Sentiment of truth to the emotions (Part II)

By Carl Muller
To Jean Solomons-Arasanayagam, it is most rational to possess an inspired insight. As my readers would have seen in Part I of this review, Jean tells of herself, and yet, with the outpourings in One Evening, there come new conceptions of her external world.
Things that had passed on, remembered for what they were, had to be re-analysed, taken as putty in her shaping hands and made to live again, distinct and doubly real.
Also, parallels are drawn. She is not prepared to dismiss an experience as fitting or fitted and leave it at that. There has to be more. It could be a better roundness of things, but could it not also possess a sort of cosmic duality?
What surfaces is inner truth – and I think of what Shelley said of Prometheus Unbound in his Spirit Song:
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurselings of immortality!
In Torch of Straw we have Helena, a much-loved friend. They are “drawn ever closer together by the fact that [they] both wrote poetry and wanted to read each other’s writing.”
Then Helena and Robert... New York... the house they built there, its massive oaken door a part of its unique architecture. When they returned to Sri Lanka, leaving their children to make their way in the New World, that oaken door closed forever on their old life.
Many things, people, swim into view, each tying a knot in Jean’s handkerchief of memory. How can she forget? There was the Broadway celebrity who had turned his back on the theatrical world. He lived in Kandy, “a recluse... struck down, crippled with polio, his body... hunched and twisted.”
Helena and Robert join him. He called himself Atman, the supreme soul – and where is he now? Robert passed away, his ashes strewn in the Mahaweli and Helena brought Aswintha from Amsterdam who carried packing cases of dreams and visions.
“Her tremulous wind-shaken golden hair rippling down her shoulders. Aswintha from Amsterdam, where she read the crystal ball and created charms of protection against evil, destructive forces and sadness. She had all the panaceas against human ills: jars, vessels beautifully wrought, which contained her magical portions. Visions can be created to become magical reality.
“Aswintha sought that vision on a hill in the Knuckles Range when she came to this island ...
“‘I want to create another world up here, Aswintha had said, ‘a special world for those who want to be transformed and metamorphosed into any form they desire, bird or beast or fish or ethereal being. I can create charms more powerful than the most hallucinatory drugs. I can make you humans invisible to the naked eye, unbind and unclasp you from the snares and trammels of your fleshy mortal natures. You are not permanently of the world now but if you wish, I can help you to remain here forever, become part of this primeval, untouched timeless zone. If you wish we can return but you can leave part of your being here and come back in your dreams, away from the fires that engulf your world.
“‘I will return, I will return, Aswintha said, ‘to build my home here. You may join me, live with me. There will be no artificial light here, only the sun, the moon, the stars, and food, the nectar and ambrosia of the gods, berries, fruits, pure water from its untouched bedrock springs...’
“She took her dreams with her, packed away in her mind, to Amsterdam.”
Helena abandoned the world, became a dasa sil matha.
“Her love and compassion, her total renunciation from a world of harrowing loss and sorrow had made its lifelong impression on my own troubled life. Helena had left this mortal life, left it without fanfare, remembered by a few of her friends. Her ashes too, like her husband Robert’s were strewn on the waters of the Mahaweli Ganga.”
So many straws that need to be bound together. Jean ties them all into an inseparable closeness for they will sit in the same room in the house of memory – the Korean friend Kim, Patricia, Chandana, Meenakshi and Keya of India.
Are we but straws to be held up together to receive the fire of the True Path? Will it then be as a wonderful torch of straw, blazing with the, light of renunciation? Are we all expected to find ourselves after we lose ourselves?
It is only then, as Jean seems to say, that there lies a common instrument with the power of reconciling then and now, opposites, into an inner unity.

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Book review

Vesak Lipi: A thought provoking digest

A Buddhist bilingual digest compiled and edited by Upali Salgado. A collection of views and commentaries on Buddhism; 164 pages; 44 articles; six colour plates; Soft-wave Printers, Colombo 5. Available at 29, Deal Place, Colombo 3

