By

Gamini Seneviratne

`It’s been a long time. Now, at last, the celebrated home-grown stage plays of half a century ago, all out of print, have been published in a single volume.

Ralahamy Rides Again, the title of this book, was the last of the plays written and produced by H C N de Lanerolle before he emigrated to the USA with his family in 1958. His son, Primal, a Professor at the College of Medicine in Chicago, merits our thanks for gathering together all the texts and related pictures & memorabilia that he could find into a well produced book.

Primal’s Editor’s Notes supplement his father’s Preface. Together, they provide an illuminating anterior history of our stage productions in the 1930s to the 1950s. The footnotes to the later plays seem to be by some other hand.

The YMCA in the Fort had been central to the production of these and perhaps of other, less known, plays. In the period covered by these plays, it was the centre of a variety of cultural activities and intellectual pursuits. My own impressions of the YMCA in the late ‘fifties, early ‘sixties had to do with its cafeteria (which de Lanerolle had helped establish), and with its little space where lay-preachers explained the tenets of the Christian faith. Among those I have listened to there and/or elsewhere, were B E Fernando, the Commissioner of Inland Revenue, A B S N Pullenayagam of the Civil Service, and Vijaya Vidyasagara, Tax Assessor, Editor of the Christian Workers’ Bulletin and a senior member of the LSSP in its BLPI wing.

Even more in public view was the foyer where ‘the Y’ hosted the leading Chess club in the city. Among those who played there was de Lanerolle’s early collaborator, E M W Joseph, better known as Sooty Banda. When I last met him, just before he migrated to the USA with his family, Sooty showed me a famous game played by Edward Lasker, a newly arrived escapee from Germany, against Sir George Thomas, the British champion.

Such was at least part of the ambiance in which Ralahamy came into being. Some of it seems to have drawn on the then current views of newspapermen of Lake House and the Times of Ceylon.

These plays were brought to life by gifted players, P C Thambugala and E C B Wijesinghe being the most celebrated. They too belonged to the ‘liberal’ anglicized classes of the big cities, Colombo most of all with Galle not far behind. E C B’s son, G C B Wijesinghe, opened bowling for Royal (‘a well-known school for boys’ as H CN has it – maybe his sons were sent elsewhere), and became the head of a much respected firm of accountants.

The ‘low country elite’ of land holders, never mind how they had got hold of the land, the Colombo based, mostly ‘Christian’ ‘Jaffna Tamils’ whose ‘Tamil’ was as stuttering as the ‘Sinhala’ of, say, the Obeyesekeras or the Bandaranaikes; the Moors and Malays in and around the big towns; almost all the Burghers, faithful servants of the pukka sahibs (most of whom were far from pukka back ‘Home’), made their own recreations of a mix of Portuguese, a trace of Dutch, and of Sinhala into an expressive English that sufficed them and lent its own fresh dimension to that language. ‘English’ of course had absorbed many other languages from the German / Teutonic, the French and other Romance, the Indian both East and ‘West’, the African, the Chinese, the languages of the indigenous peoples of Australasia and America …

The use, misuse of the English language, the puns, the ‘malapropisms’ underpin the humor, the laughs these plays were expected to and did generate among the class groups that patronized them. But, as de Lanerolle demonstrates, the ‘Singlish’, the Jaffna, the Burgher and the Malay variants, all mutually comprehensible, were the truest tool for making our people articulate in that foreign tongue.

They include much play on what, in probably the most scholarly and perceptive presentation in the series of lectures in memory of E F C Ludowyk, the late Gehan Wijeyewardene defined as ‘the hinterland’ of language.

Those who spoke or sort of spoke that language gathered together into the hastily constructed ‘United National Party’ that succeeded (how it was done is known except maybe to some of our ‘political scientists’) in usurping the mantle of ‘Independence’. As ‘the War’ has been the first and is now the last refuge of the scoundrels, so it was ‘Independence’ then.

The basic themes of the plays have much to do with the nature of ‘politics’. Politics and politicians are presented as they existed at the time or always have, and there are numerous lines or takes that would continue to delight. What is said was, of course, applicable not only to the questionable practices in ‘Lanker’ but had also prevailed in ‘the Home Country’ for well over two centuries. David Cameron is now seen to have engaged in the wholesale sale of ‘titles’ to businessmen, much as the Vatican confers ‘Chevalier’-ships or our politicians confer honorary doctorates on the most dishonorable or ‘National’ honours on the less than worthy.

As for ‘America’, Benjamin Franklin foresaw the state of submission to which that ‘democracy’ would reduce the common people of that country. To bring that vision up to date it would be pertinent to mention that their President declared last week that he is empowered to wage war endlessly against anybody, anywhere. (The USA continues to dodge the International Court of Justice against arraignment for its criminal assaults everywhere – including its own citizens, mostly the Black, the Hispanic and the intelligent). That man was awarded the Nobel prize for Peace for supporting Israel’s month long assault on the people of Palestine; perhaps he would be awarded some kind of ‘Emeritus’ status in the field of Peace for his plans to take the destruction of Iraq, Syria and the Ukraine much further than his predecessors had done. Franklin’s prediction was that the Congress and the people would be so cowed that they would not challenge the gangs that had usurped power.

