A new look Channels @ 30: Capturing Lankan authenticity
The new issue of Channels, complete with an attractive new cover design, opens with a poem (the first prize winner of the English Writers’ Collective competition) that takes us back to the days of the Kandy Lake poets and concerns as old as the hills (or at least, as civilization). It hones in on the sharp cleavage between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ (and, more specifically, the English-speaking gentry and simple villagers).
In this winning submission titled Charity Revisited, Sonali Wijeratne has an authentic voice, evoking those who “stand at the gate and beg/ whilst I breakfast on bacon and eggs!” Crisp and casual, her language conveys the unease of the privileged. “A couple of yogurts for your kids, / A packet of milk, some coconuts, / Is that how charity meets poverty? / Clad in the borrowed robes of conscience, religion and guilt?”
It is this Sri Lankan authenticity and vividness that has always been the long suit of Channels, today looking back on 30 years and having contributed more than its share to Sri Lankan English writing, steadily, with little fanfare.
This volume edited by Lancelot Fernando is a pleasure to dip into, a variegated offering.
Roshini Perera’s poem Perspectives is revealing, showing us how an airplane pilot yearns to be that child in ‘the golden fields of rye’ below pretending to be a plane, while the boy is lost in the dream of being up there in that cockpit.
Upali Mahaliyana in The Silk Hanky delivers a parable of sorts – a kick at the so-called patriots who spread racism. It is short but entertaining and packed a punch- though one could have done with more subtlety.
Himangi Jayasundere needs applause for capturing the aragalaya euphoria and the heavy emotion as the nation rose as one (in the poem Dreams Like Kites): “Like a beggar in a drunken stupor/ my bottle of dreams toppled next to me/ as deafening angry voices roar/ these dreams like kites/ so many of them/ they are filling and filling the air that I breathe”.
Sirimal Gardiarachchi goes on a blithe spree about the rumpus of ‘cricket, lovely cricket’ as played in the village paddy fields. His poem on ‘inter-village matches’ goes overboard with rustic details like the food offered: ‘kos’ and scraped coconut with Loku Hamine’s lunu miris.
“‘Oka hora, hora umpire’ the crowds will shout/ he will be at the mercy of the angered crowd.”
But “When play is over and the day is done/ There are no enemies but all are friends/ To the Mahaweli river we plunge, naked in fun/ How sadly we part, awaiting the rise of the next day’s sun.”
Neshantha Harischandra’s The Last Lesson gives insight into the ‘A’ level section of a school with all its inner workings, and the end for ‘Hoona’ (gecko) who is the principal’s son is quite unexpected. Neshantha has the knack of a true storyteller if the prose is not all that polished.
The Unreturned Goodbye is a powerful tale that captures the utter meaninglessness of racial divides and conflict wrapped in the tale of an army officer who did not return the wave of a little Tamil boy in a bus, and lives to regret forever.
Rukmini Attygalle in Shadows on the Wall in one wintry evening in London with the shadow of a crab apple tree on her walls tells a tale of childhood back in Ceylon, all to do with shadows and elephants – poignant and moving, with the keen bitter sweetness of youthful memories.
To traverse through these and other offerings was sheer pleasure for it is always invigorating to read the ponderings of fellow Lankans any day rather than the latest Faber anthology.
Channels priced at Rs.1,500 is available at the Perera Hussein stall at
the Colombo Book Fair and thereafter will be at leading bookshops.
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