21st December 1997

Arthur of Serendip

Part one in last week's issue

Part two of Richard Boyle's tribute to space visionary Dr. Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur received an introduction to a feature film production in Sri Lanka in 1961 when Mike Wilson, Sesha Palihakkara and he set up Serendib Productions and set out to make Ranmuthu Duwa. This film is the holder of a number of 'firsts' in Sinhala cinema history: among other things, the first full length feature film in colour, the first to incorporate underwater sequences, and the first to have an Englishman (Mike) as director.

Although not directly involved in the production, Arthur was supportive in many ways, and has always been one of the film's most ardent advocates. 'I have never grown tired', he once exclaimed, 'of watching the scenes of dawn over the great temples, the sea-washed cliffs of Trincomalee, the lines of pilgrims descending Adam's Peak, and the mysterious underwater sequences.' Even today, thirty-six years after it was made, Arthur retains enough enthusiasm for Ranmuthu Duwa to want to arrange a re-release.

In July 1962, at the time of the release of Ranmuthu Duwa, Arthur wrote several publicity articles for the local press describing Mike's discovery of the Great Basses wreck and the role the treasure plays in the film. 'The fantastic discovery of genuine sunken treasure inspired Mike Wilson to make Ranmuthu Duwa, and the coins and the cannon appear in the film,' Arthur wrote, suggesting that, 'it is probably the first feature film in the history of cinema to be made with genuine treasure.'

Of course Arthur's involvement in the Sinhala film industry goes beyond Ranmuthu Duwa. He also supported Mike's other feature films, Getawarayo and Jamis Banda (For example, Arthur was responsible for procuring a sample SS uniform from London for the latter film!) Much later, in 1979, he acted in Lester James Peries' adaptation of Leonard Woolf's novel Village in the Jungle. Arthur played the part of Woolf the young district magistrate at Hambantota. As nearly two decades have passed, I can now admit that at the time I felt (on account of age at least) I was more suitable for the part!

Since the 1970s, Arthur has made an indelible mark as a TV presenter with such series as Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe and Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. Lingering shots of Arthur walking under the shade of an umbrella along Sri Lanka's beaches and through her archaeological ruins, while expounding on some scientific mystery or another, are now etched on the memory of audiences worldwide. During the last decade or so he has also become one of the world's leading exponents of the satellite television interview and conference address. The introduction, 'Now here's Dr. Arthur C. Clarke, by satellite from Colombo, Sri Lanka...' has become a familiar refrain.

Television producers have flocked to Colombo, beating a well-trodden path down Barnes Place in quest of the ultimate interview with the doyen of science fiction writers. Some of these producers have been more imaginative than others. When Roger Caras came in August 1982 to film a segment for ABC TV's 20/20 he interviewed Arthur while they were both riding elephants. The segment begins with a brief description of Sri Lanka and visuals of the Kandy Perahera. Arthur informs his audience, 'Many of the elements of Sri Lanka, including its mystical and religious elements, even if I don't necessarily agree with them, I respect them and I have worked them into my books.'

Arthur's versatility in front of the television camera extends to commercial-making as well. For instance, in 1976 on the centenary of the invention of the telephone, he featured in a series of commercials on the theme of telecommunications development up to the year 2076. Arthur was filmed delivering his thoughts on the subject against the striking backdrops of Sigiriya, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa. 'Five hundred years before Columbus,' Arthur spoke of Polonnaruwa, 'this was the ancient capital of Ceylon and one of the great cities of the world. Engineers and artists of genius laboured here, men as brilliant as any alive today. But they lacked something that we now take for granted. They could not speak to each other beyond the range of a shout.'

In 1975 Arthur had made television history when the Indian government gifted him a satellite receiving station, hundreds of which were scattered in remote communities around the country and formed India's Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE). It was the only privately owned Earth Satellite receiving station in the world and Arthur had the only television set on the island at that time. 'Lanka's link with unique TV venture,' ran the headline in one local newspaper. 'India's gesture to Arthur Clarke, world's first private home to have reception unit.'

