us. His two children, Sriyantha and Samanthi, are with him.

After my retirement and with Fawzia’s death, Chrys and Indra began to play a larger role in my life and at “Pondside”. I handed over the management of the property to them, and its income. Indra is a wonderful cook and I was assured of delicious meals, mainly with produce sourced from the property itself, pesticide and weedicide free. Indra’s seafood dishes – fish, prawns, and crabs – are the best I have tasted. I traveled frequently, and Chrys and Indra took good care of “Pondside”. I helped with their children’s education, and saw them grow up to become hardworking students. These Nonises became my extended family.

Chrys’ specialty was the construction of roofs, which involved gruelling work under a blazing sun. Good workers were hard to get, and some clients defaulted on payments.  Some evenings, I saw him totally exhausted and in utter despair. He owned a three wheeler and a small van, and I urged him to give up carpentry gradually and to drive his vehicles for hire. But he stuck to what he knew best.

When the latest wave of covid hit, Chrys was working on a roof job, with four helpers, and his son, Sriyantha, now 22, pitching in. I urged Chrys to stop work and rest at home till covid was under control, especially because he had not been vaccinated. (It wasn’t available in his area.) But he continued to work. By mid-August, the whole family came down, showing symptoms of covid: fever, cough, diarrhea, loss of smell. They saw a doctor, who treated them with antibiotics. Indra told me that, one evening, the number of patients seeing the doctor rose to 160. Obviously, covid was spreading fast in the area.

One day, I spoke to Chrys on the phone, and realized he was breathing with difficulty. I urged Indra to take him to hospital. He was taken to Negombo hospital, which was overrun with covid patients. Fortunately, at Marawila hospital, he was given a bed, and immediately ventilated in the covid ward.

At the insistence of the nurses, Sriyantha, the son, stayed at the hospital by Chrys’ side. This was a harrowing time for the young man, to see the intense suffering of covid patients, some dying in agony. Within a few days, Chrys’ older brother, Primus (65) was admitted to the same ward. Three days later, Primus died in the adjoining bed.

Chrys’ condition fluctuated. He was being treated for pneumonia, perhaps the result of a chronic lung condition. I spoke to him on the phone once, and so did Indra and the daughter. But, suddenly, his condition deteriorated, and perhaps suffering a heart attack and/or a stroke, Chrys died on August 29.

His family lost their breadwinner. I lost a friend. For me, the Boralessa landscape is changed forever.

Chrys was only 54.

Chrys at the covid ward

Shakespeare in a "takarang" shed

In a tribute to Prof. Ashley Halpe, his daughter recently wrote about the time he was “forced to give his lectures in a takarang shed”. That triggered my nostalgic memories, of sitting in those takarang sheds, both as a teacher and a student. This is that story.

But, let me begin at the beginning. In 1973, I was teaching English at a remote school in the Uva, when the Vidyalankara campus advertised for English instructors. I was called for a written test, and, to my amazement, nearly 200 applicants had turned-up. I thought my chances were nil. Surprisingly, after a follow-up interview, I was selected, one of only three appointees.

Vidyalankara campus sat on a hill, at Kelaniya, not far from the Colombo – Kandy road. As one climbed the hill, back in the mid-1970s, the sports ground and the convocation hall would be on the left, followed by the science block and the library. On the right were the student center and a dormitory for female students. Teachers traveled from home and students lived mostly in nearby boarding house. A no frills, commuter campus.

After walking past these buildings, one descended the hill to a strange sight: a scattering of low slung takarang (zinc sheeted) buildings on either side of the road. On the left, one long structure housed the English department. On the right, a number of buildings housed the sub-department of English, offering general English courses to students of all majors. These courses were taught by a host of instructors, mainly English trained teachers like me. English majors, on the other hand, attended lectures conducted by professors, lecturers, and assistant lecturers.

The takarang sheds were spread among coconut palms, each consisting of a number of classrooms. The walls, which rose to about six feet, were made of cement blocks, crudely white-washed, topped by wire mesh. The roofs were zinc sheets, dented by falling coconuts and branches. The classrooms were hot, the teaching method was chalk-and-talk, and the students sat passively, bored, their minds elsewhere. On rainy days, the sound of rain on the roof was deafening, and all chairs were soon wet, not drying for days.

