Sri Lankan readers are far ahead of the critics - Kapila Kumara Kalinga

 

Pic by Chandana Wijesinghe

“Wasanthaye aga hamuwemu sonduriya -
Lawali thalawaka wisula kusum matha
Athinatha gena pera noki katha asa
Aluthin susumak gena wenwee yamu...”

Remember how these words of hope forced you to calm down when you heard this song out of the blue on a radio channel? These are just few lines out of thousands of lines written by Kapila Kumara Kalinga, who cannot be introduced only as a lyricist. He is a writer, a poet, a journalist, a stage play writer, radio and tele-drama scriptwriter, a director as well as an award winning novelist. His creative excellence in commercial advertising was also awarded with a silver medal at the Indian ABBYs Award ceremony (All India Awards for Creative Excellence) which was the first international award Sri Lanka ever won in the field of advertising. His creative team won this award in 2006 for the campaign under the theme ‘Don’t be blind to the blind’ created for the Sri Lanka Federation for the Visually Handicapped.
Kapila Kumara Kalinga believes that he inherited this creative capacity because of his family background. “My father was the Arts inspector in Central Province. He was also a student of Shanti Niketan, India when Ravindranth Tagor was still alive. My home was a place where artists met. I was following them,” he recalled. “I was also an ideal reader. I did not miss a single stage play which came to town,” he added.
Young Kapila dreamt of joining theater since childhood. Shelving his dream, he had to join a newspaper as journalist, his first profession. “I was first a freelancer for the Aththa newspaper. Then I joined Lake House and later worked as a sub-editor for Dawasa. Similar to the youth today, I too was radical and headstrong in my 20s, but the wisdom of people like Hubath Dissanayaka, whom I worked under at Dawasa sharpened us,” he said.  According to him the senior students at school, Dharmaraja College, Kandy who entered the Arts field before him also offered guidance to him. “Among them were Dharmasena Pathiraja, Daya Tennakoon and Amarasiri Kalansooriya. It was easy for me since they had already found the path,” he added.
After leaving the newspaper industry young Kapila started writing radio drama scripts. “I have written over 100 radio drama scripts. I started writing while Mr. Sugathapala de Silva was in charge of radio dramas at the Broadcasting Corporation. He was very pleased with my work,” he said.
The stage play Rhinoceros marked a milestone in his stage script writing. “It is one of my achievements I admire. It was a drama many gave up since it was believed to be inflexible. It was chosen as the best adaptive stage play at the state award ceremony that year,” he mentioned. “When we first staged my debut stage play, Bim Gae at the Peradeniya University it didn’t take much time for the audience to make insulting noises. They even threw water at us. But we continued as if nothing happened. When Rhinoceros was staged, we received a standing ovation at the end. That was an achievement as well as revenge for their response on Bim Gae. That revenge was sweet”, he showed his pride.
All his script collection published to date had been made compulsory readings for the students of theater. “That is the best appreciation I can ever receive,” he said.
He entered the field of advertising following a request by veteran film director Dharmasena Pathiraja. “When I was working in the movie, Para Dige with Dharmasena Pathiraja, he asked me whether I was interested in advertising. I had the passion for it since I was young. I used to collect newspaper advertisements and paste them in a scrapbook as I started to see a unique art in it. But I never imagined myself in that field,” he opined. “Advertising was a well-paid job. It made my life easy,” he added.
He published his first short story collection while he was working in the advertising field. So far he has published over five short story collections including Navikayan Sathara Denek, Galu Kotuwe Sinhaya and 70 Dashakaye Premaya.
There was a demand for teledrama scriptwriters. Since Kapila had already made his name in radio dramas, he could not resist the demand. “My first was Moragirigamana. It was a children’s tele. Makara Vijithaya, Gandela Nisalai, Sakwithi Yagaya, Dakathi Muwahatha are few among the scripts I enjoyed,” he stated. “I was more interested in writing one-act dramas. It was easy for me since I had to save my job also,” he added. Kapila Kumara Kalinga is still known as the Paye Raja (One hour king) in the teledrama field.
According to him, teledrama producers aren’t ready to spend money for the creative quality of a drama as they used. “It was easier to do these dramas at that time. People weren’t afraid to spend money for creativity,” he pointed out. He said that everything is limited. According to him when it comes to the television, everything has to be common. “It’s catered to a common audience. The main goal is selling the product and it has little to do with quality,” he added.
Speaking about radio dramas, Kapila Kumara Kalinga said that the radio drama audience was distracted as a result of the struggle between the radio and the television. “Even BBC radio, which supported radio dramas at international level, could not compete with television. That is the true story,” he stressed.
He admitted that the quality and the message conveyed through radio dramas were elevating the imagination of the audience. “In comparison to the television dramas the radio plays were far better,” he said. “Some plays I wrote were associated with the sky, heaven or sea. Teledrama can’t perform that magic. We were able to create what the teledramas can’t show, in the mind of our audience, from heaven to hell using the power of imagination. Quality of creativity was incomparable with the teledramas,” he exclaimed.
He doubts radio dramas will be uplifted. “Who will turn off the television to listen to a radio act? Even the scriptwriter doesn’t have time to listen to his own drama. I remember, at that time when a drama was broadcast, the conductor of the bus I took also had a comment. It is not there anymore,” he lamented.  “This does not predict a good future for the creative work since the television does not help people to enhance their creative imagination. It does not permit the audience to think,” he opined.