As Sri Lanka's only provider of television programming of any sort, Arthur took his duty seriously. 'I am now inviting the Prime Minister, leading government officials etc., to come and see the programmes,' he wrote to a friend, adding, 'Although I shall be leaving Sri Lanka for two months, I will make arrangements for continued viewing during my absence.' However, things soon got out of hand. 'House now looks like Jodrell Bank,' he wrote a while later to another friend. 'Getting dozens of visitors a day and it will increase,' he correctly predicted.

Over the years, many famous authors, scientists, film-makers and personalities of every description, have been drawn to Sri Lanka in order to visit Arthur. In January 1970, for instance, it was Gore Vidal who arrived. Arthur took the celebrated writer on a trip to Unawatuna. However, the journey nearly turned out to be a terrible disaster - due to an experience that will appear entirely plausible to anyone who frequents Sri Lanka's highways.

'We were driving down the main road going south, and there was a Ceylon Transport Board bus in front of us,' wrote Arthur. 'Suddenly the entire back axle and differential came out and started cartwheeling down the road towards us, like a drum majorette's baton. And it came to rest only a few feet ahead of the car. An extraordinary thing. Luckily no one got hurt.' Later, Arthur jokingly admitted, 'As a hundred kilograms of metal bounced closer and closer, I unselfishly prayed that the world of letters would not sustain a major loss.'

Do you remember the state of communications in Colombo during the early 1970s? It was a place where obtaining a photocopy was a major endeavour, where making an overseas telephone call was a long-winded affair and where, of course, there was no television. The facsimile, the mobile phone, satellite television transmission and the Internet are just a few of the manifestation of the communications revolution that would have been hard to conceive of by the average person back then. Colombo was hardly at the cutting edge. Yet over in Barnes Place there was a person who was able to predict all these innovations and more (although he prefers to call the process 'extrapolation').

To demonstrate how accurate Clarke can be, let me quote from an article of the period in which he lists a few of the services which will be available by 2001 - not in the office or factory, but in every home:

'Direct TV reception, via satellite, from all major countries....'

'Telephone calls between all locations and even moving individuals everywhere on earth...'

'Facsimile services whereby letters, printed matter, etc., can be reproduced instantly...'

'Immediate access via simple computer-type keyboards, and TV displays, to all the world's great libraries and information centres. Any items needed for permanent reference could be printed off or filed magnetically.'

On the subject of the Internet, have you caught up yet with Arthur C. Clarke in cyberspace? The statistics are mind-boggling. One search engine has 258,700 matches to the name Arthur C. Clarke. A quarter of a million references! Did you know that there is an official Arthur C. Clarke website? Or that there is an Arthur C. Clarke Internet Fan Club running an Unauthorisd Homepage? Much information about Arthur can be gathered this way, and of course Sri Lanka features prominently. Arthur can be seen and heard on the Internet, too. There are audio and video clips of 'Dr. Clarke speaking from Sri Lanka' - for instance on 'the role of information technology, telecommunications and entertainment in K-12 education.'

With such cyberspace dominance it was fitting that Arthur should take part in Sri Lanka's first live 'cybercast' in March of this year. The object was to send birthday greetings to HAL 900, an intelligent computer he envisioned in the book of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which became operational on 12 January at the University of Illinois. Using an Internet video link, 'a digitized image of Clarke, clad in a silver space jacket, was broadcast from Colombo's Cyber Cafe and projected on a large screen at the University of Illinois and simultaneously over the Internet,' ran a Reuter - AP report.

Although Sri Lanka, as Andrew Robinson recently expressed it, 'does not impinge much on his prolific best-selling fiction and non-fiction,' Arthur has nevertheless written some notable and quotable pieces extolling the island's virtues for the modern traveller. Possibly the best piece of this nature he wrote for Roloff Beny's Island Ceylon (1970), that perennial coffee-table book about the country.

'It may well be that each of Ceylon's attractions is surpassed somewhere on Earth,' Arthur writes in the epilogue. 'Cambodia may have more impressive ruins, Tahiti lovelier beaches, Bali more beautiful landscapes (though I doubt it), Thailand more charming people (ditto). But I find it hard to believe that there is any country which scores so highly in all departments - which has so many advantages, and so few disadvantages, especially for the western visitor.'

A similar passage I have always liked, which was written for British Airways, makes the important point that the island is a veritable microcosm - and that visitors should quit Colombo if they wish to see the real country.

