Taste of Sinhala

My own sudha

By Prof. J.B. Disanayaka 

sudu saariyak (a white sari)
sudu kamise (the white shirt)
sudu malak (a white flower)

In certain contexts, it also means 'fair in colour': 

sudu mahatteya (white gentleman)
sudu nona (white lady). 

However, it is also used to refer to one's beloveds, such as girl- friends, boyfriends, fiancees and fiances and in that context it may be translated as the 'fair one'. 

A young man will address his 'girlfriend' or fiancee as 'sudu' or 'mage sudu' (my fair one) and a young lady will also use the same word to address her boy- friend or fiance. They also use the words 'sudaa' and 'sudo' to address each other. 

When things are extremely white, the phrase 'sudo sudu' is used as when there is moonlight, which is considered 'pure white'. 

sudo sudu handa paana

From the word, 'sudu', the Sinhalese also form a masculine noun, 'sudda' and a feminine noun 'suddi' to refer to one's people or animals, who are white or fair in colour. 

Italian touch to Servants

The author, Professor Rajiva Wijesinha, who was coordinator of the English Unit of the University Grants Commission at the time, has published a number of books.

His first novel, 'Acts of Faith', dealt with the race riots of 1983 and presented an incisive criticism of government involvement in that episode. 

Subsequently 'Days of Despair', in the mode of magic realism, dealt with the Indo-Lankan Accord and its aftermath. Prof. Wijesinha received a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation to stay at its Villa Serbelloni in Italy (where Michael Ondaatje wrote parts of 'The English Patient') to begin the last novel in the trilogy, The Limits of Love'. 

Professor Wijesinha has also published several works of criticism, a travel book entitled ' Beyond the First Circle', and two works of political history entitled 'Sri Lanka in Crisis': 'J.R.Jayewardena and the erosion of democracy' and 'Civil Strife in Sri Lanka" 'the United National Party Government 1989-1994'. 

He is the Project Director of the English Association of Sri Lanka, which has produced a number of low cost English language textbooks for schools and universities. 

The publication of 'Servants' in Italian represents a first for a Sri Lankan writer still resident in Sri Lanka. The Italian version of the novel is by the distinguished translator Robert Buffi who now lives in Spain. 

Hidden horror

By Alfreda de Silva

So sang William Blake in his Songs of Innocence; and in his A Boy's Song James Hogg intoned:

"Where the pools are bright and deep
Where the gray trout lies asleep
Up the river and over the lea
That's the way for Billy and me." 

These are happy pictures of childhood in whose honour Universal Children's Day was commemorated worldwide on October1. No one denies the poet that this should be a celebration of joy, as indeed it is. But alongside that is the reality by deprivation, loss and suffering in the world of childhood around us. 

Abuse has become a key word universally, whenever the subject of children is brought up. And not all of it is sexual. 

An American writer who has captured this aspect of a child's world as poignantly and devastatingly as it is possible to do it, is Marilyn Krysl. She is the author of the book How to Accommodate Men, to which she has added another collection of short stories, and seven books of poetry. Krysl is no stranger to Sri Lanka. She worked here for some time with Peace Brigade International. Among her occupations was a stint at the Kalighat Home for the Destitute in Calcutta, with Mother Theresa and her Sisters of Charity. She now directs a Creative Writing Programme in Boulder, Colorado. 

Marilyn Krysl's riveting story Mercy in the collection How to Accommodate Men, brings child abuse by parents into agonising focus. 

This is undoubtedly a most insidious and devastating form of child abuse because of its totally hidden nature within the home. No one there talks about it openly, even if it is known. 

The cruelly abused in Krysl's story is a frail boy of five, whose total innocence, almost a prolonged circumstance imposed babyhood, makes him the utterly helpless victim of a sadistic father, who obviously feels he is one too many to feed. 

His mother is a totally ineffectual, harassed, burdened, scared wife, who weeps in silence but does not dare oppose her husband. This is a deadly combination of parents for the upbringing of children.

With consummate skill the writer sets her story of innocence and satanic cruelty against the backdrop of a popular rhyme from the nursery of the children's world: 

"Sing a song of six pence a pocketful of rye 
four-and-twenty black birds baked in a pie....
.... The king was in the counting house
counting all his money
the queen was in the parlour
eating bread and honey. 
The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes, 
when down came a blackbird
and pecked off her nose."

The menace tucked away in these lines intrudes on the reader as the story proceeds. The narrator of this shocking tale is the boy's older sister, a child herself. It begins with a sense of foreboding of how it all will end. 

The queen of the nursery rhyme, in this case is the mother - the household drudge, a person who is completely powerless. She holds an eight-hour job outside the home and has not yet got back, when the story opens. 

