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 The collection will also include previously unpublished poems.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