The Chamber Music Society gives a historic first concert in the north, and recognizes a mission to bring classical Western music – Bach and Mozart – to the people of the Wanni
It is early February. We – the Chamber Music Society of Colombo – are in the middle of our weekly rehearsals. Suddenly, the concert master raises his hand to say he has a special announcement. We are taking our music to Jaffna.
The response is a chorus of “Wow!” Three weeks later we – a group of 20 musicians – are on a bus heading to Jaffna. It is March 26, 9 p.m. We have a 12-hour journey before us, and the bus does 60 kph at its fastest.
The younger members of the group are impatient, while the older ones urge all to get some sleep and to try and enjoy the trip. And don’t forget: We are carrying a lot of prized music instruments worth millions. They have to be protected at all costs, especially if this is going to be a long and bumpy and perhaps even dangerous ride. Music instruments are not to be treated lightly.
I tell myself that I will sleep right through the ride and wake up only on arrival in Jaffna. This will not happen. The trip is an adventure, much too exciting and nerve-racking to sleep through.
Settled in for the night, I start to say my prayers before sleep. Jokes about snoring and ear plugs come from my colleagues, while the concert master sits in a corner and snacks on his dinner. One of our main concerns is how many rest-rooms we will get to use on our journey.
Our first stop is a bus stop/tea-shop in Galewala. Our ears are assailed by a Sinhala and Tamil pop version of ‘So This Is Christmas’ enjoyed by the people sitting at a table in front of us. Soundarie and I make a face, then realize we are being snobs, and that music is music, whether it is classical, rock or pop, well performed or not – a universal language and a powerful binding force.
This song could have been doing its bit to support the fragile bonding process between communities. It so happens that the owners of the tea-shop are a Sinhalese, a Tamil and a Muslim. We are a close-knit family, for sure.
We finally arrive in Jaffna, 13 hours later. After staying up the whole night, I was about to drop off to sleep and very nearly missed the famous Jaffna sunrise.
The Wanni
We peer out the windows of the bus. What do we see? Mostly a strange spectacle of devastation and development, side by side. A slow sun rises above a landscape of pale, pocked and pitted, battle-scarred roads.
I recall my last visit to Jaffna, 12 years earlier. The war was raging and we had to wear helmets and bullet-proof jackets. The soldiers had a battle-weary, bleak look in their eyes. This time things are different. Soldiers manning a checkpoint return our waves and greet us with huge smiles as welcoming and beautiful as the now completely visible morning sun.
The bus slows near a water tank that was destroyed during the war. Once-occupied homes are now empty shells. An Army Jeep rattles past us. In the back of the vehicle are covered plastic pails, containing possibly breakfast for a garrison. Yellow ribbons strung up along the road warn us of the lethal presence of land mines yards away.
The bus slows down near a sinister, ugly hulk of metal, battered and misshapen – the remains of the notorious bulldozer-tank that was famously destroyed by the late Corporal Gamini Kularatne, the soldier hero whose action on the night of July 10, 1991 is now a part of history. Six hundred soldiers were surrounded by 5,000 LTTE cadres at an Army camp at Elephant Pass.
An LTTE assault imminent, soldier Kularatne bravely confronted the advancing bulldozer tank and lobbed two grenades into the tank. His action was key to ending the infamous siege on the Elephant Pass camp. Corporal Gamini Kularatne, who at the time was a Lance-Corporal, died of his injuries four days later, and was posthumously promoted to the rank of Corporal and awarded the Parama Veera Vibushanaya, the Sri Lanka Army’s highest award for bravery. Corporal Kularatne is known as the “Hasalaka Hero”, named after the farming village in Kandy where he was born.
Thirteen years ago, in 1997, during an army-escorted media trip to Jaffna, we were taken to see this tank. Today it is a monument to a national hero, decked with garlands.
As our bus proceeds slowly along the uneven roads to Jaffna, we see patches of bright colour – pieces of sari material tied to trees outside kovil prayer stations. There seems a kind of defiance in what should be a welcome touch of colour to the scene.
Cattle on the road make way for us, twitching their ears. Female cyclists go by in vividly coloured frocks and children in white make their way to school. Their school ties hang straight and starched on their uniforms, and they are all barefoot. Not long ago, the Jaffna peninsula was the scene of great suffering and death, and now life goes on, while memories of a 30-year war recede like a bad dream.
It is 7.30 a.m. Jaffna town is wide awake. The streets are a bustling mass of colour as people head to work or to the market.
We get lost in the middle of town looking for our guest house. We stop at a wayside enterprise calling itself ‘Sorry Baby’. The “sorry” bit is puzzling. The proprietor and the waiters should be the opposite of sorry to see a busload of hungry customers at their doorstep. The man making kotthus gives us women a welcoming smile.
