‘THE UNIVERSAL MAGICIAN’ MANIK SANDRASAGARA,
MAN WHO FOUGHT AGAINST IMPERIALISM THROUGH CINEMA, CULTIVATION AND RELIGION
The 13th death anniversary of wellknown filmmaker Manik Sandrasagara fell on May 18. Among the noteworthy movies directed by Sandrasagara were ‘Kalu Diya Dahara’, ‘Seetha Devi’, ‘Colomba Sanniya’, ‘Rampage’ and ‘Reincarnation’. He was also instrumental in making ‘God King’, directed by Dr. Lester James Peries. Manik who was born in 1945, passed away in Singapore on May 18, 2008.
When asked what religion he believed in, his mere answer to be‘food’! That is Manik Sandrasagara!
He was well renowned as a thief or a liar, where he may have done the right thing and told the truth according to his own subconscious!
There are good reasons why recent generations do not know much about Manik Sandrasagara. It is a fierce battle to say something meaningful to the new population that has been strangled by the venomous hell of the Chinese-korean internet and networks that exist in the current world so to say! Nevertheless, Manik’s past was a hybrid of drama and cinema, and later an interesting history of rural culture, culminating in a diverse religious dialogue where at the latter stage of his life he ended up physically frustrated and left the country.
Manik started his basic education at St Bridget’s Convent, Colombo-07, where he was educated in the same class as former President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
After which he was educated at St. Joseph’s College &St Aloysius & then attended Horana Sri Pali.
Manik said one day. “I am a selftaught person, my teacher is nothing Manik
Sandrasagara
but the so- called College of life!”
“And there was a time that I lived a ‘Magical Life’!!” “Shall I reveal the secret to my Happiness… the reason behind to my happiness is that I am so far removed from human society and civilisation and as such I have no idea what is going on in the world around me… this is the reason to my happiness!”
“Let me tell you something… our Island has been torn apart, stolen and corrupted by various political parties where the Middle Class people were always attacked and victimised, and It is these very people from the Middle Class background who drank and quarreled with each other where the situations turned from bad to worse leaving behind nothing but frustration and unhappiness!
Although a Shiva devotee, Manik was born a Roman Catholic.
He practiced religion and was a true devotee to his own conscious as much as he was passionate over his food!
He lived in a thorn-clay hut in a village not far from Anuradhapura and farmed rice. In the early days he cultivated almost everything except sugar and fish.
“Living naturally is the first step” as he recalls his motto of life. Manik came to live in a jungle village in Anuradhapura while his wife and daughter were living in Colombo. “I can’t tell people how to live”. “Those who make their dreams a reality are very lucky. I was also a dreamer. Once upon a time I was able to keep the business community happy through cultural activities and in return they supported me. Investing in people like me was profitable for them which in return turned out to be a magical source for me! Manik as well as his wife Ann was into the habit of reading books written by Carroll Blake and various other Greek philosophers. And as devotees of Shiva, they had a common sense about birth-life-death and decay, Nirvana-destruction and rebirth and times of the Kali era.
According to Ananda Kumaraswami, there was a strong commitment in Manik to see an image of SRI LANKANESS or ‘Sri Lankeyaswarupaya’ in him. Therefore, he held in him a subtle pulse about the culture, environment and inhabitants of Sri Lanka.
Manik Sandrasagara, who was away from the Island for a while, returned once again as the producer of the film God King, making a huge difference in the annals of Sinhala cinema.
During that period he brought to the cinema the film ‘Kalu Diya Dahara’ (Black Water Stream) which brought a story about the struggle of a trade union in the plantation sector and ‘Colomba Sanniya’, a comedy of rural culture.
Manik wanted to film Maggi Lidchi’s Earthman after the 1974 God King movie, and for this purpose he even managed to somehow borrow 500 pounds from his colleague Richard Boyle’s father! Swami Gowribala, who ran an ashram in Jaffna whom Manik highly respected, was a huge shadow around his efforts in this regard. Lidchi was also a member of the Sri Aurobindo monastery in Pondicherry at the time of writing this story.tissa Abeysekara, a talented screenwriter, was commissioned to write the screenplay. Although Earth Man did not make it to the Cinema, Boyle was left alone with a single copy of the precious screenplay written by Tissa. Manik even failed to pay off Richard Boyle’s father’s debt due to a series of problems which led Boyle to work as an independent producer escaping from it all.
