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All over in half an hour!
View(s):The launch of ‘Irangani as told to KumardeSilva’
By D.C. Ranatunga
For the first time I was at a book launch which lasted just half an hour. The packed hall at the Lionel Wendt Art Studio in a way liked it being over soon – it was so warm that evening! No one complained it was far too short. Normally we are used to going for a book launch to spend a minimum of two hours.
Short and sweet event but full of substance: Iranganie Serasinghe speaks at the book launch. Pic by Hasitha Kulasekera
Though it didn’t take long, the launch of ‘Irangani as told to kumardesilva’, the autobiography of Sri Lanka’s legendary stage and screen actress did not lack anything. The launch was unique in many ways. There were no drummers to accompany the star of the evening. There was no chief guest. There was no head table. No flower decorations on stage. No one sang songs. Neither were there any dances. Yet it was a complete show.
Kumar de Silva,” the culprit of this task”, as Irangani Serasinghe put it, likes to do something different. And that’s exactly what he achieved. Brief introduction by him — on how he survived many an insult from the lady from being called “a jungle tic” to being bullied over two years — was followed by the reading of extracts from the book by Kumar and Irangani S’s niece Sharmini Serasinghe.
Pity the audience could not see the launch itself when Kumar and publisher Ranjith Samaranayake handed over the first copy to the lady with the photographers crowding in front of the low stage cutting off the audience view completely.
Irangani Serasinghe made a short and sweet speech. She wondered why Kumar wanted to do her biography when “I had not achieved anything.” She felt that biographies should be written about famous people like Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa, or notorious characters like Adolph Hitler or Pol Pot, or famous stars like Charlie Chaplin or Marylin Monroe “Who had the right vital statistics.” She laughingly noted something to the effect she had no statistics to boast about!
As an afterthought, she remembered something she had not told Kumar. She confided that English poetry played a crucial role in her career. “It was the wonderful poems on nature that prompted my love for nature,” she said. We know the pioneering work she did with ‘Rukrekaganno’.
Judging from the vast crowd that turned up (I didn’t notice any actors or actresses – maybe I missed them), it was obvious that everyone was convinced that she deserved the honour of having her autobiography published. And most of them did rush to the counters and picked up a copy.
The publication was also the first of a series that Ranjith Sam is doing with Kumar de S. In a few months there will be one on Bonsoir programmes (where Kumar came into the limelight) and in two years one on Sumitra Peiris. We had ‘Lester by Lester …as told to Kumar de Silva’ in 2007, now ‘Irangani …as told to KdeS ; and in 2015 it will be ‘Sumitra…as told to Kde S’.
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