Despite the advances in the technology of computer aided printing, the publishing of a digest of this nature, we all agree, is a difficult task. One must be mindful of the fact that one has to gather material for publication; in this process, the respective contributors have to be invited to write, and such requests, more often than not, have to be followed up with gentle persuasion.
The fact that Upali Salgado has succeeded in continuing this exercise for the 23rd year in succession during both good and bad times has to be admired.
The 23rd issue of Vesak Lipi has already been released and is an excellent digest that contains thought provoking articles on Buddhism. The contributions cover a wide range of subjects, in both prose and verse and for the most part are expressions made out of devotion. They indeed inspire the reader, and in simple and lucid language open out the intricacies in the doctrine.
To adorn the cover of the book Editor Upali Salgado has chosen a photograph of a beautiful image of the Buddha’s head made of marble. It is described as one of the Gandhara period of the 151 century BC. It shows the Greek influence in Buddhist art of the period that was in present day Pakistan. This picture speaks of the lost Buddhist civilisation which in the distant past covered the whole continent.
It is no exaggeration to say that this is one of the better compilations where some of the more difficult issues in the doctrine are discussed. Many of the contributors are well known exponents of the Dhamma.
Valuable contributions made by Prof. Emeritus Y. Karunadasa, Prof. P. D. Premasiri, Susanga Weeraperuma, Ajaan Cha of Thailand, Ven. Dr. Pathegama Gunanarama Thera of Singapore, the Editor himself, and poems written by Irene Abeysekera and Chandra Gunasekara enhance the value of this publication.
Editor Salgado must be commended for putting together the compendium in a logical, easy-to-read, and illustration-rich text. The book covers some of the more pressing and important topics of Buddhism.
The publication of Buddhist literature in the English language is an onerous task. The business aspects of it are well known. The costs incurred in type setting, procuring of colour plates, printing and finally the distribution of the book, here in Sri Lanka as well as overseas can be quite expensive. However, Salgado has a large number of devoted friends and well wishers who subscribe to and fund his mission.
One of the more outstanding achievements of this publication is that part of the subscriptions has been channeled for numerous charities. The maintenance of a 15-bed ward (No. 69) at the General Hospital Kandy is one such cause.
The specialised ward for kidney transplants was set up by the readers of Vesak Lipi way back in 2004. The more recent donations, made this year, included furniture, fittings and appliances such as refrigeration equipment for the storage of vaccines etc., deserve mention.
Overall, Vesak Lipi is an interesting digest that should be read by all Buddhists and those interested in Buddhism, irrespective of their religious convictions.

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Christine: A Memoir by Christine Spittel-Wilson. Perera Hussain Publishing House,
Colombo 2007 - pp. 266

Girl of the jungles, woman of the world (Part III)

