Sundays without Suranimala : in the memory of Lasantha

By Dharisha Bastians
As we waited, breath bated for three hours while doctors attempted to revive Lasantha Wickrematunga from fatal injury he had received last Thursday, there was communal anguish. We wept at the confirmation that he had succumbed to his injuries later that afternoon and as we marched in protest at his brutal murder, the anger and bitterness within the media community was tangible.
The cold blooded killing of The Sunday Leader Editor in Chief, Lasantha Wickrematunga has unleashed a wave of emotions in the Sri Lankan media fraternity over the last 72 hours. Yet, none of the shock nor grief seemed to hit quite so hard as the tragic sense of loss I was to feel at the grim realisation that ‘Suranimala’ would write no more. For those of us who live by what we write, there is no greater loss.

Lasantha first began writing under the nom-de-plume ‘Suranimala’ at the Island newspaper under the legendary Editor Vijitha Yapa. I was too young to have read that political column back then or when it was subsequently published in The Sunday Times in the early days of that newspaper. Yet, ever since print journalism became my career of choice, Politics with Suranimala has become staple Sunday fare. Few other Sunday columnists had the insight, analysis and spicy titbits that made up the Suranimala column and his 3,000 word full page piece would be savoured by both readers that required a healthy dose of political gossip and students of politics alike. The greatest allure was that Suranimala had what no other political columnist could lay claim to – that irresistible fly-on-the-wall perspective, which was possible only for someone with serious access to the corridors of power.

Indeed, Lasantha Wickrematunga was a political animal. But the thing is, he was a brilliant journalist in spite of it. Few could understand or agree with his brand of journalism. It is an anathema for a journalist, and especially one who lays claim to his own newspaper to mix politics with professionalism in the way that he did. Yet, for 14 years, he published a popular, if occasionally partisan, newspaper that the public never really tired of reading. There was space then, in this society for the kind of journalism Lasantha Wickrematunga believed in. Where others would cow down in fear, Lasantha thrived on constant badgering and harassment from the powers that be, fighting back tooth and nail when his press was sealed, his house attacked and his printing press burnt. All this because he believed the people deserved to know and the public devoured it week after week. In his death, it is this right of the people that has been grossly, brutally violated. Whether you agree with his brand of journalism or not, the greatest testimony to Lasantha Wickrematunga’s dissemination of information is the fact that he was killed last Thursday not because of his politics, but because of what he wrote. In Sri Lankan journalism, Lasantha leaves a void that cannot be filled simply because nobody else will even bother to try. It took an individual of extraordinary strength – perhaps even a politically motivated one – to face the fire and be willing to be engulfed in those flames.

I first met Lasantha four years ago, when he hired me to work as a reporter for The Sunday Leader. At the time, he didn’t know whether I could string a sentence together. For my part, I was terrified of seeing what I wrote in print. Yet, Lasantha not only gave me a job, he taught me to be a journalist. Green as I was behind the ears, he sent me out on assignments, to LTTE controlled areas of the north, to the restive east, on investigative assignments that scared the 24-year-old straight out of me. But I will remember him best for being the first of my editors to tell me, with a straight face, when I was overcome with self-doubt, that yes, I could in fact, write. In the year that I worked for Lasantha and The Sunday Leader there was no greater reward than to hear him say, ‘good job.’ I believe these sentiments would hold true for anyone who ever worked for Lasantha. Although I have seen or heard little of him since my tenure at The Sunday Leader, it will take me much longer than four days to come to terms with the fact that he no longer exists in the world. Such is the manner of a colossus; they are not merely individuals but legends that occupy vast spaces in the smallish world we inhabit.

As I pen these lines, I cannot help but think back to a similar piece written not so very long ago, about another editor and colleague. I cannot help but wonder how many more such pieces will have to be written of friends, colleagues and loved ones. How many more untimely deaths will we be called upon to mourn, how many more tales of separation shall we have to endure before the blood letting and senseless violence ceases? Someday soon, the words won’t come and we will have nothing left to say, except what we shall say to Lasantha today: ‘Farewell friend; God speed.’

 

Thanks : Nation News Paper.