Sunday Times 2
House of song and flowers
GALUMPHING dinosaurs in the new 3-D blockbuster “Jurassic World” bring to mind the dinosaurs we met as children in a smaller but no less thrilling Jurassic World, one that existed long ago, purely for our entertainment. This was the wonderful garden wilderness at No. 105, New Buller’s Road, the Colombo 4 residence of civil servant Vernon Abeysekera and his wife, the singer Lorraine, nee Forbes.
Ivan Peries Portrait of Lorraine Forbes Abeysekera and sons Stefan and Michel. 1958
Their sons Stefan and Michel, joined by self and Younger Brother, would disappear for hours in the garden’s jungle of coconut trees, wild flowers and tall grass to hunt down dinosaurs and dragons. We were of roughly equal age: Stefan was 12 years to our 10, Michel seven years to Younger Brother’s eight.
It was 1961. The Abeysekeras had recently arrived from England, where Vernon had been for six years Assistant High Commissioner for Ceylon in London. It was exciting to suddenly find that we had two interesting cousins, recently descended from England, and living a 15-minute walk away. The brothers had an interesting difference about them. They spoke with a delicate accent; it was “curry and rice”, not “rice and curry”, for them, and “curry” was sounded as “cur-rie”, with a rich roll on the R’s.
There’s a techie-geek in the Jurassic World movie whose computer terminal is loaded with models of dinosaurs. Just such a collection of plastic monsters came in 12-year-old Stefan’s luggage from England. He rattled off the bristly scientific names – Stegosaurus, Brontosauraus, Tyrannosaurus – and thrust upon us Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel “The Lost World,” the original inspiration for all dinosaur tales to follow.
In time, we moved on from dinosaurs. That first lesson on the primordial world would be followed over the next 12 years by hundreds of mini-lectures, on a variety of themes, mostly on history, books, the Arts. Stefan Abeysekera was a “natural-born” learner-scholar-teacher. He may have been physically two years older, but intellectually he was light years ahead by the time we had entered our teens. And all this nerdy wisdom and maturity was hidden behind a pop-rock image of long hair, flowered shirts open to the waist, denims and boots. Stefan Abeysekera was an uncertified young professor in disguise.
A typical holiday visit to No. 105 would take you up the front steps, through a forever-open and welcoming front door into a long enclosed veranda. At the far end is a sun-filled studio, where Lorraine Abeysekera the Florist is working with roses and carnations; meanwhile Lorraine Abeysekera the Singer, the country’s leading soprano, is pouring her heart out in lieder and opera. Flowers and Song.
You knew the concerts and music events Lorraine was working on from the music she sang around the house. One day it would be Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate; another day Mahler’s “Songs of a Wayfarer,” which she had studied during a scholarship visit to Germany; or Puccini arias before a visit to Tokyo to represent Sri Lanka at the “Madama Butterfly” Festival.
You turned left into a sitting room lined with bookcases and an old upright piano. The books are the thousands collected by Vernon Abeysekera during a distinguished career as a classics scholar at Royal College and the University of Colombo, a leading civil servant and diplomat, and a prominent and active figure in the local arts community. In the ’50s and ’60s, Vernon headed the Arts Council and had a weekly radio programme, his cultivated voice commenting on current Lit and Arts events.
Sweet 60: Michel Abeysekera celebrates birthday in Colombo on 29 June 2015. With him are his daughters Keshia, left, Maya. and wife Lesley, far right. Photo: Nigel Forbes
Hanging on a wall in a corridor is a large painting of Lorraine, Stefan and Michel. It was done in 1958 by Ceylon artist Ivan Peries, when the Abeysekeras were living in England. According to Michel Abeysekera, who was three years old at the time and remembers sitting (in his case standing, leaning against his mother) for the portrait, Ivan Peries was a regular caller, down and out and always in need of money. On one occasion, Vernon suggested he earned his donation of five pounds sterling by doing a portrait of the family.
