The last bohemian

The death of Simon Navagaththegama deprives Sri Lanka of her most outstanding avant guarde artist. Writer, dramatist, screen play writer and intellectual Navagaththegama came from the backwoods of the Wanni to take the Citadels of the Colombo Cultural establishment by storm.

His funeral will take place today at 4.30 p.m. at the General Cemetery, Kanatte.

The 65-year-old Simon used to recall with amusement how he had his first confrontation with a big town when he came to Galgamuwa to sit for the Grade 5 scholarship examination. Born in the remote reaches of the Kumara Wanni Hathpattuwa off Puttalam he wore a shirt an sarong and sported a big `knode' much to the amusement of the girls who oggled him like some strange species of animal.

Coming later to Peradeniya University Simon became enervated with the hot-house life of academia. He returned to the wilds where he lived by cultivation and hunting. Later he graduated from the Vidyalankara University with a honours degree in history on special permission.

Simon Navagaththegama was the village boy who discovered the European masters. His first collection of short stories 'Sagara Jalaya Madi Handuwa Oba Sanda' showed influences of Kafka while his early plays were clearly influenced by the Absurd dramatists of the European theatre such as Beckott. However, it was in the confluence of tradition and modernity that Simon discovered his true voice.

His best play `Subha Saha Yasa' was based on a historical event while in a series of novels he returned to his beloved Wanni countryside and brought to life the hunters, noblemen and bhikkhus who inhabited that rural milieu. `If I had not had the chance of education I would have been a farmer or a hunter', he once said in an interview.

So the man from the remote Wanni who conquered the cultural citadel's of Colombo by his inborn talent will bid us farewell today.

The curtain comes down on the age of the avant guarde and the last bohemian goes into dust.

- Ajith Samaranayake