It is true that D S Senanayake defended Democracy (from hoi polloi bent on voting for his opponent) with a polla on his shoulder. However the misdemeanors of politicians in Ralahamy’s time did not amount to the unbridled thuggery and looting of the country that we witness today. The power-wielders today provide armored vehicles and security for their hit-men.

The footnotes to the plays, particularly to the last, Ralahamy Rides Again, are, patently, not the author’s. To de Lanerolle, ‘ethnicity’ for instance would have been a non-word. And I doubt that he would have surmised that the irrigation systems were built ‘perhaps under the directions of architects from India’. (The Chronicle of Kashmir, the Rajatharanga records an irrigation engineer (jalanetti) from Sinhale being sent for the constructional work there in the 7th century.

The first definite record of a Chola King’s exploits by the Court poets of southern India refers to a naval expedition against Sinhale in which Karikala obtained 3000 craftsmen for the embankment of the Kaveri river; and that ‘by this means he was enabled to continue it for a hundred miles’.

And, again, as a footnote has it, ‘Ceylon’ was not so named by the British. That name has a long history in its derivation from ‘Sinhala Dvipa’. There are numerous references in the writings of court functionaries and of travelers through the centuries to ‘Ceylon’ as Serendivi (Amarianus Marcellini, 4th century A.D.), Zeilan (Marco Polo, 13th century), Sylan (Friar Beatus Odiricus, 14th century). In China it was variously known as Siar-xe-diep (2nd century) and Seng-ka-la, Wang Ta Yuan (14th century). And, nearer home, Sinhala in the Ariyur Plates of Virupaksha I (1390), and in the Vijayanagara inscription of 1435; in the 16th century there is the even more specific Telegu composition, Sinhaladvipa Kathava.

The British used Ceylon in place of the Arab Zeilan, the Portuguese Ceilao, French Ceylan. M D Raghavan concludes that “Ilam / Eelam is a mutation of the Pali Sinhal, Sinhala, Tamil having no proper sibilant.” It is ironical that ‘Ceylon’ is the preferred name of the country of their birth for some expatriates, especially for polemicists.

By the time that play was written / produced, the assumptions behind the culture of our anglicized community were heading for a state of disarray. The writings of Tarzie Vittachi and the cartoons of Aubrey Collette (who had done a marvelous job in his illustrations for ‘Ralahamy’) had become quite vicious and blind to the reality that their day was gone. Tarzie fled, and Collette burghered-off to Australia.

Thousand of Ceylonese emigrated to all parts of ‘the English-speaking world’, educated their children in that language, found employment for themselves. He was himself such a gifted man, obviously, that de Lanerolle’s family deserved the blessings it received.

Emigres to Australia had, on the whole, a snakes & ladders experience. After all the effort that went into establishing a ‘pure-white’ ancestry, some found themselves called ‘curry’ and otherwise denigrated. On the rare visits ‘home’ that they could afford, they adamantly asserted that they were Ceylonese.

In a book review one does not necessarily need to comment on the social attitudes it puts forward. But here, they are central to the plot. The Ralahamy plays carry within them a number of themes, – prominently there is the use / misuse (but not the abuse which native speakers of, say, English or Yankee inflict on the world) of language. There are puns and ‘malapropisms’ mentioned above that the British-English and the Ceylon-English educated would have relished. (That the Ceylonese who were educated in Colombo or down south in Galle or even up in Kandy spoke better English than the Indians was a given).

The Burghers may have been more ‘admixed’ than the low-country Sinhalese but among them were several classes or categories (as if humans could be categorized vs a vis each other). de Lanerolle makes the point that he presented a perfect sapattu burgher on stage. Yes, that was part of the idiom of the ‘cultured’ at the time. Even years later we continued to hear of sapattu muller/mala, mala-hath-illawwa, and of mickos (mechanics).

The note to the last play, Ralahamy Rides Again, focuses on the assassination of a Prime Minister, clearly S W R D Bandaranaike. It should be mentioned that Bandaranaike himself had recognized his assassin as a relative, Ossie Corea, Roman Catholic, and had told the police that it ‘was a man in yellow robes’. (The man was given refuge, unknowingly, by yet another relative of Bandaranaike). The attempt on the PM’s life was not by ‘a Sinhalese who couldn’t shoot’.

H C N was an associate of Ludowyk whose He Comes From Jaffna, stimulated the Ralahamy plays. There were of course other forbears to his efforts. Gogol’s ‘The Matchmaker’ and its adaptation into Kapuva Kapothi. That theme was continued much later at Peradeniya with the University students Reggie Wijedoru and G K Haththotuwegama performing admirably in Magul Prastava.

If you wish to access these masterly works by H C N de Lanerolle, read the ‘political column’ in our newspapers, or, if you’d rather go for something less noxious, just read the ‘matrimonial’ pages.

Courtesy:Sunday Island