Letting the Stars Getting Into Your Eyes

Letting the Stars Getting Into Your Eyes

I can’t remember exactly when it was I chanced upon my Thaththie’s 3-volume Set of Feynman’s Lectures in Physics, but guess it was when I demanded clarification from him as to what exactly a gyroscope was... and he showed me the picture of one in that Feynman Book No. 1. So it must have been in my ‘First Year; at the campus... I must say though, that physics lectures at Kelaniya Campus was a pretty dull affair, by-and-large. No offence meant for Professor Dahanayake, whom I had known from my childhood itself, owing to his long association with my father, and is in fact very interesting to listen to, but his very first lecture (which also, I think happened to be his last to our ‘batch’) was marred to me by his very soft spoken voice, which owing to my sitting right at the back with ‘the other girls’ (as I had been told to do so by my father), made it more-or-less inaudible to me, owing to my ears’ inability to ‘decode’ or extract the actual words from the sound! Same as what happens to me when I am not immediately in front of the TV or sometimes even when listening to English ‘pop music’ on my radio receiver! The situation was still more exacerbated by the shiny blackboard and the relatively poor-lighting in the room/lab concerned, which made it seem to me as if the words were literally dancing on the shimmering blackboard, as if playing a nightmarish game of hide-and-seek with my poor tired eyes, reeling under the shock of continuous wearing of spectacles that I had foolishly done (again under instructions from well meaning people – including friends and relatives) quite contrary to my usual practice at school and elsewhere, since I first started wearing them!

But if the Professor’s lectures did not quite convey to me what I expected from him (going by the wealth of his reputed insight, brilliance and writings), owing to campus acoustics, my poor eyesight and my father’s advice as to sit with the other girls, coupled with what was apparently thought proper by the ‘other girls’ as where to sit in the class – right at the back of the class (!), some of the other lecturers (mostly temporary, I believe) then acting for the Physics Department at the campus, were a good deal worse! There was the lady with jangling bead-necklaces and large eat-rings... Then there was also the rather pretty one, who it seemed was moonlighting in a leading girls’ school as the physics teacher there, while she was supposed to be taking care of our ‘practicals’. Then there was the kind but rather dumb one (who went onto join the Met Department) who simply did not comprehend that to my tone-deaf ears, there was no discernable difference between a tuning fork corresponding to the Middle C, with one just outside it (say the note on the piano immediately to the right or left of it). Nor could he, for that matter, explain to me, at least to my personal satisfaction, why there had to be tuning forks with frequencies with a fractional part... It was only much later, that I was to understand even a little bit, the theory underlying the division into octaves on the Diophantine Scale of the Greeks... While apparently the ancient Athenians regarded a sound musical education as part of the curriculum absolutely necessary for the proper training of a mathematician, it had not been so for me! And certainly neither Mr. Srinath or anybody else there, at all comprehended my facility to go into a hypnotic trance while I was supposed to be counting the swings of a pendulum! Just about the only Physics lecturer there at the campus who actually lectured to me and managed to imbue with something of the spirit of what he taught was one Mr. MinHaj who alas did not stay there long, and indeed had to cut short his quantum mechanics course due to unavoidable circumstances – as he phrased it. But what I remember most about him is the moment when he focused a beautiful set of absolutely perfect Newton’s Rings for me in the lab, when it was my turn to do that practical... Needless to say, I couldn’t have achieved it on my own, ham-handed at practicals as I always was!

But still, even Mr. MinHaj couldn’t compete with my first Physics teacher at Pembroke, where I had gone at 18 years of age, to do my A Levels, having being ruled persona-non-grata at other ‘proper schools’ owing to the crime of being ‘over-age’ – apparently in accordance with a ministry circular! Perhaps Thaththie got it a bit wrong, for he had only tried asking at Museaus and Visakha, the 2 schools where I had studied for Grade 10 class and Grade 9 respectively. Naturally! Having been admitted to Visakha (Grade 9 class) on the strength of my showing at the (then) Grade 7 Scholarship Test, and then missing school for nearly a month or so owing to my parents being unable to get our house back after renting it out while they were in England (having ‘boarded’ my sister and myself with Ammie’s parents at Matara), on finally returning, I found myself in a ‘strange class’ (different from my first one to which I had been admitted initially), having to field a lot of ‘difficult’ questions – not only from my new classmates but from my new teachers as well... To make matters worse, my new Applied Math teacher literally ‘threw the book at me’ for the crime of not going through the tedium of looking up literally ‘hundreds’ of cosines, tangents etc. of seemingly most recalcitrant of angles of nightmarish proportions... or alternatively just copying the lot wholesale from another girl in the class! I started hating my new Applied Math teacher, and along with her, the whole school... and following a lead that I had followed in relation to a slightly older boy cousin also boarded with us at my Grandparents at Matara – whom I also cordially disliked and in fact still do – started washing myself on coming to contact with anything to do with school! In short, I became a ‘compulsive washer’, and doctors could not really figure out why I was doing it, save, categorising me as an ‘obsessive compulsive’ when finally my parents decided to seek psychiatric help for me. And though at my insistence (and doctors’ advice), I was sent back to Museaus (where I had been before going to Sujatha at Matara), the situation did not vastly improve... My school grades continued to plummet, save in Sinhala and English (actually an improvement over what I had been getting at my first stint at Museaus – apparently because my new English teachers (both in Grade 9 & 10) felt that I could write well, even though I couldn’t ‘spell for toffee’... When the results came for my first O Level Examination came, I had managed to fail both Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics to my father’s great mortification – considering his lifelong involvement with same ... I have also managed to fail in Buddhism, though no one could quite figure out why... my friend, Chandrika at Museaus, thought it was due to my poor handwriting – and perhaps the same went for my failure in Math too... after all, when I first came to Museaus, didn’t I manage to glean 50 out of 50 for arithmetic at my first monthly test there? – and advised me to ask permission from the Education Ministry to use a typewriter... I knew better, of course. While the handwriting argument might have held water for the Buddhism paper – considering that it was supposedly marked by Buddhist monks who are reputedly ever famed for their neat calligraphy (though mind you, on my part at least, this is based on pure hearsay; my guess was that too was partly due to my then hostility on account of my dear cousin’s chief educational accomplishment being a top scorer at the Daham Pasala (Buddhist Sunday School) there at Matara, coupled with my total disinclination to commit to memory by rote of whole tracts of Pali (Buddisht) cannon.... for I saw no reason to try to commit to memory words that I could not understand except here and there… though if asked to set down the gist of those 3 Suttas given out to us that dealt with how to conduct oneslf in Lay Life (Singalovada Sutta and Vyaggapaddha Sutta) or what it is that constituted a Noble person or an Ignoble person (Wasala Sutta), I could have managed to, somewhat well, I think. As for math, well, how could I, considering how little I knew of what I was supposed to have studied then, though the full extent of my ignorance therein became apparent only a year later, when I decided to pull myself together, and study math on my own (aided a little with a simultaneous ‘studying’ for ‘Advanced’ or ‘Higher’ Mathematics – at O Level exams level)... What concerns here is that once again I prevailed on my father to prevent further ‘subjugation’ of me at school, by his removing me from same – and once again in the teeth of opposition from that principal too, who obviously felt that my father gave into my whims to easily. and that probably what I needed was a bit of a good end of a stick, and being under a watchful eye of a teacher – even if in an O Level revision class, while perhaps he and my mother set about finding a suitable marriage partner for me without regard to my educational qualifications, etc. As fate willed it, things did not turn out quite that way, but both my former principals at Museaus and Visakha never forgave me or my father, I guess, for taking into our heads for throwing away what others would have given their ‘right hand’ even...