At the end of the corridor, you turn right and go straight into Stefan and Michel’s bedroom, where one or both brothers are sprawled on their beds, reading or listening to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, a vinyl disc turning inside a pink-metal portable gramophone. More often than not, members of Stefan’s extended family of old school pals and La Bamba buddies would be present. Chitta, Baalu, Georgie, Timothy, Mohan, Dominic, and others. We would drop by, sometimes two and three times a day. We chatted, listened to music and read, cigarette smoke hanging in the air, while everyone hung on Stefan’s every word. The smokers drew on Stefan’s knowledge and wisdom the way they drew on a Marlborough – intently, intensely, as if their lives depended upon it.
It was in this bedroom setting that many of our perceptions of the world were formed and developed, and introductions to The Great were made. Conversations covered anything and everything, Art and Philosophy figuring prominently. Stefan had no time for the light stuff. Reading was serious business, and meant the Greeks and the Romans, Dickens, Fielding, Trollope, D. H. Lawrence, Melville, Whitman, Emerson, William James, La Rochefoucauld, Krishnamurti. The novelist and philosopher Aldous Huxley was his favourite. Michel sat in a corner, in T-shirt and blue rugby shorts, reading The Adventures of Professor Brainstawm.
Stefan Abeysekera had absolute pitch in his assessment of Literary and Arts matters, something he inherited from his artistic parents. His instinct told him at a glance what was worth pursuing, what could be dismissed. We all trusted his judgement, read the books he recommended, saw the movies he endorsed.
It was largely at No. 105 that we came to hear such great resounding names as Stanislavsky and Eisenstein, Mishima and Kurosawa, Abel Gance and Jean Renoir, Dietrich and Garbo. There was one spell when we had a few things to offer that Stefan was eager to learn about. This was what young Americans were talking about in 1969-70. From a year spent in the US, we were able to report that the “in” things included Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha” and “Steppenwolf”, J.P. Sartre and Existentialism, Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. This was also the time of Woodstock and the anti-Vietnam War protests, all of great interest to Stefan and his friends.
Our topics were often fun takes on the Eternal Verities, and woven around Latin mottoes. Ars Longa, Vita Brevis (Art is Forever, Life is Short). Carpe Diem (Grab the Day). Ars Gratia Artis (Art for Art’s Sake, as growled by the MGM Lion.)
Teasing was part of the fun. We picked up a classic with a lurid cover and said we couldn’t read something that kitschy-looking. Stefan shoots his arrow of a retort: “You read a book for what’s inside, not for its outside.” We aim our pistol of protest: “Covers count. A good cover takes you inside. A bad cover puts you off, whatever the content.” Stefan seizes the book and makes as if to rip off its cover to make his point. We aim to kill: “Tear that cover off and we will never read the book.” Stefan stands for Essence and Depth; we speak up for the Relevance of Surface and Superficiality (this was a time when many of us were under the spell of the delightfully wicked Oscar Wilde).
After talking late into the afternoon, the evening, the night, we would hit the road and march the length of La Bamba, stopping for tea and now talking about the Beatniks and Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti and Jack Kerouac’s hip novel “On The Road”, a popular young person’s guide to a free and anarchic lifestyle, fitting for those flower power times.
The generous Abeysekeras were natural hosts. Guests felt at home. At a party, you would see them all – prominent persons in music, such as Dr. Earle de Fonseka, Dr. Valentine Basnayake, Carmel Raffel, Evangeline de Fonseka, Mrs. Aruna Balasuriya, Mr. and Mrs. Lylie Godridge; in theatre, Arthur van Langenberg, Iranganie and Winston Serasinghe; in Art and Architecture, Geoffrey Bawa, Sita and Saliya Parakrama; in Film, Lester and Sunethra Peries, Anton Wickremasinghe.
The sun rose and the moon set on Music, Literature, the Arts at No. 105.
The years ambled on, during which much of our social down-time was spent at the Abeysekera home.