'The Island of Ceylon is a small universe; it contains as many variations of culture, scenery, and climate as some countries a dozen times its size. What you get from it depends on what you bring; if you never stray from your hotel bar or the dusty streets of Westernized Colombo, you could perish of fulminating boredom in a week, and it would serve you right. But if you are interested in people, history, nature and art - all the things that really matter - you may find, as I have, that a lifetime is not enough.'

Arthur becomes quite philosophical when he writes of his personal relationship with Sri Lanka. In an article for the London Observer for instance, he discusses the significance of the two principal beaches in his life. One is Minehead, where he grew up, and the other is Unawatuna, which he discovered much later in life:

'One day, after a lecture somewhere in the American Midwest, a young lady asked me just why I liked Ceylon. I was about to switch on the soundtrack I had played a hundred times before, when suddenly I saw those two beaches, both so far away. Do not ask me why it happened then; but in that moment of double vision, I knew the truth. The drab, chill northern beach on which I had so often shivered through an English summer was merely the pale reflection of an ultimate and long-unsuspecting beauty. Like the three Princess of Serendip, I had found far more than I was seeking-in Serendip itself. Ten thousand kilometres from the place where I was born, I had come home.'

Then there is the passage from The Treasure of the Great Reef, which reads: 'Though I never left England until I was thirty-three years old, it is Ceylon, not England, that now seems home,' he admits. 'I do not pretend to account for this, or for the fact that no other place is now wholly real to me. Though London, Washington, New York, Los Angeles are exciting, amusing, invigorating and hold all the things that interest my mind, they are no longer convincing. Their images are blurred around the edges: like a mirage, they will not stand up to detailed inspection. When I am in the Strand, or 42nd Street, or NASA headquarters, or the Beverly Hills Hotel, my surroundings are liable to give a sudden tremor, and I see through the insubstantial fabric to the reality beneath.

'And always it is the same; the slender palm trees leaning over the white sand, the warm sun sparkling on the waves as they break on the inshore reef, the outrigger fishing boats drawn up high on the beach. This alone is real; the rest is but a dream from which I shall presently awake.'

Of course events of the past two decades have meant that Arthur has had to contend with something of a Lost Paradise (see his recent piece on Nihal Fernando's A Personal Odyssey), where his 'slender palm trees' have been bulldozed to make way for yet another shoddy hotel; where his 'beautiful landscapes' have become scarred by development and erosion; where his 'charming people' have become brutalized and stunted by incessant conflict and violence.

Arthur's latest book, a selection of his essays titled Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!, has a dedication that confronts the prevailing realities of Sri Lanka. It reads: 'To Vice Chancellor Professor C. Patuwathavitane, killed while serving his students, and to the children of Sri Lanka's lost generation, remembered only by those who loved them. 'Good or bad, guilty or innocent - they are all equal now."'

Arthur is one of a small but celebrated band of British writers (others include D.H. Lawrence and Anthony Burgess) who have led fulfilling and enriching expatriate lives. Expatriates will tell you that they are often asked why they left the Motherland, and as if to test the wisdom of their decision, they are then asked how they rate their adapted countries. Because of adverse publicity and false perception, particular interest is shown in those who have chosen Sri Lanka - unfair though that might be.

Books have even been written on the expatriate experience. In Passport to a Better Life? (1995), edited by James Lawrence, the Sri Lanka section features a contribution by Arthur - the British Airways article quoted from earlier. My contribution to this publication ends: 'So here I am, trying to make sense of a paradoxical island; beautiful, exasperating, ultimately serendipitous, it is a place like no other.' It is a sentiment that I suspect is shared by Arthur.

One does not spend 41 years in an adopted country without becoming inextricably wound up in its fate, and Arthur is no exception. Over the passage of time he has shown consistent concern for the future direction, well-being and prosperity of Sri Lanka. Whether it be his pioneering underwater explorations, his eloquent writings, his magnificent contribution to the Arthur C. Clarke Centre for Modern Technologies, or even his occasional newspaper correspondence on subjects as diverse as daylight saving and Paranavitana's interlinear inscriptions, Arthur has shown an unwavering commitment to his beloved tropical island. He is, without doubt, 'Arthur of Serendip.'

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