The sweetest three-letter poem

‘Whenever I think of the innocent ways of my mother, it is a tear that flows to my eye.’ Sunil Sarath Perera wrote this in an essay titled ‘Samadhura akuru thuna maha kava ammaa ya (mother, the epic three-letter poem),’ in his recently published collection ‘Mathaka Nimnaya (Valley of Memories).’

In this collection Sunil Sarath Perera, who belongs to that incredible category of great Sinhala lyricists less recognised or indeed left unrecognized (W A Abeysinghe and Mahinda Algama come to mind), has offered the reader a slice of the amazing cocktail of insights which eventually found expression as lyrics. A review will have to wait. This is about the three-letter poem. Amma.

The sweetest word and one that is quintessentially of the heart, he says, is ‘Amma,’ [for] ‘it contains the most precious qualities such as love, kindness, affection etc. Someone once claimed there cannot be a word for ‘mother’ in any language that is equal to what is contained in ‘Amma,’ but that’s just a cultural bias.

The author quotes Maxim Gorky: ‘All things in this world are made of the sun and mother’s milk.’ That’s the kind of elevation that ‘mother’ enjoys in human imagination. Amma. Mom. Mum. Mommy. Mummy. Ma. Mama. It all in the particular mother as felt by the particular child.

Among all the songs ever written, all the poetry and all claims of things precious, there’s nothing or rather no one referenced more than mother. Love, perhaps, but then it can be argued (and we don’t need the Ummagga Jathaka or the Caucasian Chalk Circle to emphasise the point) that of all loves, that of a mother for her child is by far the most unconditional and precious. Premakeerthi De Alwis wrote (and Victor Ratnayake sang) ‘aadaraye ulpatha vu amma (mother, the source of love)’ and Sunil Dayananda Konara wrote (and Karunaratne Divulgane sang) ‘kalaa wewe nil diyavara ape amma (the blue waters of the Kala Wewa is but our mother).’ Same sentiments.

The author offers explication of several ‘amma-verses,’ among them Mahagama Sekara’s dedication in the epic poetical work ‘Prabuddha,’ where he acknowledges that it was she, his mother, who taught him that the enormous universe is in fact a pattern, i.e. there is order, there is some underlying dharmathava. ‘God,’ if you will. I would go with paticca-samuppada or dependent origination. An aside, that. What matters is the kind of dimensions associated with amma.

I remembered something that Sunil Sarath Perera told me years ago about the song ‘me maha kanda (this great mountain)’ he had written for W D Amaradeva. It was inspired by the mountain Alagalla as seen from the Rambukkana Railway Station and from his wife’s village. Life moves, he noted, things change, there are joyful days and moments of sorrow; the mountain witnessed it all. Unperturbed, he didn’t have to say. Like a mother, he didn’t have to say.

He has said many things in this essay, about mothers and motherhood and his mother too. In fact it’s all about his mother. A beautiful tribute that makes any reader think of his or her own mother or mother-figure if orphaned at a very young age. And so, I will end this with a mother story.

A few days ago I ran into Dr Hemamal Jayawardena, Child Protection Specialist at UNICEF. He was a few years senior to me in school and being a ruggerite, was quite a hero back in the day. Humble to a fault, he stopped and we spoke for almost half an hour. Updated each other about our lives, spoke about our children.

‘If your girls are writing essays as part of applications for scholarships, I would be more than happy to help,’ he said. He’s helped many people over the years. I said I will and remembering that my mother had also helped countless students with their applications to foreign universities, I wanted to share the fact with him.

‘My mother…’

That’s as far as I got.

‘Your mother…’

That’s as far as he got.

He hugged me and wept. And he told me how she had written his character certificate, that it had gone a long way making him the person he is today.

There have been times when I think of her and a tear makes its way to my eye. This was different. Or maybe not. It was all about love, after all. The sweetest epic poem that can be written with just three letters, as Sunil Sarath Perera reminded us with economy that matches the sentiment. As he usually does.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

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