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Colourful
Like his life, this year’s Gratiaen Prize winner, Jagath Kumarasinghe’s writings throb with vibrancy
By Frances Bulathsinghala
He was the school truant. His school books would lie scattered around him as he munched a guava seated on a rock near a stream. Science, Maths and English would be relegated to the trenches of his mind as he lost himself with the giddy appreciation of a ten-year-old drawn to nature in the lush environment of his native Badulla. Often on his sojourns he would be armed with the books of Martin Wickremesinghe, his hero, whom he was to meet years later.

This is Jagath Kumarasinghe, who last week won the Gratiaen Prize for 2004. "I was a good reader. As a young boy there were never enough books for me. But I was the typical bad student. I never did know where my school books were and hardly cared," he says, reminiscing how he used to break away from the confines of home and school and wander in the woods until sunset hoping that his class teacher had not crossed the path of his parents. Like his life, his Gratiaen-winning manuscript, 'Kider Chetty Street', is a collection of ten short stories vibrant with colour. It is, as Ruwanthie de Chickera, chairperson of the panel of judges commented, a celebration of life.

His characters do not live in glass houses because he never lived in one. Here at last, is one example where a writer writing in English has lived his art proving that there exists the possibility for literature not to be a lapdog of the rich. His characters know hunger. They know life. They know ardour.

From a potpourri of cultures. Sinhalese, Bohras, Chinese, Malays, Tamils, Muslims, they are people of the earth, with their feet firmly on the ground. "At one point or other I have met these people. For seven years of my life I lived like a vagabond after I lost my job as a journalist when the Davasa group closed in 1971. Due to the failing economic conditions there were no jobs to be found. Other than the odd freelance job, mostly translations, there was no work. Most of the time I was starving and did not know when I would get the next meal. But looking back this was the richest period of my life," says Jagath. It is at this point that he attached himself to Sufism and closely associated with a renowned Sufi master who was in Sri Lanka then.

By this time he had also strongly been influenced by Martin Wickremesinghe, himself a self-taught genius. Wickremesinghe, as Jagath explains, introduced him to the world of literature, especially Russian literature. Slowly with the diligence and craving for higher and wider knowledge that is often found in people who deviate from the usual path of academic instruction, Jagath taught himself to read English and Tamil.

"My parents could speak English but they never spoke it with us. So my exposure to the language was slow. But I made up for it with all the reading I did in the library at the Colombo residence of Martin Wickremesinghe. By this time I used to pen short stories in Sinhala and show them to him and note down his comments."

This, he says, was the beginning of his journey into creative writing, which he mostly kept to himself.His seven-year bohemian lifestyle, he explains, ended with the advent of the open economy when he was offered a job as a copywriter at Grants Advertising by Reggie Candappa.

"Gone were my vagabond days. I reluctantly said goodbye to those loafing years. Instead I concentrated on making some money. I began to strictly follow the saying by John Kaples, the renowned American advertising legend who had stated that 'novel writers starve in garrets but you can make a living writing ads'.

"I used all the next five years at Grants to read English books avidly. During this time I published two books on Sufism and later on, a book on Mahayana Buddhism.”

Jagath notes the advice he had received during those years from Prof. Sunanda Mahendra. "He knew that I wanted to write in English and he urged me not to write on the middle classes but to concentrate on the village and the things which usually pass the attention of the English writer based in the metropolis," he recalls.

"After five years at Grants I shifted to JWT, once again as a Sinhala copywriter. Here I stayed for 17 years until I retired at the age of 55, five years ago,” he says.

After his retirement having published one novel and a collection of English poetry, he had been encouraged by Prof. Yasmine Gooneratne to join the English Writers Workshop, a group of creative writers.

"Here I met people who encouraged me and enjoyed my stories. With their enthusiasm, especially that of Christine Wilson, a supervisor of the Writers' Workshop I developed the characters which had lived within my heart and my mind for nearly 40 years and wove the interaction with them into these stories which gave me this award,” he says.

Ever humble, he insists, that he will be at heart 'always a vagabond'. His depth, his insight and his humility do make an impression even on a cursory observer. From poetry to literature it is clear that he has crossed universal borders, well versed in Arabic, American, Russian and French literature (to name a few based on his reference to authors from these countries). And from the village to the city, and from his mother tongue to English, he has also crossed many other borders.

His has been a unique and vibrant life as indeed his stories are. His stories as the reader will soon know, once his book is published, have a life of their own. Each sentence has its own nuances and is a portrait of a kind. It reads like poetry, as Dr. Pakiasothy Saravanamuthu, one of the other judges remarked at the ceremony to announce the Gratiaen shortlist.

Jagath's request to us was to name 'all the people' who helped him in his goal of being a successful writer in the English language. To name them all is impossible but among the long list is Sandra Fernando, Lakshman Welikala and Anthea Senerathne. The inability to mention all the others as Jagath wished is purely the lack of space!

.... Oh pear, take yourself apart and surrender to the wild dreams of he who is Ramu: Ramu whose complexion is dark as night, Ramu in his mid-forties, Ramu who squats on the pavements by the Golden Pumpkin Chinese Hotel. The Pear then bends to his will, so he who holds the pear that is pierced at the tip of the Kris Knife is happy, while Pinky, too, is happy. Pinky whose face is like a budgerigar whose underbelly is like a woman's. So is the second budgerigar whose underbelly is like a woman's and whose complexion is a gleam of blue. Even she is gird by a chain; and so is the last budgerigar of this tiny harem, whose complexion beams in orange.

An urge comes to Ramu at times to look at the road through his oval-shaped casement, and whenever he peeps through it Mrs. Ooi Choo comes into view. She walks from her grandson's Gold Pumpkin Hotel, her pace slow; her feet tiny as a little girl's feet, because in the olden days whenever a girl child was born, the elders covered her feet with shoes made of iron, and hoped that she could not elope with men later.

As Ramu had done with his past budgerigars, he trimmed their feathers with scissors to bar their flight, and they worked for Ramu from 7 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. spending hours in solitude within their quarters, looking with gleaming round eyes at people and little school boys and girls.

Their quarters were threefold: each one had a cell with shining brass bars to prevent any possible escape. Unless a client offers a sum of fifty cents to Ramu, these bars are well rooted. But once payment is done, the chosen budgerigar's gate would be opened and it would come out, and walk along an array of featherweight paper cards, and pick a card with its beak. Then Ramu would back the budgerigar in its cell, and unfolding the card, read it to his client.......

-Extract from the short story
The Last Bird Man from the award-winning ‘Kider Chetty Street’

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