Gamini Fonseka’s arrival between Boyle and Manik was once again the beginning of a strange excitement which was due to Gamini’s capability in bringing the story of ‘Blood Mary’ written by Mary Palliser, to the screen.
Mary Palliser was an out spoken woman who was affected by the Japanese invasion in 1942, who sailed from Singapore.
She was an Australian woman who was allowed to set up a R&R rehabilitation camp in Bandarawela-pattipola. Arriving in Pattipola with all the animals related to the story, she angered the government and the staff of the Railway Department where at the end of an unexpectedly big chaos she was deported to Australia. The special theme of the story being that before Mary left Sri Lanka, she shot and killed all the animals at the camp brought for the film and destroyed the camp as well as the government property!
Jaws novel about a killer whale in the 1970s ushered in a new Animal Horror movie in the Western World of Cinema. Accordingly, Jaws produced a series of films, and Gamini Fonseka re-appeared with such a story about an elephant.
Funded by100% local currency for foreign markets, this was a heartwarming story about the human-elephant conflict with an environmental theme. It was entirely directed by Manik and was baptized as ‘Rampage’. Yet nevertheless the Sri Lankan extent of film preservation had been so great that not a single copy of the film exist today!
Despite the losses, differences & debates, this small group of Manik and a few others seemed to have had overcome all obstacles and move forward enjoying life in peace and togetherness. once again in 1977, with the endless ending of the film ‘The Criterion’, which was drafted with the intervention of Ven. Sumedha Thero, Swami Sivakalki’s ‘The Point of No Return’ was then embarked. Swami Kalki is Mike Wilson’s character of priesthood in the movie ‘Sathsamudura’. The group, accompanied by Swami Kalki who is a close friend of Gamini Fonseka, came to London in search of producers.
At the time, a science-fiction film with a similar story was being screened by John Boorman (Zardos), but ‘Point of No Return’ ended without a hitch.
Manik Sandrasagara, who was at the time mentally and financially exhausted, was arrested shortly afterwards in 1980 in Britain.
At the time he was the driver of a van loaded with a small machine which was imported to Sri Lanka some time ago where Manik had asked to resend to London if not sold. The allegation was that there was a stock of cannabis hidden inside the machine!
Emile Savundra (Emile Savundranayagam?) Is a relative of Manik Sandrasagara. He is a well-known figure who has been selling useless insurance policies to 400,000 British people. Emile was sentenced to six years in prison on all charges, and Manik, who was arrested on the same ‘Popularity’ note, was sent to Norwich Prison along with the owner of the machine. (Emile Savundra is not the Emile Kanthan of Sri Lankan Business-crooks).
Richard Boyle went to the Norwich prison to visit his friend while on his way to watch a cricket match where Ian Botham scored a century. And Manik recalls him to be the only person who came to see him. When he was in prison.
However, Manik managed to escape to the Amsterdam airport one day being influenced by sharp ideas, correct mind handing and all gimmicks similarly as in a series of action movie scenes. Then, with the help of an underworld organisation he once again reached Thambapanni in the middle of the night in a small fishing boat. Then once again Manik Sandrasagara while in Colombo, walking barefoot from Galle Face to Kollupitiya along the Galle Road sidewalk cladded in a sarong or a vettiya arrives in the lobby of the Taj Samudra Hotel and signs a check brought by his Accountant. Somehow or the other this man ‘out of the usual’ was fortunate to have been blessed with several five-star hotels in meeting his guests and also for his office work purposes together with facilities of luxury vehicles for his transportation!
Nimal Mendis once said that he came from a great heights like a millionaire and was a poor man who was anxiously looking for even the last rupee in his pocket!!
There were two wives Ann and Lucy to this incredibly-out of the world-amazingly fancy character who can never be measured across human standards. And his four children to be Tiliya and Kawshika, Narishta and Enoka.
Then there came a time similar to any other living being …, when this great man of Magical Powers too had to bid his farewell…. admitted for a medical examination at a hospital in Singapore… last breath and burial taking place in Singapore but ashes being brought down to Colombo….. Although body decayed.. yet his name ever lasts….!
raviprasadherat@gmail.com Ravi Prasad Herat, is freelance Journalist who was awarded the Presidential media award for
investigative journalism in 2018. He is the author of “INVISIBLE INTERVENTION
OF AMERICAN FILM GIANTS OF ASIA”