Vidyalankara, having been a pirivena (monastic college), enrolled a large number of young Buddhist monks. They were the better students, but, the longer they stayed at the university, the less inclined they were to remain in robes. Perhaps the easy interaction with female students showed them the disadvantages of a celibate life.

After the 1971 insurrection, Vidyalankara had been a camp for captured “Che Guevarists”, and their kurutu gee (poetic graffiti) could still be seen in the basement of the science building. A few years later, a group of trainee math teachers were brutally ragged in that basement. Already, JVP led, Marxist-oriented student unions were making a comeback.

The senior common room, actually a partitioned off space on a staircase landing, is where all teachers, irrespective of rank, met and mixed. We chatted, read newspapers and magazines, had a cup of tea, and played carrom. One player I partnered was Lakdasa Wikkramasinha, having previously known him at Maharagama teachers’ college. A man of few words, with a disdainful stare that made lesser mortals uncomfortable, he wore his shirt halfway buttoned that displayed his hairy chest, and the sleeves rolled up just below the elbow. He was already a well-known poet, and is now acknowledged as perhaps Sri Lanka’s best, writing in English.

A few years after joining, I was given permission to enroll full-time for a special degree in English at Vidyalankara itself. So I led a double life, an instructor and a student at the same time. As a student, I came into close contact with other students majoring in English, mainly young and female, as well as the teachers who taught them. My group of special degree students had five young females and me, the only male and a good ten years older than my classmates. This was when English was cynically nicknamed kaduwa (sword). What I soon realized was that, despite their shabby appearance, the takarang sheds also sheltered inspiring and passionate teachers.

"The takarang shed" (Photo: Kumar de Silva)

Prof. Doric de Souza was renowned among them. A Trotskyite politician and a Marxist theoretician, and a contemporary of NM Perera, Colvin R. de Silva, and Philip Gunawardena, Doric - tall, bald and slightly stooped – had a commanding personality. He had been a senator and a permanent secretary of a ministry, but dressed simply, in a bush shirt and cotton pants. He addressed students as Mr. or Miss. He never brought politics into the classroom.

Doric taught The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s 14^th century classic. The tales were related by a motley collection of pilgrims, including a knight, a prioress, a monk, a man of law, a scholarly clerk, a miller, a wife of Bath and many others. Doric’s mode of teaching was to read the text in his sonorous voice, pausing to explain and ask for our questions and opinions.

Some tales contain explicit descriptions of debauchery. On the day the Miller’s Tale was to be discussed, the female classmates (young enough to be his grandchildren) waited, sitting upright with bated breath, staring at Doric mischievously, wondering how he would handle the bawdy parts. Doric was up to the mark, and, looking down on the text, read right through the lines, without a pause, explanation or question! The scene is etched in my mind.

A word about those female classmates. They were from elite girls’ schools and privileged families. I occasionally overheard their off-color jokes. Occasionally, I would see bearded, long haired, sullen young men coming to the English department to meet with some of these young women. Intrigued, I snooped, and realized that the women were translating radical leftist texts for the men. These young men perhaps died, on burning tyres or in other horrifying ways, in the violence against the government a few years later. The women, with solid qualifications in English, would have gone into well-paying jobs.

Doric once invited me and two other instructors to 80 Club for drinks, where the actor Gamini Fonseka stopped by our table to mention how much he admired Doric, whom he addressed as Sir. One instructor, a smart aleck, got into an argument with Gamini.

Those were the days of strict foreign exchange controls, and even essential textbooks for our courses were not freely available. The library was bereft of books, the shelves for English language and literature holding only a few tattered, outdated volumes, missing some pages. (Instead, the shelves were bulging with the thick volumes of the collected speeches of Kim Il-Sung, donated by the North Korean Embassy, and read by no one.) All this meant that we did not have secondary sources, or access to literary criticism. So, in tutorials, we wrote mainly what we had noted down in lectures. The lecturers would have found the endless repetition of their own ideas returning to them in student tutorials utterly boring.

AMG Sirimanne was perhaps the most popular and inspiring teacher. He did not have a commanding presence, nor did he stick to the text, interposing the lecture with anecdotes, usually funny. He taught Wordsworth with passion, taking was away from the mundane surroundings to a green and pleasant land, to a time of romance and places of natural beauty. He deftly added pithy statements in Sinhala to his lectures, and we barely noticed the intrusion. Sirimanne had a thriving tuition class for AL students, and that, in the eyes of his colleagues, somewhat lessened his standing as a scholar. But not in ours.

