An appreciation
Mervyn De Silva

by P. S. Duleepkumar
Mervyn’s brilliance as a journalist has been universally acclaimed and rightly so. The qualitative difference in Mervyn’s writing was I believe greatly due to his over arching interest in International affairs and the width and the depth of his reading. He was able to inter-connect events happening in different parts of the world in terms of a universal trend or in relation to a common principle. This enabled him to see the unfolding events in Sri Lanka objectively and in a wider perspective than most and made him much sought after by the Diplomatic Community. Mani Dixit the former Indian Ambassador, marked him a as one of the best, if not the best, he had met in his numerous postings.

Another thing which enhanced his acumen as a political analyst was the felt need to probe the psychological underpinnings of the many leaders he met and interviewed in his journalistic career. It enabled him to see and read the person beyond the words. Mervyn had ready access to the dramatis personal of our political stage and he enjoyed his encounters with them. His intellectual capacity gave him the self-confidence of the other great journalists of our time both local and foreign, and his subjects learnt quickly that he could not be patronised or fobbed off with sophistries. Also because he had this world view of the forces that shaped social and political events and his own penchant for the satirical mode, he tended to see the local players as caricatures of themselves, not maliciously though, but in good humour a la Gabriel Marquez. Not that his commentaries of the Sri Lankan political scene were not serious. On the contrary there was a prophetic dimension to his writing. He was in the forefront of the thinking which mooted the significance of geo-politics in the conduct of foreign affairs. He emphasised the primacy of India in the structure of our foreign-policy. The Tamil Nadu factor. The importance of being Mr. Thondaman and the crucial nature of including Prabhakaran in the political discourse.

In the Lanka Guardian which was his prime achievement he was at pains to give due weightage to the expression of the minority view on the vexed Nationalities question.

There are two issues of the Lanka Guardian which have left an indelible impression on one’s mind. Surprisingly both are memorable for the picture on the front cover. The first is the issue after the July 23, 1983 program against the Tamils. It shows a picture of a despairing and doomed Tamil youth stripped naked at the Borella bus stand five minutes before he was burnt alive. The second is the issue which carried Prabhakaran as the man of the decade - 1980’s. While the first registered a paradigm shift in the main stream Tamil empirical consciousness from that of a National minority to that of a Nationality within a State, the other drew emphatic attention to the political and military reality of the time. Ten years on very little has changed.

This was not only journalist as prophet, but the journalism of integrity and courage. Thanks Mervyn. The need of that hour, is the need of every hour. Then and Now.

It was Mervyn who told me the story of the South American guerilla leader who came for political talks in battle fatigues, glanced through the drafts placed before him and tabled his AK 47 with the remark "This is my first amendment." When life is played out as theatre, politics is farce, and he saw the humour of it.

I have known Mervyn from our days together at the Colombo University where he preferred the tuck shop - he was quick to see a pun however devious - to the lecture theatre, and the Junior Common Room cut table to the library. Our talk shop resumed in earnest many years later with a regular Saturday morning meeting over a glass of beer with mutual friends. It was right that Lakshmi his devoted wife and companion always accompanied him and so touching to receive the beer supply sent by her for our meeting, the Saturday after his death.

At our meetings we would screen the events of the past week as in a private viewing, providing both the commentary and the dialogue. Mervyn played a leadership role at these discussions which covered the whole gamut of subjects where the serious was seasoned by a necessary degree of levity. Mervyn was never pedantic or polemical and was an excellent listener, and his contributions were instructive, entertaining and stimulating. His death has diminished the quality of one’s life as is sustained by the dialectical interaction of ideas in a world which is too much for us late and soon getting and spending.

In the initmacy of these conversations to which there were mid- week prostscripts over the telephone, Mervyn revealed dimensions to his personality in which there a strong romantic strain. He had a feel for the heroic, the courageous, the brave and brainy anti-authoritarian protagonist. General Giap and Che Guevara come to mind. These were live versions of other heroes who made their mark as actors of characters in films and in the genre of the espionage novel. The rasping intonation of the laconic Humphrey Bogart "Here’s looking at you kid" (Casablanca), the sonorous mumblings of Marlon Brando as the Godfather "I made him an offer he cannot refuse" "Is it safe?" Repeated six times more in succession with inflectional nuances by Laurence Olivier as only he could, in The Marathon Man. And of course the masterly understatement of the heroic in the one and only George Smiley walking into the London Night in his crumpled raincoat. Mervyn would relive the times and the gestures and his conversation would be embellished by these and other images of our shared past of a more sanguine epoch.

Naturally Cricket which has held the imagination of most of Sri Lankan society both before and after the World Cup victory, invariably became the subject for discussion. He had imbued its culture, from the heady days when from beyond the boundary we were enraptured by another hero - Satha, defining the aesthetics of batsmanship, once and for all. Metaphors from Cricket came readily to him both in his writing and in his speech.

Latterly the Lanka Guardian was proving to be more and more difficult to keep going because of financial compulsions. He had already reached many landmarks in his publication and I suggested that he lay it aside to write his memoirs. I reasoned that issues which the Lanka Guardian had been most concerned no longer made the front page. The ethnic issue had been flogged to a standstill and in the wider arena Karlov had made his crossing over the Berlin Bridge to checkpoint Charlie. The spies from the Cold War had come in from the cold. But Mervyn was determined to keep going as he wanted to leave the Lanka Guardian as a living legacy for his son Dayan. I know that J. R. Jayewardene had invited Mervyn to write his biography but he declined. There was one other thing he had in mind - the setting up of an institute for the education and training of up-and-coming journalists. He was working at this but received a set back with the untimely demise of A. J. Gunawardane and he was feeling the strain.

On Saturday 19th June 1999 when we met, there was an ominous indication that the ebb tide of his life had caught Mervyn in its currents. On the following Tuesday, 22nd June, it carried him away.

Mervyn was a rare person for whom I had an affectionate regard differed on many matters but talked the same language. He was completely un-ambitious in the best sense of the word. Never a seeker of vain glory, he was also oblivious to wealth and money.

He lived to satisfy inner compulsions which were filtered by his reason and intelligence for a life of self fulfilment in accordance with his outstanding talent. When I learnt of his death, my thoughts turned to those felicitous words of Edmund Spencer - "Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please"