Guess, also they perhaps thought I just might be mixing a little bit of love-interest or boyfriends with mathematics, and as a many a person had taken the trouble to tell me more than once, love and mathematics don’t mix!

But they did though, that first day at Pembroke (after arriving there a term late, this time with the required number O Level passes including one in English Literature, and Distinctions in English Language and Pure Mathematics) when Mr. Karunaratne walked into the class in the second or third period to take Applied Mathematics – or more precisely Dynamics, a portion thereon... He was dark and small, very slightly built in fact, and seemed to have coal-black eyes that reminded me of a volcano about to erupt and (I suspected) a temper to match. He started with wedges, a mathematical term for a triangular-shaped piece or block of wood, etc. placed on a smooth table (with the wedge surface being idealized to same, though later on, we considered rough surfaced ones too), with some tiny smooth particle sized ball (but with perceptible ‘mass’) placed on one of the sloped sides of the wedge... Naturally, as the ball moved downwards, it exerted a ‘reverse momentum’ upon the wedge, and so on, it being one of the cardinal tenets of Newtonian mechanics, that in the absence of external forces upon a given system, there can be no change of momentum, but when there is a net external force acting on the same, the acceleration produced was proportional to that force, taken vector-like... After giving a brief lecture, he did one sum upon the blackboard, surveyed the result, corrected a careless mistake or two, and finally arrived at the desired result. Then a second one, I think, and this time the blunder seemed to elude him... But I hadn’t missed it, and plucked up a little bit of courage, and pointed it out. “You forgot to reverse the sign on that x-double-dot term, while taking it to the other side.” He looked in my direction to catch at my words, and then checked out the board, and decided that I was right... and finally had it right. Then after giving out the third problem, he said, we could try it out by ourselves for a change!

But I had a problem. How did he work out the actual acceleration of the particle mass, relative to the earth? Timidly, I decided to go up to his desk, and find out. But it was with considerable trepidation. What if he were to bite my head out? What if he were to yell at me, calling me stupid girl? As it turned out, he did neither. He turned his large eyes upon me, which at that moment seemed like two clear liquid pools of brown light, and patiently began to explain to me in a language I could understand... Suddenly, I began to feel that I might, if I tried, actually develop a liking for Applied Math too, even though that I had obtained only a simple pass for that even at my third O Level attempt in spite of my best efforts till then.... Suddenly, I seemed to have found a man, with whose correlation of understanding (as I termed it) seemed to be higher than that with my Thaththie’s (even in the aftermath of my sudden re-elevation in the latter’s eyes)... After all, Thaththie’s attempts at teaching me math for O Levels had proved almost entirely futile, and my eventual success at imbibing some of the same was due partly to my coming across a book by one Professor H. Sawyer, called “delight with Mathematics” – which made me realise where exactly in my attempts at ‘proofs’ in Geometry, were going wrong… and perhaps even more importantly, that Euclid’s Parallel Lines Postulate was an ad-hoc assumption based partly on defining what parallel lines are, and that it was due from this definition plus postulate, that you ‘proved’ parallel lines never meet… While it was gratifying to learn that there were indeed other geometries possible either discarding it all together (resulting in a rather impoverished geometry – which nevertheless enabled ones to prove results that were valid in many different kinds of ‘other geometries’), Euclid’s Parallel Lines Postulate with 2 different premises, one can in turn get other more delightful geometries of the sphere and the hyperboloid respectively, Thaththie brought me a little boo written by 2 English schoolmasters, that too me was eminently more readable than Bernard and Child’s, clear-cut and precise, with a lot of ‘riders’ to solve… This together with a bit of dabbling with Advanced Math at O Level, helped me considerably in my approach to Algebra too.

