Kathikawa in an interview series focusing on the issue of English language learning/teaching in Sri Lanka, written by Madhubhashini Disanayaka Ratnayake, Senior Lecturer, Department of English Language Teaching, University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Here she talks to Liyanage Amarakeerthi, Professor of Sinhala at Peradeniya University, writer and critic, about his journey of learning English.
Q: I am extremely grateful that you agreed to come for my very first interview in “The In-between Space”. I called you here today to see whether you can tell us your journey of learning English which started from a village with hardly any exposure to the language, and you ended up getting a PhD in the USA writing your doctoral thesis in English, and how that happened? Because it’s inspirational, it will help many people who are reading.
In terms of learning and being inspired to learn English - you know, growing up poor and rural in Sri Lanka – when I kind of reflect on that past, it’s quite amazing how it really happened. Because I didn’t have anyone in my neighbourhood, or among my close relatives who read in English. But at a certain point in my life when I was a teenager, I discovered reading. How I discovered reading is an interesting story in itself but I will tell you that in a bit. I got into reading English when I was reading Martin Wickramasinghe’s autobiography, Upan Da Sita.
First of all, in that book, he writes about his formal education. He was educated only up to Grade 8 but he went on to become one of the greatest writers in Sinhala, and in addition to that, he wrote several books and articles in English at that time. It’s not perhaps surprising that he learned it, because he grew up under colonial rule - late colonial times – and attended English medium schools like Bona Vista - that’s the school he attended. It was a colonial school - perhaps he had some foundation in English as a child - it’s not surprising that he continued to read in English.
I didn’t have that kind of background at all, but I thought, look, if I read books in English, I could improve my English as well. That’s what I told myself, but then, we had to find books, you know. Growing up poor and in a rural - working class family - you don’t have books at your disposal.
Now by that time, since I had discovered reading in Sinhala, I had taken membership of the public library in Wellawe. This is a little town in the Kurunegala district. Now if you go to Anuradhapura by train, you pass this place. I often use this metaphor - Malgudi- to describe this little town where Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil people live together. That town had this public library- it was very instrumental in developing or assisting my reading - even inspiring me to read things because it had quite a large collection. After reading Martin Wickramasinghe’s autobiography, I was looking around to find books in English to read.
In some books I came across, the English was difficult - you know, adult books, adult novels - I couldn’t understand them at all. Then I thought I should read books like children’s books in English.
Now the Wellawe public library had this little room - on the door it said ‘English Section’. In that room you often find people from, sort of, middle-class families - parents, children hanging around in that room. That’s a kind of an intimidating sight for someone growing up poor. I would kind of peek into the room but wouldn’t go there. One day, this young librarian - female librarian and Muslim - I later learned that her name was Miss Manzoor - she one day detected that I was kind of looking into this room and she said – Putha, come in, or something. Then I, perhaps, might have told her that I am interested in reading and she asked me to read, suggested some children’s books, simplified versions of Black Beauty, Christmas Carol.
In English, you have all these kinds of simplified versions. Because the bigger, the original versions were really difficult for me, she suggested those things. I borrowed them and tried to read them. It’s not that I read them all the time –having a rural upbringing means like you have all kinds of work to attend to, you go to the paddy field, you take care of your cows, you attend to some domestic chores, and all kind of things. But when I had the time, I did read them. And sometimes I wrote down difficult words. That was, kind of, one of the beginnings.
Then, at school, when I was doing my A Levels at Wellawa Central College –Wellawa Madhya Maha Vidyalaya – at that school I met this wonderful Sinhala teacher. His name was S. Dodamgollegama. He was a friend of Simon Navagattegama. That means he had this exposure to the world of art and all that. He was totally bilingual. He had graduated from Anuradhapura Central, or Mahava Central, or one of those first generations of central colleges, where they had bilingual education, even though they were rural schools.
English education was good. When he taught us The Caucasian Chalk Circle, he would often bring the English version of the play and he would compare Henry Jayasena’s translation with this English version. I hadn’t seen the English version at all, you cannot find it in that children’s section of the public library. I thought this was fascinating. He liked to translate back and forth - he would even sometimes criticise Henry, saying of his translation, “Oh, this could have been rendered better this way”.
He didn’t do this to show off his English knowledge. Perhaps he wanted to inspire us to perhaps learn better and improve our English. I don’t know what he had in mind when he did that, but as someone who had all already been inspired into reading in English, I thought this was fascinating. It’s not that I myself read the English version of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. I didn’t read it because I couldn’t find it.
Another kind of inspiring sight was our school principal, Herat – he is always dressed in this immaculate white, wearing tie and all that and in this attire he would, everyday, read The Daily News, sitting in the school library. We had a real good library. When we had the library period, one hour per day or two hours per week - I don’t remember - we would see this principal reading the English paper. He never asked us to read it, but that sight alone was inspiring enough for me to think, ‘oh my goodness our principal is reading English. I must do it too.’ You know, when you don’t have that kind of background at home, when you have that at school, it’s really important for children. Actually anyone.
