A couple of days ago I was discussing poetry with a Turkish
friend. She asked me if I had read a
poem by Nazim Hikmet about painting happiness. I had not. She quickly
translated the first few lines and emailed it to me.
"Can you
paint happiness Abidin
but without the
easy way out
not the rosy
cheeked mother breastfeeding her child
or the red apples
on a white cloth
nor the jolly fish
darting aquarium bubbles;
can you paint
happiness
the kind without
lies?”
The idea is old of course and speaks to the ancient debates
about the purpose of art and the true calling of the artist which will remain
unresolved. No one, Hikmet included, can
commission the artist to paint this or that. It is the artist’s decision. And here, before I am misinterpreted, let me
add that we are talking about people who take their art seriously and who are
not influenced by ‘market realities’ and the play of demand and supply when it
comes to choice of subject, material or style.
Nazim’s concern is simply and elegantly put. He wants the artist to depict for us those
tender things that reside just below the surface called ‘appearance’ or that
which is lost in the clutter of the everyday.
Perhaps. I don’t know. I assume.
Anyway, it made me recall the oft-quoted and ill-employed lines from
John Keats’ ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’, ‘Beauty
is truth and truth beauty; that’s all ye know on earth and all ye need to
know’.
How does one paint happiness, ‘the kind without lies’, I
wondered. On Sunday evening, I found
out.
I went to watch a street theatre performance in
Moratuwa. It was organized to
commemorate the birth anniversary of the late Gamini Haththotuwegama, widely
recognized as the pioneer exponent of this form of theatre. It was exactly one month after he passed
away. It was a trans-generational affair
with members of the original troupe performing with the present lot, old
favourites infused (as has always been the case) with present-day reference,
slang, prop and cultural allusions.
There was naturally a tinge of nostalgia that hovered over
the players and the performance given the significance of the event. That quality was enhanced by the vocal and
physical presence of the master’s son Rajith.
Rajith would I know dismiss all this as unimportant as he should and he
wouldn’t be wrong. On the other hand, he
alone possesses his father’s voice and in this sense it was ‘complete’. The father was present in son, chosen genre and
the excellence of performance.
Back to happiness.
People and human relations are not red apples (or mangoes) on a white
table cloth; nor are they ‘aquariumed’ specimen swishing this way and that to
be gazed on and painted by the random passerby.
They are not one-dimensional and are never made of either black or white
but both as well as a multiplicity of other colours and shades. The story of a single human being is an
epic. The story of social process is an
untenable proposition in that it is never amenable to reference in the
singular; there are millions of stories and millions of version, all cluttered
by the grind of the diurnal and the paint of ideology and political
prerogative.
It is not easy to paint human being. It is not easy to find the colours that do
justice to the human condition in all its complexity. Indeed it is hard to pick and slice and
describe it without injuring that which was chosen for dissection.
The performance, divested of nostalgia, to my mind was an
expression of what Hikmet demanded of Abidin.
It was ‘happiness without lies’.
‘Happiness’ not because that which was commented on through word, action
and rhythm was about a world without blemish, a world warranting salutation and
celebration. It was a ‘true’ depiction and it rang true because the colours
were believable.
Social comment suffers in delivery because it is often
painted in harsh colours and is devoid of humour and wit, whereas people
regardless of what kinds of drudgery they suffer are not humourless and not
one-dimensional in response or being.
The critical edge that I saw in the performance was the fact
that the script while being ruthless in criticizing the status quo of a number
of things still endowed the ‘sufferer’ with the power to laugh at the oppressor
and oppression, injustice and its perpetrator, not in a revengeful way, but an
almost paternalistic manner. More than
this, the ‘sufferer’ also laughs at himself.
This is one of the most endearing human qualities and I think this is
what allows us to believe in and work towards a different social order.
I do not know what Abidin said to Hikmet. I do not know the
rest of the poem and what else Hikmet asked Abidin. I have never seen Abidin’s paintings. But I think, had Hikmet lived in Sri Lanka and
had known ‘Hatha’, he would have written a different poem. Or perhaps added an
extra verse to the ‘Abidin poem’. Something like this:
Come Abidin,
Let us to the pearl of
the Indian Ocean
The tear of all tears
Blood soaked and
benign.
There, I have heard
Lives a painter
Who turns apple into
orange
Draws it out of table,
table-cloth and frame
To feed revolution;
Who disguises scream
as laughter
Anguish as resolve
And tickles himself to
death
So he can live
forever.
Malinda Seneviratne is
the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Nation' and can be reached at msenevira@gmail.com.
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