I had also been spurred on by the fact of my an year younger sister gaining five or six Distinctions at O Levels (and worrying about not getting an ‘extra’ sum she had done, not quite right, as to the possible repercussions on her final grade, while I myself was thinking sadly that I probably would not get even 25% marks for same), an encouraging letter by my friend Chandrika (having somehow or other found my address – probably from a former classmate of mine, who was Thaththie’s friend, Uncle Piyadasa’s daughter, Lalana) and to Paul Gallico’s fairy tale novel, “The Man Who Was Magic”... whose 13 year old heroine is constantly been bullied by both her father and brother for wanting to be a professional stage magician rather than a mere magician’s assistant – as all young girls I Magia seem destined to be, until then. Following the tip to Jane by Adam, the man who was magic without quite knowing how, I too had decided to use my Magic Box, and visualize myself actually doing the things I wanted to do, by unlocking the two compartments “I can” and “I do”... But there’s a limit as to how far, this technique can actually carry you... Previously, lacking somewhat true insight to Nature and Natural Phenomena – especially where Physics and Mechanics were concerned, I couldn’t quite achieve the desired results in those two areas... But now, here was this magical man, who clearly understood where my difficulties lay, seemed capable of helping me out of them... especially since as it turned out, he happened to be our Physics teacher as well... even though it ended all too soon, as all good things do, in a way... For that is life.

Too late, I realised that the ring he wore upon his finger was in fact, his wedding ring, and in fact, realised much later, in fact many years later at a subsequent meeting, that before coming to Pembroke, we had given him and his wife a lift in our car, when my mother noticed the same young couple (a dark boy and a very fair girl) traversing the same highways and byways of a temple complex built by our King Nissankamalla in the Gadaladeniya region... Indeed, though memories can’t be often relied upon, I think we ran into them once again when we were visiting Sigiriya, though that first encounter ended with us seeing them off either at Peradeniya Gardens or Campus (where they apparently belonged)... What I remember most on that first encounter with them was making an aside sotto voice for the benefit of my sister and our servant girl, that boy was ‘a long-haired Johnny’, and his glancing in my direction (looking a wee bit amused) as I made that remark, and their telling us that Haggala Gardens were much more beautiful than the ones at Peradeniya – which indeed seemed to be true, as doubtless they already knew, having spent many happy hours there). Though those memories stayed with me, I somehow or other did not make the ‘right connection’ perhaps owing to the fact that I seldom observe closely faces of even peole whom I get to know quite well. In fact, I often find myself in the somewhat embarrassing position of being not quite able to identify with whom I happen to be speaking, when I meet them years later or sometimes even when chancing to run into them at a different setting to which I had been accustomed to meeting with them before! Perhaps also, subconsciously I didn’t ‘want to know’.

What I did know was in fact, that he was in fact the best teacher I have had up to date – perhaps even eclipsing my father – who, let us admit it, is at his best when discussing things with which both he and I are somewhat familiar, it being primarily my mother who taught me arithmetic, with my paternal grandmother following it up by introducing me to arithmetical and geometrical progressions and extracting square-roots (by hand) a la Newton’s Method, apparently. Thaththie’s main contribution to my secondary school level math being introducing me to the concept of negative numbers, and providing me with heaps of interesting books to work with… and settling my doubts as to a triangle can be said to be congruent to its mirror image…

As I said, Mr. K was probably the best teacher I ever had, besides being the first real man with whom I actually fell in love with, though when one day when his wife turned up at school to meet with him, I realised as to why he wore a ring on his finger… Wisely, I opted to keep my secret to myself, but I benefited a lot from the time he stayed at Pembroke... Not only did I gain an abiding interest in natural phenomena and its (possible) mathematical underpinnings (at least, going by theories made up to explain them, as Professor Nalin de Silva would say), but slowly but surely, I lost my aversion to things connected to school... and gradually I became much less of a ‘compulsive washer’... It no longer bothered me if one of my plaits grazed one of my schoolbooks, and more and more, I found myself pushing unruly hair from my face and getting ink on it in the process), and slowly but surely, I started relaxing again... though it truly hit me only when my father remarked “Why, Priyanthi is no longer keeping her fists clenched into little balls all the time!”)... Soon I was once again taking my books to bed as I always did, until that fateful encounter at Visakha... and learning became a joy again.

And though as it happened, he left Pembroke after that first term (at least for a time), I realised that I could do the impossible, as my new classmates termed it, and get through my A Levels from Pembroke without even extra tuition. I might, I reflected, even get into University (locally), something my parents (especially my mother) I knew, might well have given up on… even in the aftermath of my Math Distinction at my 3rd O Levels…

As it happened, I did both. Though owing to the District Quota system prevailing then, I managed my second ambition only on the basis of marks gained at my second A Level attempt. But I did get through my A Levels on my very first attempt – even if taken up from Pembroke – and if not exactly with flying colours, with passably good results that included a B (Very Good Pass) in Physics and Credits for Pure Mathematics and Chemistry... and once again I had made through Applied Math as well... Next time, it was even better, of course, there being no change for the better only in Chemistry.

Many waters had indeed passed since under the Kelani Bridge, and always, Mr. K stood in my mind like a beacon in the dark or like that candle referred to in Irish song, Mother Macree. And never once did I seriously contemplate self-imposed spinster-ship on myself on account of my Mr. K! After all, before going to Visakha, I had loved most of my teachers, and even in Visakha and back again at Museaus in Grade 10, there were a couple of teachers or so, whom I adored, especially those two ladies who taught us English then in Grades 9 & 10... But there’s a difference between the way you eventually get to feel to a teacher whom you lov dearlye, when it happens to be a male – and a gentleman at that! Especially, if you are young (just eighteen plus), and had never been in love before (unless you count the times you felt a throbbing in your heart for someone in a book – brave and considerate perhaps, but in a book)... But it still came as a bit of shock for a girl who had some rather funny ideas about love and marriage – as my mother was wont to say – and in fact, very likely many people will still say, that I still don’t know what it’s supposed to be all about, though I dare say,, I do... and whose general attitude to boys and girl falling in love, was in step with William Brown’s attitude towards his older brother and sister imsgining themselves to be engaged in same, in those wonderful books by Richmal Crompton that our parents used to buy for us! But even though I eventually realised that not only did I love my teacher, but was apparently in love with him, I chose to nothing about it...