Only the girl is in. Her pathetic little brother is next door with the woman who looks after him, when he gets home from nursery school with her own offspring. Her mother is late. 

Contrary to the pattern of everyday, it is the king (her father) who returns early to bring the boy home. The girl is overcome with anxiety, bordering on terror. 

The boy realizes when he sees his father coming for him that it is his mother who should have been there. He is filled with a sense of unease. He asks if he might stay and play for awhile and is refused. 

He walks along, beside his father, who takes him to a small pool in their garden and makes him strip. The boy, in all his innocence steps into the pool waist-deep. 

"I'm going to teach you how to swim," says the father. "I know to swim," replies the little one happily. But then the man grabs him by his neck and holds his head under water, long enough to throw his lifeless form on the grass. The girl turns into an enormous disembodied screen. 

When the worn-out husk of a mother returns from work she sees the naked body of the boy on the bank of the pool. Suspecting nothing sinister, she says something as commonplace as: Let's get you a towel, Honey. Those four and twenty blackbirds were circling out there now by the pool, and they were singing a song of death. 

Book Review

It touches the mind, spirit and heart

Reading poetry has never been a favourite pastime, but when a close friend (and one of my literary role models) writes anything, I am naturally first in a queue at the bookshops. Having brought Jean Arasanayagam's "Women, All Women" I felt duty bound to read it since Jean might well ask me one day, "So what do you think of my latest?" and I would need to answer. 

Unenthusiastically I settled down - but what is this? I am entranced - nay "riveted" would be a better word. Why had I feared poetry so? Was it the fact that so much of my own Advanced Level Literature texts had to be explained line by line while I quietly went to sleep? Had all the beauty of poetry remained a closed book (literally) simply because of early prejudice? So it seemed, for "Women, All Women" held me in thrall.... and I understood it, I understood it! What a thrill. 

One must ask what condiment seasons Jean's poetic cuisine. What art makes her work so palatable to a novice like myself? How does she touch the hearts of all women in the same way she has touched mine? Perhaps it is the relevance her words have for women from anywhere... everywhere. 

Somewhat autobiographical of the writer's own childhood is the story of her exasperated mother telling this over-imaginative offspring, "Changeling. Stop your Masquerading. You are only mortal clay." Why do I hear echoes of my own mother's gently spoken word, "come down to earth my dear. The halo round the moon isn't really fairy dust." 

I always say that women of Sri Lanka have been far better off than their Asian counterparts. Not for us has the Ramayana turned our men into petty tyrants. Not for us the Sita syndrome of a totally accepting (and foolish) wife. Our many freedoms are part of a Sri Lankan woman's birthright and Jean, married to a traditionally reared, well-born Tamil gentleman, can say with confidence in her own identity in her poem "The Guru".

"My husband's people always had gurus. 
I never had one but was expected 
To manage on my own, chant my own Vedas." 

And she has chanted her own Vedas magnificently, has she not? 

This freedom of choice was obviously not shared by the Hindu-culture oriented mother-in-law who is enmeshed in rituals and almost shackled by family ties. Her thoughts early in her life were tainted by rigidity of belief. The mother is unable to throw off her limitations and embrace a new daughter from an alien clan. How sad, how sad. What enrichment is lost on both sides when bodies meet but minds do not. "Striptease" struck an answering chord. Have not all of us women seen young Cabaret girls in Sri Lanka and wondered what pain they might have felt while the men thought it was all jolly good fun. To quote: 

"Don't touch," she breathed between her lips. Her hand held out keeping at bay 
A scimitar of command." 

Was she ashamed of what she was doing? Was the money worthwhile? 

"He brought innocent girls to the city", it was whispered of her manager. "Luring them from the villages," Jean continues. 

Or again, what do Sri Lankans living abroad really feel when they go back home to the West having told admiring and even envious Sri Lankans of their magnificent material lives? 

"I feel pity," writes Jean
"They say, 'we have everything
but we have lost our identity'. 

Are expat Sri Lankans listening? 

In writing of her sister-in-law, Gowri Thyagarajah, Jean's words are particularly touching for I knew both women. The similarities of these two eminently civilised beings though widely divergent in upbringing and culture makes a fascinating study. Gowri's bookshelves contain "Ibsen, Freud, Jung, Nietszhe, Wilde, Lawrence and Kierkeggard." But then so do Jean's. Both love Beethovan's Ninth. Both highly cultivated women, one a Burgher, the other a Tamil, had so much in common, it is a tragedy they so rarely met. "All I know of my sister-in-law.... are the myths and legends... that my husband lays...." 

