Government stands accused of biblioclasm

Blind Sinhala thugs burnt Jaffna Library

| by Pearl Thevanayagam

(June 01, 2012, London, Sri Lank Guardian) My father died of a broken heart at the age of 62 just two months after he celebrated his birthday on June 01, 1981 which coincided with the burning of Jaffna Library although his love for cholesterol-ridden red meat and pork contributed to a certain extent. His paintings adorned the library and his passion in life was his art.

He never sold a single painting since he believed art was too sacred to be a commercial venture. He specialised in Old Masters, portraits of ordinary folk such as our dumb servant whose wrinkles he depicted in oil rather life-like, his aunt sitting on the floor slicing cabbage with a knife held between her toes, my mother not looking pretty with her dishevelled hair first thing in the morning and landscapes.

I grew up in a household smelling of linseed oil, turpentine, water colours and stinking starched canvases surrounded by his many artist pals. W.J.G. Beiling (Chief Inspector of Art), Messrs Ranasinghe from the South and Wijeratne were the other inspectors of art who graced our home in Jaffna for holidays with their families. Bongso Jayah and Podinilame from the Department of Education were also our regular guests. I also remember being forced to wear socks and sandals and don Sunday dresses lined with can-can (which itched like hell) since father believed we should look presentable for our cultured Southern guests than our usual urchin selves running barefoot and wearing cotton frocks.

My poor suffering mother killed the emaciated red and white Leghorn fowls running wild in the compound and spent endless hours in the kitchen to make mouth-watering lunches including lagoon crabs and prawn for these playboys. Dessert was no pudding but Karutha Kolumbu and plantains. We enjoyed curd with kitul pani, rambuttans, mangoosteens and pine-apples courtesy of our guests. Thank the Lord she was only educated up to Grade Eight and therefore was blissfully unaware of women's lib.

Father also dabbled in sculpture along with Ramani (nick-name for his male friend who was also a sculptor) and Mr Sivapragasam who taught art at Central College and whose paintings adorned Jaffna Library. The visitors to our house were an eclectic mix. To keep company and liven up the weekends was Mr Sivagnanasundaram aka Savarithambar of Veerakesari cartoons famed for depictions of Mrs Damodiran representing upward mobile women in the seventies when miniskirts and sunglasses were the height of haute couture. Then there was Duke Mama who smoked slender cigarettes from a slim holder and Edwin Mama the Communist who stood around discussing politics.

Ramani and my father took possession of our portico in Manipay, a suburb of mainland Jaffna, at weekends and experimented with cement sculpture which was indeed hard work considering that cement dried rather quickly.

Although he was Inspector of Schools for Art in both the North and East in the '50's and '60s my father's preoccupation was painting which took us seven kids to the most scenic locations throughout the island during our school holidays.

My plea to the government is that it should not repeat the mistakes it made and killed my father's soul along with those of other Tamil intellectuals, artists and academics when it burned the Jaffna Library; a veritable treasure trove of culture. I am so glad he did not see his 300 or more works of art – some which took over five years to complete - go up in flames in July 1983 at our Nugegoda home in July 1983. He harmed no-one.

The writer is Asia Pacific Journalism Fellow at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, California and a print journalist for 22 years. She can be reached at pearltheva@hotmail.com)