Why? I knew by then, that he was already married, and I felt sure that he would have picked on one whom I would really like as my friend under other circumstances, and could not bear to give pain to somebody else (especially one who had never hurt me) just in order to gain the heart of one I loved myself. Besides me being me, I always felt that if I did such thing, I would be feeling as if I lived under the sword of Damocles – living in fear, lest somebody else served me the same... And I could not bear it to be said of a man I loved, that he heartlessly left his wife and children for another... Eight years later, when I ran into him, at a computer workshop, things were pretty much the same... except that I felt that he certainly must be having children by then – even if he did not before! Perhaps quite a few of them! Though glad to meet with him once again, I also felt that everybody’s eyes were on us... which made it extremely difficult for me to do any ‘teaching’ at all to him, though I was there in the capacity of unofficial demonstrator... Luckily my friend, Dharmasiri (who was a very kind and considerate boy himself), helped me out of my dilemma, by remarking casually, “Priyanthi, you take over that section. I’ll look after this side.”

Perhaps, I was simply over-reacting, perhaps because of something else that happened in the immediate aftermath of those awful July Riots of 1983, when the then President of Lanka, JRJ chose to hang the murder and mayhem carried out largely by UNP goons on the instructions of a powerful minister or two, around the necks of the JVP and NSSP. A chance scrap of news on the radio and upto then forgotten joking reference by Mr. K as regard to his brother Wickramabahu’s proclivity in distributing leftist literature at the university much to the annoyance of his lecturers, resulting in his getting into the ‘bad books’ of Professor Sultan Bhawa. I was a bit hazy as to what Professor Bhawa was professor of … Still less, as to what Mr. K’s brother in fact did at the university. Nor that this said brother might in fact have had any connection with the math department of our university! But what I decided on the spur of the moment perhaps was that Mr. K seemed to have been detained alone with his brother, when the police went after the later at the formers house… Perhaps I should have tried to confide my worries to my Thaththie – but explanations they say, are tedious. Also on account of my Mahappa having being diagnosed as a schizophrenic on account of some conspiracy he had imagined having stumbled upon listening to the radio, and my being ruled as an incipient (possible) schizophrenic by a Professor of Psychiatry, I was a bit wary of coming out with things that I had seemingly got from the radio.


I kept my worries largely to myself, but couldn’t but help crying in the privacy of Thaththie’s office in the Math Department, over my lunch so as to speak. Unfortunately also, others in the department also sometimes came to wash their hands in the washbasin there – particularly dear Nimalka, who deceived me and wheedled out my secret from me, and proceeded to put it to good use – though I did not quite realise what she was upto, or still less, as what she was really like… I was much less good at reading character in general then, and much more naïve… in spite of my toying with writing even then. Though I have pieced together, only the final part of this puzzle only very-very recently, a brother of Mr, K seem to have been already there, at least as a visiting lecturer, though which exactly, I am not quite sure still. One who in fact knew that my worries were groundless, both Mr. K and W. having been released within a day or two… Perhaps though older than me, he did not remember, that in 1971 in the aftermath of the 1971 JVP insurgency, some who were taken in for questioning , in fact never returned. Even though quite a few of those who were detained, in fact were what could be dubbed ‘innocent bystanders’… So mmany died then, and as some would say, though I myself can’t vouchsafe for that, being largely grounded at Seeya’s house, rivers ran red with blood, and some of the suspected insurgents in Matara were in fact shot facing the wall dividing the Bodhiya from the Church… While as your brother seems to think, it might be silly to be ready to die for a cause (though, I guess perhaps he had borrowed it from “Lion Hunting…” by a Russo-American mathematician), and certainly not wishing for any establishment of the “Diktat of the Proletariat”, one does sometimes have no option perhaps – whether or not you were picked for a cause or even actual crime anyway! At least, that was how I viewed it then. Besides having been secretly studying Russian (but with the knowledge of my sister), partly at least because I wished to score a one-upmanship over my hated cousin, who spoke good English – whereas I didn’t, I was terribly aware only too well what might indeed happen, if by any chance, the police took it into their heads to search our house. My sister advised me to burn my Russian books (apparently a hangover from my father or Mahappa’s interest in same distant days gone by, but I couldn’t – anymore than I could set a match to my attempts at ‘short-story’ scrawled in a monitor’s exercise book, even though all too painfully aware that save for one I submitted for one of my Sinhala compositions under the title “The Day that the Sun Did Not Rise” , they were in fact only pale shadows of what I actually wanted them to be… As somebody said, one cannot in fact take an axe to one’s creations or efforts!

But on account of the ‘silly’ prank played by your idiot of a brother and some other nitwits from the campus... there were far reaching consequences, triggering an unfortunate sequence of events culminating in a few days of utter misery and torture for me perhaps, that mercifully I have in a sense forgotten... save for what I read by chance in a newspaper of somebody’s memoirs, which together with remarks made by some others, eventually prompted me to seek memory recall under hypnosis from a ‘lady doctor’ then at our campus medical centre, who had claimed to be a neighbour of Dr. Gamini Prematilake, and had talked over with him about me... And this brings me to another point, at that time when I was enormously stressed, I seemed to hear somebody telling me that “You have Schizophrenia. Ask to see Dr. Gamini Prematilake” And that was definitely odd, because one of the 2 salient events from that period apart from the lynching of Tamils over an attack by Prabhakaran’s men leading to the death (or shall we say literal ‘vaporisation’ of 13 soldiers), was the emergence of a mysterious new disease dubbed Auto-Immune-Deficiency-Syndrome (AIDS) and the arrest of a young psychiatrist called Dr. Gamini Prematilake and a Tamil Professor of Gynaecology on account of what they claimed to have might have done on a seminar on abortion organized by Mrs. Anne Abeysekera among others. Dr. Prematilake’s words were in fact, that he might have done an abortion on a young teenaged girl who was just 13 years old, and might have been sexually assaulted, though rape in the clinical sense could not be established. I guess though, that at that time, he went under the name of Michael Roach, which was how I knew him in England too, though at that time, he pronounced his name as Roh… And as I now know, he pointed out my book “The Golden Island”, and told me that he was thinking of changing his name to Gamini (Dutu Gamunu – the hero in that book), he also persuaded me to part with a book on amateur radio making, that he had found on one of our upstairs bookshelves, that I think had belonged originally to Mahappa… That day, he had told me that he was studying to be able to help people with problems – a psychiatrist rather than a mere psychologist… he also wanted to experiment with the possibility that telepathy might in fact can be on occasion real – at least to be able to hear somebody else’s thoughts from a distance… But he also made me forget that terrible night, though my dislike towards my cousin was reinforced. Mercifully, my aunt removed him from there, having got him admitted to Royal through the good offices of a cabinet minister from Tangalle at the time – with whom my uncle was on very friendly terms then… But the past casts long shadows on the future, they say… And the horror that I had of my cousin almost right from the start while boarding there, in fact helped to intensify terror for me afterwards – perhaps on another of my uncles’ misguided attempts to check on as to whether I was perhaps not a virgin… Apparently on the grounds, that there’s no smoke without fire…