As a teledrama scriptwriter Kapila Kumara Kalinga succeeded in incorporating humor in his work. The hilarious boy, Ping Pong we met in Tattu Gewal is just one example. Produced over a decade ago, Tattu Gewal still has an audience despite the number of times it was repeatedly telecast. “Good humor is always admired anywhere in the world.  Making people laugh is not an easy task. This is true with what you write for children,” he stressed.
“I try to see everything lightly. I laugh at my mistakes first and then I am able to see what mistakes other people make. I remember when we were making Tattu Gewal, residents close by to that setting started complaining that we are trying to show the world what they were doing. I didn’t even know where was going to be shot, when I was writing the script. Later they enjoyed seeing their mistakes, and started telling us about the funny incidents in the neighborhood,” he recalled. 
He expressed grief about the situation of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation education service. “I suppose the SLBC didn’t understand the value of it.  Education service was a huge medium of information for the people in rural areas with limited facilities. The education service of the SLBC was an independent body at that time. It created a dialogue among people about various subjects like art, politics and culture. One instance is the program Rupana Mandapa. I think we can still create a dialog within the country through an education service, if well organized. People will listen,” he emphasized.  “There are many ways which the SLBC can go further, yet they seem to ignore those paths,” he stressed.
Television and radio commercials are more common than popular song. Sometime we get to listen to the same commercial advertisements several times a day. There is no doubt about the impact of these advertisements both the cultural aspect and the marketing aspect. “Since these commercial advertisements are now a part of our everyday life, it could influence the society. One, it influences the consumers. Advertising people are the opinion makers for them. They tell you what you should buy; they tell you what your lifestyle should be. Consumers change according to them involuntarily,” he explained.
According to him these impacts could be both positive and negative. “On one hand people need someone to help them with their decisions. That’s the advertiser’s responsibility. But sometime they make non-essential goods, essentials. Advertisers cannot lie, they exaggerate,” he said. “If an advertisement bluffs about some product, they could be sued according to the code of ethics,” he added.
In his opinion, new creative words used in advertisements could enrich a language and help the language maintain its liveliness. “Sometime we have to coin new words to describe products and sometimes people start using these words in common practice,” he said. “There is a term call ‘ad-Sinhala’, the language used in the advertisements, but not in the common context. My opinion is that it is good if I don’t have to distort the language. But it’s a competition out there. If I want my advertisement to compete with the others I have to give all the treatments that ad needs,” he claimed. 
He continued to explain. “For an example, when the advertisers had to introduce margarine they didn’t have a way of explaining ‘poly-saturated’. The Sinhala scientific term for this was ‘bahu asanthruptha’. If a scientific word is used in an advertisement it will be nonsense for the ordinary people. But we had to use it. But with time people got used to the word. Now they know what it means,” he elaborated.  “I am the baas, I will construct it the way I want. But you have to know the grammar to break the grammar,” he pointed out.
He described the work of a creative team in an advertising agency. “A creative team has a certain task. They do what they’ve been briefed on. A creative team cannot challenge the market value of the product or its politics. Their responsibility is to sell the product. They don’t know whether a button they try to sell will later be lethal for the consumer,” he said. “Only thing we can do is refuse to work if we are not sure. Once I was asked to help with a cigarette ad campaign. Since it was against my principals I said I can’t do it. My management was understandable enough to release me from that,” he explained. “The question remains whether there was or there will be a virtuous advertisement in the commercial field,” he said.
Kapila Kumara Kalinga published his debut novel, Piyasi Kawuluwa in 2011. The following year his contribution as a novelist was appreciated with the Sri Jayewardenepura University Vidyodaya Literary Award for the Most Excellent Novel. It was also nominated for the final round of Swarna Pusthaka. Piyasi Kawuluwa is a biography about an astounding person who can see and talk with people who are dead and gone. The story is filled with mystics and the main character, Vinter is lovable. But his character is hard to understand. His second novel, Kande Weediya woven around a historical character gives the reader a dramatic experience filled with romance, humor and curiosity. Time period of the story dates back to the last few decades of the British period. The main character, Lloyd – a lawyer coming from a rich business family, his father- a vedha mahattya who later becomes a renowned planter, Sarojini- a poetess from India and Subha- Lloyd’s pretty bride are the constructors of the story.  Poems included in both the novels boost the attractiveness of stories. “Poetry is a part of the stories. It gives a structure to my story. It added flavor. I enjoyed including the poems and the poetic language I used,” he said.” And I felt easier to build the Piyasi Kawuluwa story on my own than build the story around a character that actually existed. A writer has to limit his imagination when he is dealing with such a character,” he explained.
After so many years of experience in the art field, Kapila Kumara Kalinga says that he has observed that the ordinary readership is much more intelligent than the critics in the field. “A person cannot judge a book, a movie or a teledrama by an appreciation of a critic. Sri Lankan readers are far ahead of the critics. If a writer bluffs them, they will immediately notice this,” he opined.
In conclusion he said that he has a positive attitude toward the Sri Lankan novel. According to him, there is an improvement in the contemporary Sinhala novel. “All these literary awards could be a reason for that. Writers now try to produce complete novels. I think, we would be able to compete with the Indian writers in no time,” he said hopefully.