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An everlasting smile
A shortlisted writer for the Gratiaen Prize 2005 passes away while presenting his writing, but the sheer joy he exuded will always be cherished in the minds of all who were present
By Ruhanie Perera
I will always remember the night of March 20th by one thing, a smile. Ecstatic, haunting, unforgettable. It was the smile of a man, as he tried to take in an achievement of a lifetime.

Chelliah Shanmugalingam was the fourth writer shortlisted – out of five, read out in alphabetical order – for the Gratiaen Prize 2005. Short of hearing, and not yet convinced of the benefits of wearing a hearing aid, he had to be nudged by his niece who told him, “They are calling your name. Don’t get excited, you go and read now.”

Clearly, the man who slowly made his way to the stage was throbbing with happiness. Perhaps it was the excessive excitement that took a toll on an already weak heart – a thousand perhapses could be speculated – but what took place last Monday at the British Council auditorium was that Mr. Shanmugalingam, overcome by emotion, never finished reading from his work. He collapsed midway, and was taken to hospital, where a short while later, he died of heart failure.

This was a completely different – and difficult – Gratiaen event. The usual atmosphere that celebrates the meeting of literary minds, where the technicalities and philosophies of creative writing in English are tossed over finger food, was shocked into a stunned silence that you just couldn’t shake off. Yet, there was a kind of spirit in this community of writers; a spirit embodied primarily in the smiling old gentleman, neatly dressed in the pastel shades of green and beige, carrying his manuscript, with the meticulously bookmarked selections that he had chosen to read. It wasn’t the death that underscored the spirit of the Gratiaen that night; it was life.

One felt such a connection with this man. Maybe it was his sincerity that reached out and touched the audience, like his work, which in being shortlisted, made the criterion of reaching out and gripping the reader. He had us from his first bright grin that accompanied his thanks to the panel of judges. It was a feeling of warmth that deepened with the exuberant readings of short extracts from his work, where in the process he completely forgot to censor the word ‘bastard,’ whereupon an almost apologetic, almost mischievous grin was flashed, just minutes before he declared to one of the judges, Ameena Hussein, who assisted him, “Thank you. Now I’m old, no.” That got a laugh.

The man who stood before us was feeble, his hand shook, but his work was alive with the ecstasies, insecurities and anxieties of love, marriage and parenthood set within (and complicated because of) the action of our nation’s war, bringing into focus, life lived in its midst.

In Shanmugalingam’s work, ‘The Wait For Eternity’, one hears the voice of the Sri Lankan living in the North of the country. According to the citation, which preceded the announcing of each shortlisted entry, the story is one that sketches with unflinching clarity the world that the 20-year-old war has created. In the prologue, the reader is plunged into a world of crisis, loss and pain:

“And now the latest order was to vacate – vacate before the army takes control. To enforce this order, the Tigers had threatened to blow up the Kaithady and Navatkul bridges, which served as the link from the Peninsula to the mainland south, within a matter of hours…

“Arumugam and his family were way behind. They had coaxed and persuaded the old lady, Mangalam, but she had been stubborn in her refusal.
“I will only add to your burden. Without me you have a chance of saving yourselves. And I would rather die here in this old ancestral place which has been home to me for the past ninety years… I know I’ll never make it. I have lived my life. Let me die in peace.”

Arumugam saw the collapse of Jaffna in her eyes.” To have lived in Jaffna is to know the collapse of Jaffna in the eyes of its people. It is an understanding of the end of a way of life, and the heartbreak at the destruction of a place one called home. The intensity of the story may come from the writer’s own experience of life in Jaffna, where he lived later on in his life until 1998.

A niece through marriage, Manjula Vipulananda, who pieced together the life of Mr. Shanmugalingam, spoke of his early years in Malaysia, where his father worked to his 25-30 years of service at the Bank of Ceylon, recounting stories of Jaffna related to them.

According to her, a major portion of the book, which she remembers as “sheets of white paper, written in pen,” would have been written in Jaffna, but completed and perfected within the last two years.

Known for his appetite for reading and his bouts of writing, especially his letters, ‘The Wait For Eternity’ is Shanmugalingam’s major effort at a book, which he was unable to publish, because of the expense involved. The Gratiaen was, in fact, the impossible dream. “He never thought he’ll get chosen. In the introduction they said there were 52 applicants, and he said, ‘what chance do we have – we’ll wait quietly and go home when it’s over.’”
But it wasn’t a quiet exit. This sometimes quiet, sometimes restless, cricket-loving, jovial person, who had lived through the hardships of life in Jaffna, worked quietly at his job at the bank, and dedicated his life to being the caregiver to a sister who was mentally ill, read before an audience the story which required, “considerable courage to tell.”

In her concluding speech, Ameena Hussein made the point that people have something to say and that is why they write. When, as in this work, something is said with passion and with conviction, through a voice that speaks from the depths of the soul – then creative writing in English in Sri Lanka is truly alive.

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