As to exactly what happened then, I simply do not know, save that I was confronted with crass stupidity and total insensitivity on the part of both the attending psychiatrist and my relative (a doctor himself). And guess, I reacted badly to an injection – either a tranquiliser or an anaesthetic. Waking up dead in the night by a telephone call from a rough male voice who brusquely told me “If you can’t come on your own, I’ll come and get you.” And then just slammed down the ‘phone on his side. Who did call? Was it really meant for somebody else? Perhaps in another room? Or was it from my uncle to my aunt, my father’s sister who simply was not there. (In fact nobody was there). I still don’t know. I looked about. I was in a strange room, in a place I could not tell. Vaguely, I had the terrifying fear that I had been kidnapped or something, and that I could expect bodily harm. There was a suitcase, but it was locked with no key in sight. I think, I was in a nightdress… but those days anyway, I wore lingerie underneath… I felt terrified… Fear of rape loomed in the horizon… In fact, even before your brother and his friends deciding to act as ‘police’, and ask for me to things I could not to get you released, and in fact I was quite aware that such promises might not really be kept – always even when real, some of the campus thugs who cried out for the blood of Tamils, had threatened me in no uncertain terms, when I tried foolishly perhaps to speak against the shedding of innocent blood, to pay for the sins of others… Without thinking out the possible consequences, I decided to ‘escape’ – which alas proved only too easy, I think. I walked out into the night, and gradually I think, suffered progressive loss of memory…

I remember little only of what followed. A harsh unsympathetic police officer, … who asked me to prove if possible that I am not a prostitute by taking off my ‘top dress’… then an equally obtuse elderly magistrate – who tried hard to persuade me to plead guilty to some stupid charge which I did not understand, so that I would be given 3 months at a ‘rehabilitation camp’ instead of 6 in jail… but being told what it actually boiled down was to admitting that I was a prostitute, how could I? I tried hard explaining that I was a university student, and that my father was a lecturer or professor (though not I was quite sure as to which) who specialised in Relativity… They did not know what Relativity was, and asked me what exactly he was supposed to lecture in, and what his name was? I knew that Relativity was something that could be the prerogative of somebody who had originally specialized in either Math or Physics, and I believed that it was to the former category my father belonged. But I could no longer recall his name, still less mine. I was hazy as to where we were supposed to live, still less of an address or telephone number… Curiously enough, I recalled the predicament of Alice in “Through the Looking Glass”, where in one chess square, Alice is in company of a fawn, neither of whom knew in fact who they were supposed to be… But I could not recall either the name of the little girl or the little animal that kept her company then… Guess, they thought that I was a bit mad… And the needle-marks on my wrists (probably from the ‘drip’) was interpreted as a sign of drugs usage by them… And the fact, that I got angry and started yelling probably did not help either…

I could go on and on, I guess as to what I recalled under that hypnosis, with some gaps filled in by the ‘lady doctor’ while other parts were filled in by somebody else seemingly in the other room – whom I assumed to be Gamini, that I had 0riginally gone to consult professionally on another matter – but who seemed to have very odd memories of me, to say the least, apart from the one that I actually remembered – that episode oat 17-and-a-half years just before my 3rd O Level exams were due… Probably the fact, that Gamini had suggested that I take the place of his dead wife, probably helped, though I had initially remained indecisive on that – both on account of the fact, that I was on the ‘rebound’ so as to speak, on account of a break-up with another boy, and the fact that Gamini’s wife had seemingly died a short time after my first visit, apparently from a collision with a truck or some such heavy vehicle. Since at that time, he had remarked that his own wife was at the moment seemed to be suffering from severe depression, and that he had put her on Prozac, and perhaps I might benefit from it too, meant that I was not to blame for that… But since on my next visit, finding him in a tearful mood and learning of his wife’s sudden death, he suddenly got into his head that I was a prostitute (apparently on account of my insisting that I might have had several affairs – and insisting that they were not intrigues but affairs – which he apparently equated with affaires in the French sense of the word, while to me the term ‘intrigue’ suggested ‘court intrigues’ rather than anything else), and began an outrageous ‘soliciting’ of me (though I must say, that his offer of 16,000/- as against my then salary of 6,000/- and apparently what Lal’s window-cleaner’s wife gets as payment per client of 50/- or 100/- seems to have been pretty generous!)… When I continued to desist… He changed his approach, and tried something else – wheedling, saying that he missed his wife in a very real sense…Bemused, and in a certain sense, seemingly lost and wandering over space and time, I sort of went along… And in some strange way, in spite of everything, he seemed to be falling in love with me… when all at once, I was sharply jolted into realty, when he tried to take my hand, and exclaimed how cold it was, and then suddenly started acting as I was a ghost! A ghost, come in revenge! That was when I knew that something was strangely amiss in my past history, and I found myself admitting, that when I awoke from that ‘nervous breakdown’ of 1983, it was many days later than what I expected it to be – though how long after, I could not recall exactly. And that I had dreamt of unspeakable horrors, which my Ammie assured, was in fact mere hallucinations or a nightmare… And when I asked why my hair was a little bit shorter than it used to be, she told me that it had to be cut on account of their deciding that a little less would be beneficial to me on account of it being kept loos on my neck, rather than plaited as usual… So I dilly-dallied, though I must say, that I started it all, on account of my being offended at his saying that “You seem to be a little better than a prostitute…” He went onto say, ‘to think that I went to prison on account of you…”, but I didn’t stay to hear, but softly I asked him, ‘What if I were a prostitute?’ I was being sarcastic, or more exactly ‘find him out’, but the result was totally unexpected. In the course of one hour, I found myself being solicited for sexual favours, than being asked whether I would like to be under his protection, and then being virtually promised the earth. Save his name… and finally with ‘realty being re-established’ asked formally for my hand, in spite of my misgivings about men who patronised prostitutes, and his being caught ‘virtually red-handed’, by me! It was all a bit bewildering, though I accepted his explanation that he was all lost and at sea, and awfully lonely consequent to his wife’s sudden totally unexpected death…