I remember what she told me when I first held the manuscript of this book in my hands – Alistair still keeps things inside of him, things he will not or does not wish to talk about.
The end of the war took Alistair to his last posting as Officer Commanding Troops, Diyatalawa and Nuwara Eliya. It was in their home there that he unwound, but not to the extent that he would drag memory out by the scruff of its neck.
He and a sergeant had stumbled into a Japanese outpost in Rangoon, were held there in a makeshift ‘cell’ to be transferred to a big POW camp; but they broke out, using the staves from their holding hut to beat their guard senseless, then escaped... and that was all he would say. As Christine says:
“Alistair will not speak, even to me, of these things. It was another kind of war. Too much torture seen; too much death. Thousands of others who had gone the same journey had not survived.”
Let me jump to 1946. Christine, Alistair and Anne go to Glasgow where Alistair’s parents live – to the flat in Burbank Terrace where J.M. Barrie lived. Alistair finished his engineering degrees at night classes.
Richard Spittel was not to be appeased. “Good for you getting settled in as you are doing,” he wrote, “but what’s happened to your writing?” Christine then joined Edward Scouller’s Writing Group. Alistair passed his exams with honours; Christine won a first and second award in her writing course, even though Scouller “used criticism like a scalpel.”
They moved to Clydebank, explored the glens and lochs, even Loch Ness, and in 1948, Richard and Clarie came to visit but also to see a specialist about Clarie’s thyroid. After the tests, she went into a major stroke – no speech, no movement, her life only in her eyes.
She had to be taken back, but Richard had to also find a trained nurse to accompany them. Alistair and Christine also flew back, for Alistair had applied to be part of one of Colombo’s largest engineering firms, and that firm’s London office accepted his application. Daughter Anne was accepted at Clarie’s old school, Cheltenham, then went on to Lausanne to study French. In two months, they were all back at Wycherley, save Anne.
Readers will see by the potted foregoing, the vast extent of a life that has been lived to the hilt. There never was the time for long, useless unlivable hours. I used to pride myself on the life I have so far lived, like some clown on a trapeze, and what can I show for it all?
This memoir is something that stimulates, that plays its own Waltz of the Vienna Woods as well as its March Militaire. Every musical instrument seems to call, pipe, vibrate, harmonise and echo. There is resonance and diaphonics and it is all done with the music of words.
In her beloved jungles one can hear the birds, the timbre of the wild ones, the gavotte in the feet of the vedda dances. We see the writer, the remembered with the scherzandos of memory rising, shaking themselves free, waiting for those chords of true art that will give each a place in this orchestra.
And it all seems to leap out of some giant prism – as Christine tells us of her travels... like their visit to the beaches of Arippu to look for the Doric:
“The winds were strong; monsoons beat heavily on that coast. But that evening, as we walked further, it loomed before us, a lonely ruin on a forgotten shore. A vision arose in my mind of this place in the days of the Fisheries, when the masts of many ships from many lands rode the sea; and ashore, Pearl Town had arisen almost overnight… People of many races thronged boutique lined roads, fetid with the stench of rotting oysters...
“Long after they had gone, the forgotten Doric remained… Balis had been held there. Up the curving cemented stairs, gloved guests with fans, in 19th Century evening dress climbed to dine and dance under the moon. “...Only part of the double stairway remained, and the moonlit shore.”
Clarie died after four years of stroke-directed silence. Christine is introduced to life’s seamier side ­deserted, lonely women who make a living by selling their bodies; young Burgher girls hired out to satiate the cravings of men; the woman who runs her own flesh-web and sells heroin.
To Christine, solace lay in her writing and a new thirst for this island’s story. She went with Alistair to Killarney, and her father said: “Don’t forget to ask about the devil bird.”
Their hosts were Peggy and Douglas Kelley – one of the last of the High Range aristocracy “who abided their own laws and founded the greatest estates in the island.”
They ate seven-course meals, eggs in silver eggcups, at a 14-foot mahogany table holding the finest China, monogrammed silver and heavy Waterford glass. Douglas had shot a devil bird on the Hortons and sent it stuffed, to Richard to be displayed on top of a bookcase – a Forest Eagle Owl. There is something more to be said:
“Once a week, [these planters] gathered at the clubs of Bogawantalawa, Darawela, the Agras... for tennis, badminton, snooker and in the evening, danced to the music of a croaky gramophone... perhaps a dated waltz, when lonely men pressed close against the few women present, and forgot for a moment their loneliness. And the girl-wives in turn, or even the older ones, would float quietly on a silent partner’s arm, lost, too, in dreams.
“When Independence came in 1948, many left... Yet Douglas remained solitary and staunch to his own ideas. He died shortly after estates were taken over by the government.”
And yet, the jungle remains a beloved part of this memoir. Richard and Christine go to the Puttalam coast in search of Kuveni Gala, “in the jungle where nobody goes now.” This place, they were told was where Vijaya first met Kuveni. They explored Jaffna and its islands – “villages cradled in turquoise lagoons” – and suddenly, the pain of an old spinal injury.
Richard and Alistair took her to England where an orthopaedic surgeon said that surgery could offer a 65 percent chance of success, but she could do the prescribed exercises and live as normally as she could.
She decided to do just that, collected Anne and toured the prehistoric cave country of Spain and France, then came back home, determined to finish her book. It was when she finished The Bitter Berry that she decided to undergo surgery in London – and on the day of the Queen’s coronation at that.
She followed up The Bitter Berry with I Am The Wings and The Mountain Road [and you know, I was privileged to review them all!]
Other blows followed. Her father had advanced glaucoma and knew he was going blind. Christine rushed her book Surgeon Of The Wilderness at feverish speed.
For Alistair, there was trouble too. As Chairman of Colombo Commercial Company, he had a politically tense staff, glowing labour troubles and false rumours spread by subversive elements the police even searched the library at Wycherley and read Alistair’s private letters. The Sinhala Only Bill was passed:
Tamil was OUT; English was wheeling downwards; Sinhala Only was IN, followed by the mass departure of the intelligentsia and people whose main language was English they went taking their families with them, sad for this island they had loved.
The next year, they did a shoestring flight around the world. All they could take for living expenses was £25. They visited New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii, San Francisco, Arizona, and New York before ending their crazy tour in Glasgow. They returned to immerse themselves in their chosen streams – she to write, he to stage his own workplace battles.
Christine simply had to get away – to the jungle places she loved. She makes the trip with three medical students, and in Wilpattu, she hears her father’s voice:
“Tell them, my daughter, how we searched the ground for clues, bushes where a deer rubbed velvet from his antlers in the season. How I taught you to study creeper-twined bushes as you pas, for the sight of an eye-peeker snake, slender as the vine it climbs. Explore dank roots of trees for orange-spattered fungi, deadly toadstools.
Learn from droppings and pugmarks what animal passed this way and when. Study trunks of trees for claw marks, nests, broken branches, where elephants have fed and passed, not knowing they are destroying their habitat. Endless small creatures scuttle in the undergrowth, hide beyond our vision. And if there is nothing else to study, concentrate on the birds. Finally tell how we travelled, cut off from civilisation by rising rivers, our food finished except for a tin of sardines and a tin of biscuits, tea, sugar...”
There came the day when Alistair said: “I retire at the end of this month ... There’s nothing to talk over. Ceylonisation of the Company. It’s time for the others to take over.”
When her father died, Christine felt her world falling to pieces around her. Anne had married, gone to live in Denmark. Christine had material for two more books she wished to write. She packed it all away.
She had to leave for London with Alistair... but she also had to say goodbye to the veddas. When in London, Alistair received the offer to work in Kenya and, as she says, “it was mad, it was fun, and sometimes we were scared to death.”
Their stay in Kenya is told of as though it is like a string of bright beads round the neck of a young Kikuyu woman. When Alistair fell dangerously ill, the Nairobi hospital pumped Masai blood into him. He pulled through. There were masked robber gangs, break-ins... They went to London, discovered that Alistair had cancer of the throat. Christine wept and prayed, but that battle too was met head-on, and Alistair won! And finally, back home. Wycherley had been leased to an international school. Their new home was smaller, but beautiful and airy and Wycherley lay just across the way.
“We share a den now. He is there when I have computer trouble, which is about every five minutes...
“Alistair,” I began tentatively,”... you are the most wonderful person I have ever known.”
“He thinks for a long time. ‘We’ve been a good team,’ he says.”
This memoir is love – and for an ageless, timeless Christine Spittel-Wilson, Love will always be a many-splendoured thing!

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