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Book review
CBK – the somewhat authorized biography
By Rajpal Abeynayake
It’s by now well known that the president does not like the press making any comment on her children, and that’s by and large a wish that has been respected all along during her tenure of office. But Vimukthi Kumaratunga’s public appearance last week at a press conference is a different matter. Her son has, for the first time, appeared in the public spotlight which brings him into the public domain, and the President will not grudge any comments made on her boy’s fifteen minutes of fame...

Apparently, Vimukthi Kumaratunga began the press conference in faltering Sinhalese by apologizing for his lack of mastery in his mother tongue – Sinhala. He said ‘’mata vediya sinhala kathakaranna behe.’’

That’s in retrospect, probably what the JVP did to the young man. His mother was forced into exile after the father’s assassination, and spending his formative years in London was probably the causative factor for his inability to master the lingo that was made the only official language of this country by his grandfather in 1956. But even if the JVP drove the young man to an early and formative disengagement with his own language, it is a commentary of our times that SWRD’s grandson cannot speak Sinhala.

One needs to seek elsewhere to look at this fact placed in its proper context, and one location to find something will be the new biography of the mother launched recently at a ceremony graced -- but apparently not authorized -- by the President herself.( Or is it the book that was not authorized? Hmm, these things can be a trifle confusing, what?)

Graeme Wilson’s “CBK” is as whopping as the price you pay for it. The book doesn’t paint a picture of the President warts and all, even though it has a few warts of its own such as the several bloopers that have been already commented upon by another writer in the press. But yet, let’s say we are not going to cavil over the Town Hall being called the Parliament, and the Vajiraramya being called Vijayaramaya. Getting that whole la-di-da correct upto the last detail, would be an unfair burden for even a white man to bear -- especially for a white man to bear, we’ll say. So, let’s leave that part of the white man’s burden alone, and get on to weightier matters that concern a weighty tome that finally weighs in at a five thousand smackers.

Wilson offers a charming picture of a young chit of a girl who metamorphosed into an iron lady in a matter of 50 years or thereabouts. Sure, he does make some fruity comparisons, calling SWRD the Bill Clinton of Ceylon, and accompanying a chapter of Prabhakaran with a sketch of Napoleon on his horse. But all his idiosyncrasies apart, the man is not a complete idiot.
He does a reasonably good job of putting the life of the president in perspective, without seeking to canonize her as some party hack such as Janadasa Peiris would have.

To that extent, certainly, “CBK’’ is a good book -- whether it comes authorized or notoriously sans the presidential seal of approval. The president is seen as a woman who essentially had human qualities, which had to be subverted only every now and then just because she was in politics. Not an unkind assessment of any politician, one has to say.

Wilson quotes somebody close to the president as saying that after she assumed the office of the presidency, she chose to drive herself in a flat Nissan truck in private, even though officially she was driven about in a Merc.
None would dispute that about CBK. But, what reason did she have to put on airs, when she had been treated as heir apparent almost from the day she was born??

In the end, Wilson in his own way as a white man bears the burden of his subject’s biography without making things too melodramatic. He gives way too much prominence to the sponsors of the book, and that’s a blot on his efforts and cannot be forgiven even though Englishmen are still forgiven most anything these days from the president’s office downwards.

The fact that the book is littered with quotes from utterly irrelevant characters such as Arthur Ashe and Carlos Satana (!) can be forgiven, at least mildly, not because the author is English, but because he is packaging the book primarily -- or so we’d have to think -- for a foreign audience.
One thing indubitable about CBK (the person not the book….) is that she out-survived all her competition, and cheated death, which to most of her contemporary Lankan leaders came in the form of a plastic explosive jacket-wearing emissary from the Wanni.

But, by cheating death, CBK necessarily became the most important political figure of her times, and the book fleshes out this story in a manner that’s at least reasonably good for the record. This is no sophisticated and scholarly narrative in the manner of KM de Silva and Howard Wriggin’s biography of JRJ, and therefore, it makes sense that even belatedly the presidential secretariat has kept room for the authorized biography to appear sometime in the future.
In the photographs that come with “CBK”, you can see the subject going from a chit of a girl to lissome lass and then to first citizen. The narrative is essentially a corroboration of the same progression.

It has more than a few warts -- which are of the author’s own making. But wait for CBK’s real unauthorized biography -- the one which paints her with her own warts and all. If it appears someday, the presidential secretariat will not ditch it gently the way they did this one. They will burn it – and also burn the author at the stake.

CBK: the official and unofficial versions
The President’s office has back-tracked on the biography of President Chandrika Kumaratunga released last week in Colombo -- claiming that book released was not the official biography. The President’s office in a brief statement on Thursday claimed that the “authorized memoirs of President Chandrika Kumaratunga are now in the process of being compiled by another author”.

The statement said the “Office of the President wishes to state that the publication captioned ‘CBK’ which was launched recently is not the official biography of President Chandrika Kumaratunga”.

But, this was contrary to the official invitation sent out for the book launch held on July 29 at Visumpaya. The invitation to attend the ceremony said it was the launch of the ‘Authorised Biography of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga”.

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