I asked for more time, and when I next went to see him with both my parents at his house (after being sort of ‘hearing a voice in the night’ asking me to ‘Come and see the Doctor” from far-far-away), I felt shy, and would not sit opposite him or take his proffered hand, but rather made Ammie sit there instead. For when back at home, I had tried telling her that doctor seems to want to marry me, she took the attitude that the doctor was probably leading me up the ‘garden path’, because no psychiatrist in his right mind would probably desire to marry his patient! And that was where in a way, things went wrong for me in a way... Why I am caught in an impasse of my own making perhaps! But this I know for sure, that the voices I hear are often real, because not only Gamini then and Nalin later, but sometimes even others seem to know what’s going on in my mind!

That day, when I saw Gamini professionally for the second time, after ‘sorting matters out’ and his smoothing my ruffled feathers, I propounded a theory of my own as regarding the possible ‘roots’ of schizophrenia: That in fact, some people at least, sometimes manage to ‘catch’ the undercurrents of thoughts going on in the minds of those close to them (whether in terms of distance between them or ties of kinship, empathy, etc.), but often such intercepted thoughts are in fact somewhat unflattering to the ‘eavesdropper’. As long as such intercepted but actually unarticulated thoughts are wholly ignored by the ‘eavesdropper’, nothing actually untoward happens to either party. It is only when the ‘eavesdropper’ acts on such (unintentionally communicated thoughts or thought-trains), and shows open hostility, picks up quarrels, etc. that something does happen... Since nobody else has in practice overheard the ‘unwholesome thoughts/remarks’ by the second party, everybody else in fact ranges on his side when the first party starts hurling accusations at the second. After a time indeed, the ‘incipient schizophrenic’ starts hearing other voices too (perhaps wholly imaginary now), maybe ‘misleading’ him and his condition becomes pathological... On the other hand, not all potential schizos are in fact, thus labelled. If their endowments are rightly used, perhaps they might end up being regarded as seers and visionaries... In fact, in our parts of the world (India and Ceylon particularly), monks and hermits and rishis, seem to have routinely developed such skills (among other accomplishments such as being able to levitate or project oneself elsewhere to a great distance at will), ... though this last part, I now add, courtesy Nalin’s articles in Vidusara and elsewhere. And while technology may play its part in enhancing such potential in a particular individual, meditation (or alternatively intense concentration of thought on another person by the first individual or vice-versa) might in fact play a crucial role in increasing the potency of thought-hearing... my surmise again, but again much later!

Which fact of course explains why I was able to hear some of your thoughts, in particular your wondering “that after having made such a fuss about you those days long ago in 1983, and paid such a price for it, I have now forgotten or failed to recognise you or simply ignoring you because of your shabby briefcase?” As I thought back to you then, ‘saying’ that I was unsure whether somebody or some group of people were again trying to hoax me, since you looked so terribly thin and gaunt, and your spectacles hid your beautiful eyes, and with all those campus people present, I asked you to remove your glasses (which in any case I have never seen you wearing before), for then I could tell with certainty... And you ‘said’, you will when that last speech was over... and for me to do the same, I think... And finally as we did so, you seemed to be thinking “I stand near the gates of Heaven and Hell...” and automatically I found myself ‘correcting you’ to what I had seen in an episode of Gulliver’s Travels in Art TV, a Saturday or two back: “I stand near the Gates of Life and Death!” and you in turn corrected me back to, “I stand near the gates of Heaven and Hell!” And then when you took off your specs, and I gazed into your eyes, and felt absolutely certain that it was indeed you, somebody seemed to be telling me, “Give a Radiant Smile!” But I needed no telling. As sad as felt on realizing that you hadn’t been eating properly for months perhaps (on account perhaps of your getting upset about my ‘not getting properly married’ and ‘writing love letters on the sand’ (though that last was just a ‘gag’) and all that), I felt gloriously happy too on seeing you standing there before my very eyes, after perhaps a lapse of twenty years – discounting the possibility that the rather plump happy-looking man who took trouble to explain to me at length features depicting industrial safety precautions on scaled down models at our Science Exhibition, last December, just before last Christmas and Tsunami catastrophe.... And as I did so, smiling at you, but not quite not knowing what to say, I seemed to hear somebody else thinking out the last lines of that beautiful poem by Thomas Moore, “... as the sunflower turns the same face to her God when he sets, as she did when he rose in the morning!” and more besides, May be it was the gentleman whom I tentatively identified as Dr. Jayatissa at our medical Centre or Prof. Vidanapathirana, or somebody else altogether... It did not really matter, only I wish, that I could have actually talked with you, instead of just looking... So, why not call over at our Senior Common Room, with your wife or brother, or perhaps one of your children, after first letting me know (Daya Dissanayaka who I am sure was privy to it all, knows our house telephone number: Call around 6 pm (evening) or after about 8:30 pm but before 10)... Though usually I manage to come to campus on Tuesdays and Fridays without fail – it being Ammie’s washing machine days on account of which I can’t use my computer, sharing as it does, the same trip switch. And I would appreciate it very much, if you would pull yourself together, and eat properly (in fact, ‘crash overfeed’ a bit), so as to get back to what you were like earlier...