At some stage, it became apparent that Vernon was no more a full-time occupant but a visitor at No. 105. He would come in carrying gifts – heavy books about Film or Photography. His calls were charged with the excitement of the latest happenings in town – a French Film Festival at the Savoy Cinema, a George Keyt exhibition at the Wendt, a visit by the Russian Kirov Ballet, a performance by French mime artist Marcel Marceau and his troupe. (Michel Abeysekera recalls these artists being entertained at Vernon’s Brownrigg Road residence: an unsmiling Marcel Marceau sitting in a corner, a study in glumness; the Kirov Ballet troupe kicking heels high to the liberating throb of the Beatles.)
And then came 1970 and the Great Insurrection, turning the country’s daily schedule upside down.
With the curfew and state of emergency in place, we had to find new ways to get things done, to move around, even if it was after hours. We found short-cuts. We crept through gardens and climbed over walls to get to the Abeysekera home. This was a time of close interaction with the House of Song and Flowers. Stefan’s friends would gather till the last minute, before the military hour, or stay over. The JVP siege brought people closer together. Visits were short, intense, frequently interrupted. It was a time of fear, excitement, suspense.
Tossed on a sofa was a cyclostyled copy of Tennessee William’s play, “The Night of the Iguana.” Vernon was studying the part of Shannon, the defrocked priest, for a theatre production that never happened. After the uprising, Colombo was not the same. Projects were shelved, schedules forgotten, promises gently broken.
The JVP Uprising marked a turning point. It was a deciding factor for many who had for years been considering moving overseas but were hesitating. By 1971, the Abeysekeras were ready to call it a day. They were looking to Australia, where dozens of family and friends had moved. They staggered their departures; Vernon and Michel left first, then Stefan, and last Lorraine.
Lorraine, a regular concert artist, gave a series of goodbye performances.
One was a performance of Richard Strauss’s “Four Last Songs”, with the Symphony Orchestra of Colombo. Three of the four songs, among the most sublime music ever written, are set to poems by Hermann Hesse. “Beim Schlafengehen” (Going To Sleep), has a supremely expressive passage for solo violin. This joyous music fell to Mother to play, as leader of the orchestra. We heard this passage practised repeatedly at home, until we knew it well enough to whistle. This was the first Richard Strauss attempted by the orchestra, and its melodic and harmonic modernity was a challenge. At the farewell concert, we heard the passage fitting into the scheme of the song, the solo violin singing this achingly beautiful music, to be picked up and echoed by the solo soprano. It was the last music to be shared by the two cousins, Eileen Prins and Lorraine Abeysekera, and the choice could not have been more fitting. The lyrics and the music soar on emotions of farewell in the profoundest sense.
“. . . Forget all thinking.
My senses yearn to sink into slumber.
“And my unfettered soul
shall soar to heights untold
into night’s magic sphere
to live there deeply a thousandfold.”
Eleven years into her new hope-filled life in Sydney, Lorraine Abeysekara contracted cancer. In Australia, she had worked as a professional florist, partnered in a design boutique, and kept up her singing. She died in February 1982, Vernon and her two sons by her side. She was 56. Vernon Abeysekera continued to do what he loved doing, giving through his writing and broadcasting two-and-a-half decades of service to the Australian-Sri Lankan community. He passed away in 2004, at the age of 84.
Michel owns an apparel retail company, and travels widely in the Far East on business.
Stefan lives in Sydney. He has discovered the Elixir of Eternal Youth and looks not a day older than when we last saw him, 44 years ago. His role in life Down Under is that of guru, spiritual guide, confidante. His religion is that of Sri Aurobindo. He oversees house-full sessions for Yoga and Meditation. On special occasions, he wears a black-and-purple cape, recalling Romantic 19th-century visionaries such as Byron, Shelley and Wagner.
The Ivan Peries painting of Lorraine, Stefan and Michel, commissioned by Vernon, arrived in the mail this week as a JPEG. It was good to see the artwork, after four-and-a-half decades. The figures and Ceylon backdrop of sea, catamaran, coconut tree, are idealised. This is as it should be, in a portrait of a family that lived for Art and Beauty, and the Highest Things in Life.