Book Review: Bernie Hay

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She writes about growing up in convents in the hill country decades ago. She must be one of those delicately built, demure ladies in a nondescript sari, with graying hair pulled neatly into a bun at the back of her head.

Not so.

Bernie Hay launched her second book, “Love, Learning and Laughter” on Saturday, September 7. The title seems incongruous in a current context, but the book and the author both surprise, and a meaningful book launch seemed to say there is much hope for the future.

“Love, Learning and Laughter” traces Hay’s experiences from childhood to her teenage and early adult years spent primarily at St. Agnes’ Convent, Matale and Good Shepherd Convent, Kandy. It is in fact a collection of articles previously published in The Sunday Times and The Sunday Island, with some tweaking.

The book is organized as a series of brief images into the life and thinking of a shepherdess-in-the-making. Hay shows us a fressh seven-year-old boarder’s sincere astonishment with the fact that nuns have toes and relates with disbelieving laughter, a nine-year-old girl’s earnest prayer as regards feminine lingerie. She writes simply, earnestly, enticingly.

But a collection of this sort that is lucid and yet tongue-in-cheek does not come by easily. It is mostly the product of what Rev. Mary Gertrude, Principal of Good Shepherd Convent, Kandy (and guest of honour at the launch), called a “bygone era” when love and laughter did in fact encompass learning. As Hay demonstrates in her writing, the mischief of their childhood equipped her with a full knowledge of the range of suitable punishments. But the deeper understanding she is left with is that the sisters that punished her loved her, and were ever ready to laugh at her escapades.

As Chief Guest at the launch, Rev. Stephen Abraham, past principal of St. Anthony’s College, Kandy pointed out, such a learning environment is rare in the current context. “Tutories” have replaced traditional schools, and our systems are producing “learned monsters” instead of educated human-beings, he said. “Teachers are potters... lamps to help illuminate the darkness of ignorance.”

Hay is proof of the old-fashioned attitude to teaching as moulding life. She enjoyed her “convent days” and then went on to the University of Peradeniya, received a M. Phil in Education (Linguistics) from the University of Colombo, taught at prestigious institutions around the country and abroad, and has been published in the Asia Reader’s Digest.

The sincerity and truth of Rev. Abraham’s address echoed that of the book and the launching ceremony. “Love, Learning and Laughter” being about young shepherdesses, it was fitting that it was in fact young shepherdesses that ran the evening. Thurumi Rathnayake, Shehani Wijewardena and Karen Tennakoon, students from the two convents, read and even sang excerpts from the two books with skill and enthusiasm that held the gathering enrapt. Their voices rang of a genuine relationship with the text which could only spring from an understanding of the experiences it related. And that spoke volumes of the school days they still have to grasp and make something of.

Principal of St. Agnes’ Convent, Matale, Rev. Mary Dilrukshi expressed her hope that “Love, Learning and Laughter” would be an inspiration to current and future generations of shepherdesses. Hay is of the same mind.

Nothing of what we imagined, she wears a loose leopard-print blouse over black slacks and deep red lipstick, and sports a short crop of jet-black hair. The author and her book are as surprising to us, as life was to her. Standing at the podium at the Good Shepherd Convent Main Hall, Bernie Hay remembers the dreams she dreamt in that very place, many many years ago.

“Some of those dreams were realized, some sadly not. But amazingly, some things I never dreamt of happened. So go on dreaming, girls...”

*“Love, Learning and Laughter” and Bernie Hay’s first book, “Lives that Touched My Own” are both available at Sarasavi Bookstores.

Born to Write: Samantha Modder

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“I was born to write

You may not like what I have to say

Or the way that it is said

You may not think that it's the best

Thing you've ever read

But I was born to write

When emotions find the way

To be still in time and space

When hours pass and I feel alive

As each word falls into place

I know I was born to write…”

(Born to Write)

Samantha doesn’t know how or why she started writing; she’s simply always been doing it (her parents have poetry she wrote when she was four years old – when most of us were probably not sure how to spell anything!). “If you find something interesting you just write about it” she says simply, seemingly confused as to why anyone would be interested.

But then, it’s not every day that a nearly-17-year-old publishes her second collection of poetry. And not just any old collection of rhymes either. Though In a Head Like Mine features poems from when she was between 10 and 14, there’s quite some depth of thought in the works. ‘You From Where?’ and ‘Jesus, My Shooting Star’ for example deal with serious issues that are personally very important to Samantha: identity and Christianity. “I try to put a little bit of humour in it, but [Christianity] is a big part of who I am, so I’m not gonna joke about it” she tells me, matter-of-fact.

But more often than not, there’s lots of humour in what she writes. She pokes fun at her not-so-tech-savvy mum, her super-spy brother, her friends, and just picks up little things (homework, dust-balls, vegetables, cockroaches!) from everyday events, adds lots of wit and sarcasm, whips it together with tonnes of imaginative insanities and puts together a delightful concoction of unbelievably good poetry.

And then she illustrates them too! Samantha’s second love (after writing) is drawing, a flair for which she loves to show off. “That’s something I’m not embarrassed about” she laughs, explaining that since she simply draws images, and not what she feels, she’s not as self-conscious about her painting as her poetry. “The reason why this book took so long to come out was that I really didn’t wanna publish it” she admits, “I write for me, and if you read the stuff I write, then you know a lot about me, it’s very personal”.