Since your brother looks fairly young still, and you I think are junior to him, I am sure that you can manage it...

After all, going by what Nalin says, when he first saw me at that hell-hole in 1983, he hardly recognized me! And certainly, you have nothing to suffer now, in comparison to what I seem t have endured then – though mercifully, those memories have been for the most part, pushed into the limbo of forgotten things in my memory now and for a long-long time past – except once under hypnosis, and since then, only very rarely when I am very upset.

But which is done, cannot in fact, be wholly undone. While contributory causes to what happened then, I now see, not included a treacherous wily friend who was perhaps a bit jealous of me even then, and definitely spiteful and manipulative, but also perhaps my secret literary ambitions, and the then desire to write avant garde prose, and the notes (along with possible titles) that I recorded in a notebook, plus some of the actual stories that I had then written on two monitor’s exercise books, too considerably helped in persuading some of that group to act as they did... But what followed was, perhaps due to my own credulity/naivety and stressed state (rendered doubly so both on account of July 1983 riots and impending final year exams), exacerbated owing to the folly of some of my immediate kith and kin and other attending doctors... and may I say it, the disposition and lack of imagination of some of our guardians and enforcers of the Law! (Also, not to mention outright malevolent nature of some of them!)

On the plus side of course, it resulted in an effective delay of my getting married at all – perhaps on accounting of a difference between what I could get and what I actually wanted – or what I liked to call a ‘type mismatch’! But as it turned out, it resulted in a ‘de facto marriage’ with wider implications. I found somebody else who seemingly had an even greater correlation of understanding with me – or as he put it, “Priyanthi, I think, we think on the same wavelength. If you will only let me touch your head, I might be able to reactivate it.” which was what in fact led me to greater things perhaps, including being able to sometimes think at (and receive return thoughts from) other people too, at times, especially when close to me... And if Gamini and Nalin are not strictly speaking legally single people, it doesn’t really bother me. As for ‘marriage certificates’, I guess that either can provide me with one even as a ‘brother ‘ perhaps, but I am that angry with some people both within and without our campus, I feel that in any case, I wouldn’t under any circumstances! Considering how pure really, Nimalka and Janaka (my former boss) and some other guys I can name, I can’t be morally that bad! So, I feel that whatever I do or don’t at he moment, or for that matter had done or hadn’t any time in the past, or whatever I sign or don’t sign on a book, some of my detractors – especially that esteemed lady and gentleman can’t really afford to slander me or throw stones in my direction!
Guess, as some people still seem to think, I am a very immoral or at least amoral woman… After all, as my Ammie likes to say, I was born bad, and will probably manage to remain so, till the day I die! But then to me, not only was marriage not ever my overriding concern or even one of my prime objectives, but to me the purpose of marriage (in the ‘legal’ sense of the word) is not mere sexual gratification or even as the sole means of bringing children into this world!

For me, any kind of marriage (whether lawful or not) would be empty of all promise or worth, if I feel that I am only being ‘made use of’ – to borrow a phrase from a friend. A loving marriage can in fact only be among people who like, love and respect each other. (Here I put the word “like” before “love” deliberately. If you don’t even like each other, chances are good that you will never ever come to love each other in the true sense of the word. And to my mind, liking each other is not enough in one fundamental aspect, for a marriage to survive long-term vicissitudes that buffet it in the course of a long life together… Because in a however ideal relationship, there can be little things in the other that annoy or irritate you, and even more so, areas in which you two are not in perfect harmony. And in such instances, you must be able to respect each other enough, to be able to say, “Viva la Difference!”, and let things be… Thus in fundamental areas like what it means as to have integrity, equity, reliability, keeping faith, honouring your word, and so on, you must in fact be in almost total agreement. Otherwise, one might find oneself rather in the position of Lady Godiva perhaps, though in my case, I believe, I would have resorted to lacing such a cruel lord’s food with a dash of medicinal poison. In her case, if she did just that, I am sure that her husband’s tenants would have allowed her to bury him without a single question!

And of course, it is desirable to having a loving environment for any child you care to bring forth into this world… In my considered opinion, it is better to not have any husband to put forth, than one who is worthless or cold and selfish and utterly callous towards you, or even both! Personally, I have never cared much for the notion of ‘buying’ a husband (or wife)… The idea behind providing a dowry for a girl or a little nest-egg for a boy by their respective parents, is to ensure that there’s something for them to fall back upon – in case of arising of dire circumstances such as loss of a job, or sudden death of one or even both. Though in every family, there can be greedy or selfish individuals, in my experience, a greedier a man is, greedier still his other close relations might be! And it is certainly not by pure accident alone, that sometimes two gold-diggers end up shackled together! Guess, life is like that!


In fact, I had met my Gamini before I met you for the first time. – Many times in fact. … Though the remembrance of him that came into my memory at first was, of the young medical student who formed part of the lecture group of the Professor of Psychiatry about a month or two before that 3rd O Level Shie at which I finally managed to make the grade. But since this is supposed to be your story, Mr. K, I’ll leave out that portion of it, save that, just before coming to Pembroke, I had a dream – a dream of my tending my garden of flowers, with a fair boy beside me, whose features looked hazy, but who (on waking up), conjured forth in my memory, the memory of that young doctor – who was to say the least, extremely impertinent, but whose eyes that I liked very much! And it was those very eyes, that Mr. K, that you had in common with him! That you seemed to share with! As far as both of you went, the stars that once seemed to shine in the sky, now seemed to shine in your eye! Except, that now there’s a third in our group!