Chuckles our soprano, Mary Anne: “Hey, he knows his business!” Smiling soldiers on bicycles stop as we wave to them. We ask whether we could take photographs with them. They oblige readily. “Hondhata gaththaa da?” they ask with broad grins as they cycle away.
Finally we find our guest house and sit down to breakfast. We have steaming-hot pittu, a cream-brown version of the Indian special; the softest of string hoppers, with crab, prawn, cuttlefish, and chicken, and an interesting dish of chickpeas and brinjal, made sweet and sour, accompanied by kotthu and rice. Oh boy! We ordered the same dishes for all our meals that day.
After our late breakfast, we laze on chairs and relax before the concert. Soon it is 3 p.m., with just an hour to go. We clamber back into the bus. In the excitement, I lose a part of one earring, which had been held in place with a piece of chewing gum. The gum was a suggestion from our principal cellist Dushy when my earring came loose on the bus.
We arrive at the concert venue, the cavernous Veerasingam Hall. We all feel very hot in our all-black outfits, black shirts and trousers for the men and concert black for the women. As we walk in, we see a hall that is half full, with mostly schoolchildren. We were hoping for a full hall, but there is still time for last-minute and late arrivals.
It is 4 p.m. Time to begin the music. The orchestra is ready to perform, but the hall is still half full. Well, half-full is better than half-empty, they say!
It is so hot inside the hall that the perspiration is dripping down our faces and backs, soaking our concert kits. We look at the sheets of music in front of us through a mist of perspiration.
We start playing. In the middle of the overture to Handel’s opera ‘Agrippina’, somewhere in the audience a cell phone rings. Then a second cell phone rings. Through the corner of my eye I note that someone is getting up to send someone out of the hall. Close to the stage, from the front row, a foot-tapping audience member is keeping time as oboist Hasitha plays a rhythmic solo.
The applause at the end of the concert is rewarding enough – at least for a half-full hall. The audience crowds round the stage for a close-up look at the musicians and their music instruments. They seem clearly grateful for our presence. They must appreciate the effort to bring one hour’s worth of serious Western classical music all the way from Colombo, a journey that will add up to some 25 hours of travelling time, coming to Jaffna and going back to Colombo.
“Many thanks. Please come again,” they chorus. “Yes, come back again. Soon. We want to hear more of your wonderful music.” “We are sorry the hall wasn’t full, but we’ll make sure it’s packed next time.”
“Yes, you MUST come back. All of you. Please.”
With all the advance publicity for our concert in Jaffna, with notices put in the Tamil and English newspapers, and the generous sponsorship of Concerts Norway, the concert could have had more people. This was a disappointment.
Western classical music has a long way to go up here, just as we had to come a long way to bring Bach, Handel and Mozart to Jaffna. We foresee an uphill struggle to push serious Western music into this world of confused Westernization.
We spend the rest of the afternoon touring Jaffna. Much of what we see is saddening, the results of recent history: we stop to gaze at the magnificent Jaffna Fort, that has taken so many batterings, and the imposing Jaffna Library, next door to the Veerasingam Hall, where we gave our concert.
Jaffna is teeming with visitors and pilgrims from the south and other parts of the country. Many are doing their own cooking out in the open, preparing meals on open fires.
I am confused by the mixed messages I am receiving. Here I am in a great city, and surrounded by gaudy commercial Westernisation. This is not my idea of an ancient city with a rich history woven with strands of Sinhala and South Indian culture.
It is time to head home. We will spend the night in the ancient city of Anuradhapura. It’s been a long day, and we are looking forward to sleeping on the bus over the next few hours.
We are woken up at a checkpoint in Omanthai and asked to get off the bus with our luggage. Five sleepy-looking army staff – two men and three women – apologetically start looking through our luggage.
The boxes and cases carrying our music instruments must intrigue them. It’s unlikely they have seen anything like this before – black containers in a variety of weird shapes and sizes. If this was war-time, these objects would have come under the severest scrutiny.
At Anuradhapura, we get off at our hotel. I share a bedroom with Mary Anne. For the next three hours we talk about the concert and our Jaffna experience. We fall asleep, and when we wake up it is late morning, and we have almost missed breakfast.
Some of us hire bicycles to see Anuradhapura. Lakshman marvels at the ancient city and reminds us of almost three millennia of history and grandeur. Here too, gaudy commercial Westernization stands next to ancient dignified history.
Kesara, our resident photographer, is clicking away. I sit in the shade and sip a Dilmah Moroccan green tea with a cinnamon stick, thinking of Yarl-Paanam, slowly healing and opening up to the rest of the world in her first year of true peace in three decades.
We went all the way there and made music. It was worth it.
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