There is too much in "Women, All Women" for my simple appreciation to do justice. This review hardly merits that name. It is but an appreciation of the magical ambience Jean's words can weave around me. It is a tribute to one of Sri Lanka's best known writers of literature. Poetry must touch the mind with words of insight, it must touch the spirit with words of wisdom. It must touch the heart of the reader so that she will say wistfully as I did, "I wish I could have said it like that." This is a book for all women. Read it. 

Continuing Madhubhashini Ratnayake's series on the issues facing the teaching of English

Opening up a world of literature and language

Ms. Parvathi Nagasundaram was a speaker at the SLELTA conference in September, but what this article will focus on is her role as the Head of the English Department at Sri Jayawardenapura University - one of the few universities that have an English degree course for students who have not done the A' Level examination in English.

"Since only a few urban schools have the facilities to teach English in the advanced level classes, it is a small minority of urbanised, sophisticated students who already possess an acceptable command of English that get the opportunity to read English as a subject for the degree in a majority of universities," she said. So most students are bereft of a chance to have an English degree even when they come to centres that have the facilities that they did not have access to before. 

"By not giving them a chance to do a degree in English, they were actually being penalized for no fault of theirs," said Professor Rajiva Wijesinha, one of the central figures in getting this degree programme started. He was instrumental in initiating this course at Jayawardenapura University while he was there, and now has begun it in the Sabaragamuwa University to which he is attached. 

To be selected to follow the degree courses in these universities, students sit an aptitude test - the tests are of two different standards in these two universities, but they are not as demanding as the A'Level English examination. "We work on the language proficiency of students as they follow our course. So we are not too worried if they don't show much proficiency at the beginning," said Ms. Nagasundaram. "Of course, the work is harder this way. We do two things simultaneously. Students have to be taught the language as well as literature."

"Traditional departments of English have to understand the fact that a country like Sri Lanka needs the English language too - not just literature. Because they usually took in only students who knew the language, there was not much attempt to teach language proficiency there. But by doing that, they were leaving the majority out of account," said Professor Wijesinha.

Of course, no problem has a simple answer. The opening up of degree programmes to students who haven't had the basic grounding in the A' Level classes might mean that the standard of the degree that the students have eventually will be different from that of other universities. The English Department of the Colombo University, for example, actually asks not only for a pass in A' Level English, but a Credit pass at that. The universities of Colombo and Kelaniya do indeed also have an aptitude test for those without A' Level English wanting to follow an English degree, but these tests are almost as demanding as the A'Level English exam so that very few can actually enter the system through this process. 

"There is a way in which we can still ensure that standards are kept, in our degree programmes," emphasized Professor Wijesinha. "If the students don't measure up to our required standards at the end of the course, they should not be passed just for the sake of passing them. My point is that we should keep failing them if they don't get the grade, but they should be given a chance at least to try and get a degree in English. That is what we want to do. The student who will really work hard might pass."

He emphasizes that careful monitoring of this process is essential to ensure that this kind of course is not taken to mean that standards don't matter at all. Ms. Nagasundaram pointed out that only ten out of about 40 passed out of the first batch. "Those who fail have to keep trying. The effort they have to make is immense. But most students do it," she says. 

And for those who do pass out, there are many job opportunities that are calling out for personnel. "There are crucial positions vacant in the job market of this country that the English graduate of a traditional department might not want to fill. The most important among them is the school English teacher. I feel that the traditional departments of English are failing in a very vital need - that of providing teachers of the subject, " says Professor Wijesinha. He gives a reason for him being aware of this fact by saying, "Having taught at the University of Peradeniya, I had noticed that the pool of potential English graduates is getting smaller and smaller. Only very few students very proficient in English will pass the A' Levels, and none of them will consider a teaching appointment in a school." "It is not that I see the work done in traditional departments as not important," he goes on to add. But English teaching should cater to something like a triangle, he says. "The traditional departments will deal with only the tip of it - with those who might be exceedingly proficient in the language, those who might do research, and go on to do a PhD in English and so on. That is important too. But there is the base of the triangle as well - those in need of the language who can probably give much to the country in their turn, if they are given a chance to have an English degree. We concentrate on that base."

"We have structured the syllabus at Sri Jayawardenapura University very carefully, to ensure that what the students get at the end of the course is something of real value. It has been designed taking into consideration some conditions essential to learn a language - maximum exposure to the language and increased opportunity to use it," said Ms. Nagasundaram. "When our students pass out, it may be that they are not very confident as first - but they have the strength to manage, and with the kind of input they have got, they keep improving the more they put the knowledge to use."

She adds at the end the most vital consequence of their effort. "Most of the students who pass out of our departments have got jobs - middle level jobs, may be - but the fact is that they are employed." She says it with a joy that shows the whole effort to be worthwhile. 

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