transcurrents

Ajith Samaranayake-A tribute by Lester James Peries

August 9th, 2007

Ajith Samaranayake: The conscience of the younger generation, a voice for lost causes

by Lester James Peries

With much spluttering of engine and tooting of horn the three wheelers would sweep into No. 24 (formerly Dickman’s Road) like the famed ‘Chariots of Fire’. Over the years this heralded the arrival of our brilliant young friend to our home in Colombo 5.

Unlike many Sri Lankans who would drop in with no agenda to darken the early morning sunlit hours with idle prattle, Ajith would phone and say, “I’ll be there in half an hour-Ok?”

Of course it was always ok for me for I always knew our young friend would light up the darkening skies of our troubled days. – No one has left us quite so suddenly.

Who in the public life in this country be it politician, artist, dramatist, musician, dancer, film maker evoked such over-whelming grief, a genuine outpouring of sadness, such laurels in flower and words and poems for a life so young, snuffed out by the hands of fate that awaits us all.

An year has passed since he left us. Has it really been a year?

It has taken me that long to write a few words that can scarcely do justice to a master-craftsman of the English language. Would he really like us to mourn for him? Are there watering holes in Eternity?

Wherever he is, he will be what he has always been, a younger generation’s conscience, a spokesman on behalf of our embattled island home.

At his passing away, members of his tribe, his peers had no inhibitions to link his name to the greatest in the world of Sri Lankan journalism. H.A.J. Hulugalle, Tori de Sousa, Regi Siriwardena, Jayantha Padmanabha, Tarzie Vittachi, Mervyn de Silva et al…

Had he been alive I doubt whether these encomiums, eulogies, panegyrics…call it what you will, would really have meant much to him.

I have no academic qualifications to write a critical analysis of his style. But however inadequate my analytical skills may be some observations must be made.

In all his best writings Ajith combined lucidity, elegance and grace-grace as Hemingway said under pressure…as a combination this is a difficult style, difficult to cultivate or imitate but a gift possibly bestowed on the chosen few by the deities who look after the fortunes of the fourth estate-should there be any.

In the hurly burly of daily journalism, to keep to deadlines, journalists even the best ones are forced to resort, by the compulsion of time to use the cliche, the hackneyed-phrase.

Ajith was no exception. Read any of his critical essays on Arts, Politics or his Profiles on our very important people and one would find him using the language of daily journalism. But by some mysterious process, even a cliche reads as though it was re-invented, newly minted in a style that depended on the dignity and eloquence of simple prose.

To digress for a moment. Long long ago when I was young, a fanatical English teacher told me…”Take this sentence from the Bible-God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” Improve on it, of course I couldn’t. Now I often think of Ajith; he may have performed the miracle; he may have improved on that peremptory divine pronouncement. After all the Bible did have some of the most inspired reporters in literary history.

The visitor

Over the years Ajith was one of the most regular visitors to what used to be No. 24, Dickman’s Road.

He would insist (not that there was any objection on our part) on bringing his three-wheel drivers and offering them seats either in the verandah or in the drawing room. I suspect at the beginning this was a challenge to our social conventions. Neither Sumitra nor I bothered very much about it….but we did feel sorry for some of the poor guys who looked thoroughly discomfited surrounded by paintings by my brother, the great……artist in our family, Ivan Peries, seated on antique chairs which they suspected might collapse at any moment. For his part Ajith would say, “I dropped in to borrow some books and have a good katha.” Though I can’t boast of an extensive library, I had some of his favourite authors-Edmund Wilson, Cyril Connolly, the Letters and Diaries of George Orwell (I’m sure a kindred spirit) Walter Benjamin, Steiner, etc.

His favourites were critical essays rarely novels, no magic realism, no post modernist, structuralist stuff of which I had just a few from our four years in Paris. Strange he never picked a book on the Cinema. Ajith knew I never kept a little black book to record the ones he borrowed, nor did I badger him to return them.

I’d like to think he visited us not merely to borrow books but for our companionship-Sumitra’s and mine. It was not intellectual stimulus he was after. It was, as I suspect a relief from it. He always appeared to be completely relaxed, perfectly at ease. He knew he was always welcome, the bar was open and though he often dropped in on his way home (after visiting his favourite “watering holes”) to his wife who always waited for him; it was always one for the road or….

Though there was a considerable generation gap between him and me I rather think that what strengthened our friendship was his involvement in a number of lost causes on our behalf. The first I remember was his urging the Government at that time to take over our ancestral home in Dehiwela and convert it to a museum for Ivan’s paintings and a room reserved for my films. It wasn’t surprising that in 48 hours the building was demolished. Another was a series of very powerful editorials that the State should construct a special archive to preserve our local films. Had he been alive I can just imagine his fury and horror at the news that the original master-negatives of “Nidhanaya” – the film voted by local critics as the best in the fifty years of Sri Lankan Cinema had been burnt.

In Sri Lanka gossip is the fourth major language after Sinhala, Tamil and English. In all the years I’ve known him I’ve never heard him gossip, never about his colleagues, never about his workplace, never about his bosses.

Occasionally he might hint about the many vicissitudes he suffered in the newspaper offices he worked, from the ‘Upstairs-Downstairs’ Syndrome, but that too with a self-deprecating smile. He knew he had his enemies, those who exploited his weaknesses but that didn’t seem to bother him unduly.

This was inevitable as his journalistic gifts, not merely the elegance of his style but the mature insight with which he analysed and probed in editorial and feature article our present discontent as a nation and a people where our multi-religious and multi-ethnicity should be our strength and not our weakness.

One has to admit though it is sad but true, that the real magnitude of his achievement came to be realised only after his death. It was not a surprise to me that the great Regi Siriwardena said he was his true heir and his last wish was that he write his obituary.

I still remember the last time he was here. We were in the office-the shades of night were fallinghe had sipped his last “one for the road” – collected his books – one a bulky volume of Scott – Fitzgerald, the American author’s incredibly moving letters to his daughter. The books under his arm he walked out got into his three-wheeler which with much stuttering and tooting of horn disappeared into the night. Will we see him again?

[Where are you Ajith - where are you?]

[August 10th is the 53rd Birth Anniversary of Ajith Samaranayake]

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