She begins, in a mocking, super-flowery accent describing how her parents have “always been very supportive” (they have the kind of relationship that leaves no room for false emotion but plenty for good laughs) but gets serious with a truth she took “a long time” to realize. “I recognize the importance of not being ashamed of what you have”. Publishing has helped her share and assert the strength she receives from knowing that “this is what I do, and it’s good”.

How she switches modes, from playful to serious, confused to confident, reveals not only what seems an instinctive desire to “capture” and highlight moments (as she does with her poems) but also her love of treading the boards. “I love to act!” she smiles, a tad regretful though, that she doesn’t have more opportunity to do so. Now, we’re starting to think she’s one of those “perfect” girls from out of a movie. She has smooth but striking features and a slender figure, tops most of her classes, wins prizes, writes, acts, draws, sings a little, plays a little sports, and everyone seems to love her. But Samantha Modder defies the box I’ve arranged for her. “We got kicked out of here (the quiet little tea-shop where we’re having our highly animated and giggle-punctuated conversation) once for playing Uno” she tells me quietly, grinning broadly, “cus we were banging our hands down on the tables really loud and stuff”.

The story, in fact, is not all that difficult to believe. There is a persistent glint in young Miss Modder’s eyes that sparkle as they roam the area, seizing things up, and I learn, she is not fond of jewellery, heels, party dresses or shopping. She will most definitely not be stereotyped.

 

It’s quite likely that it is this quietly rebellious streak in her that makes Samantha’s writing so surprisingly mature and well-controlled, allowing her to see and represent the irregularities in everyday situations. “So this is what it feels like/To be alive” she writes at 13 years old, in ‘I Watched the Ball’, unexpectedly sensitive to the unintentionally marginalized, the true writer’s sensibility. These moments of what her father calls “thoughtful, creative calm” were not so frequent in her earlier works on aliens, haunted houses and panthers drinking Fanta, as they are now. The passion and intensity of a few more years added to her age are starting now to show on her notebook of scribbles and doodles;

“There's a pain deep inside me

That never goes away

It sits and hides quietly

Waiting

For the moment, for the word

That will make it come

Gushing out

In hot salty tears

And tiny little gasps

Of air as I try to breathe…”

(untitled)

“Love?” we wonder aloud, to which the sweet-sixteen laughs. “I've never been in love, and I haven't imagined myself in love, AND I think that most people who think they're in love aren't really in love... So!” you really can’t expect her to be how you expect, or to feel uncomfortable that she is not what you expect, because in her own words;

“…right now, right here, this very place

I know what I must do

Sculpt these words and form these lines

'Cause I was born to write

For you.”

Review of Nanda Pethiyagoda's 'Emerged'

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Let’s first drop all pretences: very few of us had any taste for History at school. It was all a memorizing of names and dates that meant nothing to us. So when one hears the title of Nanda Pethiyagoda’s research-narrative Emerged: Noteworthy Women from Kandy, the read doesn’t seem too welcome. But the term “don’t judge a book by its cover” (or title rather, in this case) is a good piece of advice to remember here. What the insides hold will really surprise you.

The book is an enjoyable and engrossing read! True, the cover is beautiful but rather dull, the title sounds prosaic and the first few words of the front flap “this researched study” really put one off. But the introduction as well as the first ‘half’ of the book are obviously the result of much thought and personal engagement, and therefore make a really captivating read. Nanda Pethiyagoda talks of serious social (and to a large extent feminist) theory in her informal style, making the whole discussion much easier to digest and something of a light conversation over cups of tea! With what ease she seems to manage the flow is quite amazing, and has the potential to provide an education on the issues she addresses to those not usually inclined to reading such material.

Emerged: Noteworthy Women from Kandy portrays the lives of eight women, “middle class Kandyans of means”, who lived and “emerged” in the time period between 1900 and 1950. In and through these portrayals the author explores the issues of conservatism and patriarchy, attempting to discern “whether the social milieu these emerged women came from was patriarchal” and “to what extent the emerged women were influenced and guided to emerge by their mothers who were conservative and within a patriarchal system”. These academic goals are combined with a genuine interest in telling the stories of these remarkable women, providing the author with a unique style and flow.

Nanda Pethiyagoda is obviously personally very interested in the issues she discusses. Even the introduction to the author on the back flap highlights her interest in “the situation of women” and “particularly those from her place of birth and upbringing – Kandy”. Maybe because of this strongly personal nature of the inquiry, or because of the strength of her interest in the study, the research questions she asks as a point of departure to her narrative, tend either to be biased or to be based on broad assumptions. Though from an academic point of view this may seem a negative, it is this bias and assumption that hold the narrative together and makes it interesting.

The need to qualify the first statement as “the first ‘half’” arises out of the fact that the second ‘half’ doesn’t seem to flow as well. While part I consists of Pethiyagoda’s own thoughts and therefore provides better-organized material for writing, part II is built mainly of quotations from biographees and relatives of biographees, complemented by Pethiyagoda’s comments on these quotations. The juxtaposition of comments against quotes (i.e.: theorisations against stories) is not an easy feat to achieve, and the flow of the writing seems to suffer because of this.

The work Nanda Pethiyagoda sets out to achieve nevertheless, is monumental. It takes rare amounts of bravery to nose-dive into the kind of discussion the author engages in, and much more skill to take the reader along as well, without demanding much or losing him/her along the way. The author’s experience as an academic and prolific writer help her overcome these minor setbacks and make the end result a well-balanced portrayal of the amazing yet un-sung women of Kandy that Nanda Pethiyagoda knows and admires.