As for you, guess, I always saw poetry in your eyes. That same sort of indefinable ephemeral beauty I see reflected in water, sea, the moon and the stars… I always meant to write to you something like this, some day, yet was afraid to name you by your proper name… lest I hurt other people dear to you or me… But now I think, virtually everyone who knows us, do know. And if I did not quite recognize you that day at Daya’s book launch, the fault, I guess was mine. Because you had aged prematurely, and wearing glasses to boot (something which you never did), and owing to a fair sprinkling of our campus crowd, I did wonder, whether as to somebody or some people were again getting ready to pull my leg… Or whether it was an older relative of yours – say father, elder brother or uncle – though I must say that you and that nitwit of your brother Wickramabahu manage to look just as much alike as I and my own sister does – perhaps even less so! And when that last speaker but one started telling that anecdote about a boy and a girl leaving their names scrawled together for posterity, vandalising the mirror wall of our Sigiriya Rock Abode, I couldn’t but help thinking what matter if they did? After all, wasn’t all those Sigiri Kurutu Gee too was a sort of vandalisation, wasn’t it? Like those poets of old, that boy and girl too wanted to be remembered by the generations to come, and link their names together… And then came the punch line. After paying the fine of 5000/ rupees, (and guess they were ready for it in advance), the boy turned to the girl and said, it was fully worth it! That their names are going to be immortalized together – at least for awhile! And I found myself going into peals and peals of laughter, and quite unable to stop it! Looking around, I saw other people joining in, but most of all, you beside me… And then I seemed to hear you thinking wistfully … that for instance I never penned you a story! Guess I did in a way, and even thought of labelling that story as S1Karu on my computer diskette, except that a BBC diskette’s carrying capacity even when relying on pure text produced by its Pascal editor was far from enough! In the end the first actual story I managed to type (using WordStar) was something else which I named S2money (“A Question of Money”) which the then Lanka Woman editor was gracious enough to publish straight away, and eventually when I did get around to typing that story, I felt it prudent to change its file name to “Dora”

So, in a way, this is for you too, because that story sort of ‘misrepresented’ you, and anyway there was no Frank Wentworth behind you at that time, nor did you precisely ‘preposition’ me the way that Charles Higgins did… In a way, guess it was a rather silly story anyway, though outrageously funny… because as quite a few people took the trouble to point out to me, those names were decidedly outlandish – certainly not to be found in the trailing two decades of the twentieth century of Lanka – at least not in that concentration, and that anyway Charles Higgins couldn’t have got away with such outrageous lies here or anywhere else in the earth! And my sister was kind enough to add, that I had ‘borrowed’ the name Dora Fitchet from an old Argosy magazine in Thaththie’s bookshelves… As to the name Elspeth Emsworthy, that was positively stagey! But few if any realised, that in fact both Dora Fitchet and Elspeth Emsworthy were really me, at different stages of my ‘evolution’ so as to speak… That before I had the benefit of being instructed by you, and gazing into your eyes while doing so, that I was apt to come out with acid comments on men – pretty much like old Elspeth does! And if I tended to fall in and out of love too much latest, that was not precisely your fault either – because I discovered that most of my male acquaintance in fact had feet of clay… Anyway, I guess my record there is a bit better than Dora’s… Certainly, if you did not come along, I might have got a bit set in my ways, and anyway probably never made anything that much of myself. So, I have a lot to thank you, you see… For among other things you made me realise that a man whom I truly cared for might not have been ready for an entirely platonic marriage, and still less be ready to go to prostitutes to do what his wife wouldn’t allow him to do with her! So, I guess, that somebody somewhere out in the world might yet feel very kindly disposed towards you, precisely on account of that!

I started this little essay with a reference to Feynman Books Series. So let me end with there. In that very first book, Professor Richard Feynman talks (or more accurately the compiler of his lectures have him say) of a young astrophysicist who had been involved with the formulation of the very first theory of internal combustion inside a star that involves synthesis of heavy elements from much lighter ones… Taking out a girlfriend for a stroll under the canopy of a starry sky, he turns to her and asserts confidently, “I know how starlight gets made…” Naturally, she doesn’t believe him. For as every girl knows, starlight is really the work of fairies, conjured out of love and dreams. That is why, almost every girl in love almost always imagines that she sees the very stars that once shone in the sky only, reflected in her lover’s eyes… Same as I did, once long ago, and in a way, still do.

Priyanthi Wickramasuriya


PS: With this, I’ll try to send you a book called ‘Man’s search for meaning in life” by a great Austrian Jewish doctor cum professor, which I think will do you a power of good, if you can bring yourself to read it. Take your time, and if you can start close to the end (3rd section), and read at least that part. If you like, you can keep it for yourself; but if you do so, please return me at least a potocopy, as that book had proved a consolation and guide for me, many times. And may I add, that while at times I feel that I’ll never know peace this side of earth (and that had been so, from the time I was 12 years or so at Matara), there are also moments when I feel wonderfully happy and elated, full of joy! So, I think must needs you, because in this life, the sun cannot be without the shadow, nor joy without sorrow.

And I think, someone else saw the poetry in your eyes... Your wife. When I told her, that what I liked most of all in you, were your beautiful, that at times burned like glowing coals, but when one looked into them, were like deep brown pools of light, she agreed. “They are still beautiful... in a way, to me at least.” she said wistfully, “But they might close soon now – perhaps forever.” Don’t let them please. She needs you... perhaps more than even I, and so do your lovely children... And I’d like to be a sister to you at least, and a sister to your wife too, and maybe another ‘Sudu Amma’ to your children as, if only they would have it to be so.

Priyanthi Wickramasuriya
(Finished: 22 October 2005)