Teachers often adopt the teaching styles of their favorite teachers. In retrospect, I realize that Sirimanne was my model. I, too, would rarely stick to the textbook, mixing anecdotes and jokes as I taught.

Here’s a Sirimanne anecdote. When he was in the USA, studying on a scholarship, a parcel had arrived addressed to him. Sirimanne was summoned to the post office, and the parcel opened before him by a counter clerk. Upon seeing and smelling the contents, the clerk exclaimed “What’s this? Sh.t?” In fact, they were lumps of maldive fish.

Ranjith Gunewardena, fondly nicknamed “Ranjith Goonda” by the students, taught poetry in translation. His forte was the Spanish poet Anthonio Machado. In his rough smoker’s voice, Ranjith didn’t teach, but performed, his soaring voice and passion carrying him away. Himself a product of Vidyalankara, and equally fluent in Sinhala and English, he would shock his sheltered, privileged students with profanities. Behind that idiosyncratic, devil-may care personality, was a tender heart. He called me “machang” (we were similar in age). In fact, he had many “machangs”.

A few years ago, I sat next to a Spaniard on a flight. As we talked, I told him about the Machado poems I had read in the 70s, and still cherished. Then I recited the opening lines of “To José María Palacio”, Machado’s bitter sweet poem of nostalgia and longing, to the amazement of my fellow traveler. I remembered how avant garde Ranjith had been.

Palacio, my dear friend,
is spring already
covering the poplar branches
by the river and the roads? On the plain
of the upper Douro, spring comes late,
but it’s so soft and lovely when it arrives!

Do the old elms
have some new leaves?

This was the time that the English department was moved from Peradeniya to Vidyalankara, for reasons too complex to describe here. That brought Prof. Ashley Halpe to us. We had not met him, but his reputation as a top Shakespearean scholar preceded his arrival. He turned out to be a soft spoken, low key, unassuming man. He traveled from Peradeniya to Kelaniya perhaps twice a week, taking the bus, so we had little opportunity to get to know him. Our loss. If he resented having to teach in a takarang shed, away from salubrious Peradeniya, he did not show it. Often dressed in a bush shirt, casual pants, and sandals, I can still picture him trudging up the hill.

Those were violent days on campuses. The JVP was in control of student councils, but UNP student unions were being formed, leading to inevitable clashes. Vidyalankara was a hotbed of these clashes, leading to frequent suspension of classes. (I stayed home so often that a neighbor asked me if I was unemployed.) Once, passing the Vice-Chancellor’s office, I saw that radical students had, once again, invaded the office. One bearded, long haired, raggedly dressed  student was standing on the VC’s desk, gesticulating wildly while lecturing the VC.

In 1977, the UNP came into power, and the campus clashes worsened. One day in March 1978, a bunch of thugs (organized by a prominent politician) swarmed up from Kandy road, armed with knives and iron rods, and attacked students at the student center. Outnumbered, the thugs were beaten-up and chased away by the students. An eerie, ominous silence descended. The road leading down to the Kandy road was deserted.

Lakdasa and I had watched this from the safety of the science block entrance, and noticed that someone was lying on the road, halfway between the student center and the Kandy road. We thought it was a student who had been ambushed.

So we walked down to the prone body and squatted down for a closer look. It was one of the thugs, badly beaten, his hair matted with blood, bleeding from the nostrils, taking horrific, long drawn breaths. He appeared to be breathing his last. Suddenly, we heard a wild yell and saw a number of thugs running up the hill, brandishing iron rods, already within a few yards of us. Lakdasa and I took to our heels, and ran uphill back for our dear lives. Had we been caught, we would have been severely beaten-up, if not killed. (The thug died the next day, and the President of the country attended his funeral.)

Lakdasa died a few months later, from drowning. He was only 36.   

Those takarang sheds hid inspiring, charismatic teachers, with a wealth of talent. Some students, too, have gone to stellar careers, in Sri Lanka and abroad. 

Vidyalankara became the University of Kelaniya in 1978. The takarang sheds survived that change.