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| Sunday, 4 April 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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"Those Phoenix Days" : On the book and the author by PADMA EDIRISINGHE
Pardon me, for generalizing without a systematic survey, but the work, Those Pheonix Days by Dr.Wimala De Silva seems to have carved for itself many firsts in the book field of Sri Lanka, not all of them complimentary (pardon me again). What are these firsts, which firsts again I reiterate could be subject to correction. 1. It is the "first book" penned by a Sri Lankan ex-principal who has unstintedly donated the full income accruing from the book to one of the schools she happened to head in her long educational career. 2. It is the first book written by a Sri Lankan educationalist for therapeutic purposes in a very advanced stage of life (the octogenarian stage) 3. It sets a record for monotonous repetition of facts (especially regarding family data about Puchi and Suddi) and wrong insertions of pages (I only hope I did not get one of the "condemned copies" in my haste to leave. Anyway that augurs a better condition for the book as a whole if that was the case). The extremely candid and sweet nature of the book however compensates more than enough for the last snag. The flowering of the little Sinhala Buddhist girl's life in that city of Negombo dubbed "the little Rome of Sri Lanka" and her rise to one of the highest posts in the educational arena of the country as a Chancellor of a University (and the first female at that) reads like a poetic rhapsody especially in the early part. Not just a poetic piece but cooed in a charmingly naive style that obliterates the facets expected of a sophisticated and highly academic educationalist. The style surfaces from the very beginnings of the book, when the little girl dwells on snippets of her childhood. With an unbridled boldness she confesses that she was not sorry when her mother died. For one thing she was just six years old, too young to realize the momentum of the tragedy. The major cause however had been the mother's strict disciplinarian ways, especially the prohibition of consuming sweet food. So when news that her mother has passed away reaches her she says, "Good. Now I can eat two honey hoppers in the morning"; Yet something unpleasant rankles in the reader till he or she reads later that the mother aware of her impending end deliberately saw to it that no unbearable grief would result in the child from her exit. She is the wise mother of a wiser daughter. The charming nature of the book again surfaces when a Buddhist monk arrives at her home at Angurukaramulla for the first time. Seeing the serene face, she rushes to the kitchen and announces that Lord Buddha has arrived and is standing in the verandah! Prof. Wimala De Silva's path and my humble path have never crossed and somehow I have never even spoken to her but a strong affinity with her seemed to grow within me as I read these little incidents. The affinity was facilitated by the common fact that we have both had our education in that beautiful seaside city of Negombo, in two educational institutions that aptly mirror the cosmopolitan nature of the Meegamu society that is a hotch potch of varied religions and races. Of course my school career emerged about 20 years later but as the author writes on her Burgher and Tamil friends at Newstead and talks of them minus any rancour but with only affection, nostalgia for my own non Sinhala Buddhist friends (myself being a Sinhala Buddhist) in my own alma mater came flooding back to me. The most redeeming feature of My Phoenix Days' is this complete lack of rancour and hatred and this feature stamped itself on me in these days of frenzied hatred, political, communal and otherwise. The author may be rather unaware that in the welter of facts of her educational career that she has put out a book very rich in sociological value too. In fact on my family visits to Angurukaramulla temple I have often wondered how this particular area in this little Rome had become a total habitat of Buddhists. Dr. Wimala de Silva explains it all in meticulous detail along with the story of the spread of the Salagama community around Andiambalama area. The background that ended up in the welding of a personality that soared to the highest academic strata in the land infused with high moral values is amply given as she dwells on the daily ritual in the house of Jayatileka Wedamahaththaya, her father. The bond that grew between father and daughter is indeed remarkable, along with the sacrifices made by Puchi and Suddi, her two Punchi ammas for her progress in life. It is a story remarkably rich in human goodness and very well told, though as mentioned the constant repetition mars the systematic structure of the book. One thing that can be told in the defence of the writer is that she never had pretences to professional writing. On an invitation by an old girl of Devi Balika to write her memoirs, she begins her story and goes on writing and then ends it up. In fact I read in the interview that she had given to Lakmal Welaboda when asked why her old students are so fond of her, she replies "I don't know, child, when I was principal they were all scared of me". So, were someone to ask why she keeps on repeating facts in her book she may answer in her disarming frank way, "I don't know, child, I just wrote what came to my head'. Spontaneous may be the word, unbridled overflow of it. Devi Balika is the pivotal epicentre of the work, the axis on which the book rotates. The author herself, says, "Writing my memoirs and not speaking about Devi is like trying to write Hamlet without mentioning the Prince of Denmark. The acute dedication to this school and her mammoth attempts to bring it on par with major girls schools in the island are certainly well told. She seems to be almost obsessed with "Devi" as insinuated here. "So when I am alone and tend to wallow in self-pity, I think of Devians past and present and how blessed I am." The disappointments in her personal life are omitted. But equally interesting is her tracing the evolution of Newstead College from a mere Sunday school to a prominent outstation school. Here she flies to a global perspective where the much maligned educationalists from the Occident, both male and female did perform some remarkably dedicated service in the arena of education transcending barriers of race and religion. Of course one should not forget the bigoted ones who regarded the natives as "uncivilized niggers". Since a newspaper review is hardly sufficient to dwell on the many fields of education and aligned worthy subjects the author has dealt with, especially in the latter part of the book. I shall stop here recommending the book for readers of any social and educational level. A blurb on the book reads "She started on it, ("Those Phoenix Days) at the age of 80 years for therapeutic reasons". Can one categorise the book under "Education" or under "Literature" or "Sociology?" It is a fascinating salad of all three and much more despite some structural drawbacks. |
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