Ranmali bids BC adieu after 26 years
Last week, surrounded by friends, colleagues and admirers, Ranmali Mirchandani bid farewell to the British Council after over two decades with them. Known for the creative events she spearheaded that encompassed fashion, design and most notably theatre, Ranmali helped set up an arts programme within the British Council known for its quality and vibrancy. To send her off they had to, for once, plan the party without her but it was a memorable finish to an entirely unexpected adventure.
Ranmali and husband Kumar: A shared love for the arts. Pic by Susantha Liyanawatte
In her last week in office, Ranmali is busy handing over the reins to the two young women who will replace her. The British Council offices are in disarray with a comprehensive renovation in progress and as she finds us a quiet space in the only department where everyone else is off to lunch, she says that more than one person has asked her today if she’s going to miss being at work. The short answer is no. The longer version is of course she’s going to miss the people she’s worked with and the challenge of a job she loves, but she’s given it all she has and more, and is now ready to consider something new.
That Ranmali has spent so long here is already something of a surprise considering how she began. Still in her early twenties, she had just returned from Japan where she had won honours and earned a scholarship to study the language. She’d imagined putting her fluent Japanese to use in a big multinational and to that end had sent out a dozen CVs when Rajiva Wijesinha who was then Cultural Affairs Officer approached her with a business proposition. He wanted her to take over for him while he was travelling – it would be a six month stint that turned into a 26-year career. Unfortunately, Ranmali’s Japanese never really got put to use but she saw eight Country Directors come and go as four promotions brought increasing responsibility until she finally found herself Head Programmes at the British Council.
In those early years, Ranmali did all she could to engage with the artistic community, many of whom she had worked with or were already personal friends. A full roster of literary and theatrical events were staged. For Ranmali it was a perfect mingling of the personal and the professional. (In fact, her husband of 21 years proposed to her on the British Council stage – they had fallen in love over the course of several productions in which they had been cast together.) Her passion for theatre has deep roots, and she says the women in her family always had a creative streak. As a young girl, she was enrolled in the Wendy Whatmore Academy and enjoyed a string of excellent and inspirational teachers. The opportunities to work with Steve de la Zilwa, Graham Hatch and Richard de Zoysa were formative ones, allowing her to hone her craft and grow as an artist.
Her exposure to superlative theatre gave Ranmali the edge when she began visiting the Edinburgh Festival to select the play that would be later brought down for Sri Lankan audiences. In recent years, standouts have included two productions by 1927 – ‘The Animals and Children Took To The Streets’ and ‘Between the Devil and Deep Blue Sea’- another by the Oxford Playhouse titled ‘One Small Step’ and ‘Low Life’ a dazzling piece of puppetry cabaret by the UK based Blind Summit theatre company. All were handpicked by Ranmali for local audiences, her determination being that we would see something truly extraordinary. She confesses to having been nervous ahead of some of her more unconventional choices – a radical version of Macbeth involving partial nudity comes to mind – but more often than not, they’ve found favour. “I felt the British Council really had to showcase new trends in the arts,” she says.
Ranmali’s work in the fashion, design and young entrepreneur programmes the British Council weren’t quite as much in her comfort zone – “those were a huge learning curve,” she says. Working closely with the likes of the Colombo Fashion Week and the Sri Lanka Design Festival, they’ve managed to provide many talented young designers an enviable platform.
Now going forward, Ranmali will take over as the Royal Academy of Ballet’s representative in South Asia, responsible for managing the exams conducted in India and Sri Lanka, as well as keeping an eye on potential dance studios in Bangladesh and Nepal. She imagines she will finally be able to have a schedule that allows her to have a dog and to do a dozen things she’s been putting off. A 9 to 5 job is certainly not on the cards. Most of all though, Ranmali is looking forward to just blending in with the audience. “I’m going to be like you now,” she says, “I will sit there and just enjoy the play without worrying about what’s going on backstage or whether enough people have come.” It seems a modest pleasure, but for Ranmali it’s the one she’s most anticipating.
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