Lasantha, the story according to Raine
It was a wife and colleague’s ode to a luminary figure, when on Monday, March 26 at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, Raine Wickrematunge launched Unbowed and Unafraid – a biography of her ex-husband, the slain scribe Lasantha Wickrematunge, then editor of the Sunday Leader.
Raine and Lasantha went back a long way starting from the offices of the Sun and WEEKEND newspapers – nursery to a bandwagon of writers who later grew to immense success – a remarkably talented crop of journalists. Later they shifted to the Sunday Times and then moved away to found, on their own newspaper, the Sunday Leader.
Raine, as doughty and intrepid as her husband, stood by him till their divorce in 2007 and was one of the most affected when Lasantha was killed in 2009.
The launch was attended by some of the press’s ‘literati’ and there were lighter moments as when Lasantha’s schoolboy escapades at St. Benedict’s Kotahena were recalled by his classmate Peter D’Almeida. A number from Nanda Malini’s Pavana (the ‘JVP Songs’ of the 1980s) whipped up old flames in ‘young’ hearts as on the screen were images of Lasantha’s activism and his legacy.
Lasantha’s niece Raisa Wickrematunge, also a journalist and deputy editor of Himal Southasian, remembered wistfully a man who was an ‘investigative journalist’ even in private life. “He would question us about our lives – always with a smile but probing us for facts, be it where we were going, what we were doing and who we were spending time with.”
She said that it was “incredibly moving” for them to see the Aragalaya protestors holding placards with “bappi’s” face on them – “If he were here, he would definitely be busily at work trying to uncover the political machinations,” she added.
Raisa also took the opportunity to recall all other journalists and media workers who “lost their lives in the pursuit of their work” -- among them Subramanium Sivaraja, Dharmeratnam Sivaram, Ayathurai Nadesan and Prageeth Ekneligoda.
The keynote speech was by Peter D’Almeida, who spoke of a lion-hearted man and childhood chum.
Raine herself spoke briefly, stating it was for her a “therapeutic journey as well as a journey of healing” to write the book. “But the main objective of writing this book was to gift Lasantha’s story to the world and hope that it will inspire a lot of people, especially the up-and-coming journalists of the next generation.”
Dr Gaithri Fernando, a psychology professor at California State University and a childhood friend of Raine’s, presented a review of the book.
She avoided nailing down the volume’s genre, calling it “also part autobiography, part spy thriller, part political commentary and part deep-diving into the world of journalism and newspaper publication”.
“Above all, I think of this book as a love letter – a letter of passion, from a wife to her husband; from a mother to her children; from one journalist to another; and from a daughter of the soil to her beloved country.”
In a lighter vein, Dr. Gaithri quoted from the book:
‘Lasantha was an irrepressible joker and prankster and would tease and embarrass the young ones or pull their legs by disguising his voice with prank calls. His ear-splitting two-finger whistle which indicated he wanted an office helper pronto would see poor Sandanam, engrossed in making tea for the staff, almost drop the cups and saucers in his haste to run to his beloved Lasantha Mahaththaya.’
While the biography illuminates the different chapters of an eclectic life, it mostly hones in on that period of éclat when he was the Sunday Leader’s outspoken editor, plus the tragic assassination and the murder inquiry.
The first copy of the book was presented to Sandya Ekneligoda, wife of the disappeared journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda.
Unbowed and Unafraid, with 400+ pages and 25 plates of colour photos, is available at Barefoot, Vijitha Yapa bookshops and Expographic bookshops. The book was first published in 2013 as And Then They Came for Me.