Then at the university, I was a student of the University of Colombo - after the JVP uprising, the second uprising 87-89. It was after those tragic years that the university was opened in 1990. We were the first batch. I met some English speaking - so-called “English speaking” friends. I don’t know, perhaps for historical reasons like the rebellion and the suppression of the rebellion, for some reason the English-speaking batch mates and Sinhala-speaking batch mates, we kind of, like, stayed around together. We were together nearly all the time.
It is not often the case now. I see at our universities, the Sinhala medium students are totally separated, especially Peradeniya, from the English medium students. And in Colombo that was not the case those days. I don’t know now how it is there. There I met Satyajit Maitipe doing English- taking English as a subject, Indira Atapattu, those days. Nilika de Silva, she was actually a junior.
Q: I don’t know either how it is now there, but those particular people whose names you mentioned are very artistic, different, out-of-the-box people. So it could be that you were incredibly lucky to have had batch mates like that.
Yeah. Those are accidents in your life. Lucky ones. Lucky accidents. Then Madhubhashini Disanayaka. She was studying in India. My professor, Professor J.B. Disanayaka’s daughter. That’s you. You happened to be here in1992-93, I guess, in Sri Lanka. You were interested in literature, and I had published even my second book by that time as a university student, and you wanted to write about Sinhala writers, right? And we met and then you realised that I was interested in learning English.
You always encouraged me and sometimes you would invite me to your home and we had discussions about it and we read - you asked me to read Animal Farm. We discussed what we read afterwards. Unfortunately, I couldn’t continue it. You know, if we did that kind of discussion for like, one year, one whole year, it would have improved my English greatly.
But then I got the Fulbright scholarship. I went to the US. Then I was nearly 30 years old. I hadn’t written any academic paper or exam in English at the time. I went there. I was nearly 30 then. I was among very young American students.
Q: Even to face the Fulbright’s call – the interview - even to have the guts to do that - that would imply that you already had confidence in dealing with English. Because I think the Fulbright seems in accessible to people whose language is not very good. You completely proved that wrong. How were you confident enough to face that?
By that time, for some reason, I was not all that afraid of speaking my broken English especially in front of, say, foreign speakers of English. I was a bit hesitant to speak in the presence of middle-class English-speaking Sri Lankans but the Fulbright interview - I thought this is one of those points in which I have to face this.
If I win it, I win it. So I said whatever I had to say in English- in my broken English. Perhaps, in the panel of that particular day, there must have been some considerate people. But this is the argument, this is the point, I made in my broken English- I said this – look, I am a Sinhala writer. I want to be a real good writer. I am in the Department of Sinhala. I want to be a real good scholar in this field.
In order to do that, I need to get a real quality postgraduate qualification from elsewhere, from outside of the country, in the US. If you help me to get this scholarship, it will be a help for my field of Sinhala literature. That kind of grand argument I made, I remember that. Perhaps it was convincing enough for them.
Going back to how I did at the university - then I entered the University of Wisconsin as a Fulbright scholar there. Even though I hadn’t written anything academic in English, I had to write, at least, for each course, several assignments every semester, usually two or three. And then you need to - in American classrooms you have to express your ideas in the classroom where discussions take place.
There, in the presence of those American students, I was not intimidated at all. I felt that my English was not enough; I felt that my vocabulary was not enough, but I tried to say what I felt. I still remember my first ever assignment in English.
My professor - his name was Louis Madureira – after reading that, he gave me an A but he had corrected nearly all sentences there and at the end he had written “You have great ideas but I like nothing more than to see them clearly and elegantly expressed.” I still have that assignment – these hand written comments of the professor. Because I thought it was one of those memorable moments - trying to write your first ever assignment in English.
Now, the University of Wisconsin had real great second language - English and a second language- program. I was required to take that in the first semester. I did really well and then I didn’t even have to take, in the second semester, any second language courses. But I wanted to take them. I registered myself for the second academic writing and academic English course. By the end of those two semesters, my English was all right. Not great - all right.
One thing, during both semesters, the English as a second language course was taught by a Wisconsin poet named Steve Timm. Now, imagine - a poet teaching English to a foreign student who is passionate about literature. One of the luckiest moments in my life. We are still friends after so many years. We email each other still. In one of my articles, I talked about him recently.
Then, reading. Reading, of course. During my postgraduate years, I took a lot of literature classes, for example, this course that discussed South Asian literature in English. We had 15 hours to read for 15 weeks. A Fine Balance, 600 pages. Midnight’s Children, some 700 pages. The Glass Palace, about 500 pages. I read all of them. I thought - these are thick books, I had never read these kinds of big books completely. I must take it upon myself to finish these. I did. Then my vocabulary improved. I still read. I still read.