tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4773560866504269501.post8400596314387960638..comments2022-03-24T13:45:35.033+05:30Comments on Lankan World View: Whatever his Color was, Wijayananda Dahanayake (Banis Maamaa) Carried GalleChamara Sumanapalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619780972198766465noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4773560866504269501.post-42751035789461604202014-10-25T00:26:01.799+05:302014-10-25T00:26:01.799+05:30Thank you very much for the information and the co...Thank you very much for the information and the comments which add up to my write-up. Since I did not live during Dahanayake's best years, all what I wrote are based on research and things I remember reading years ago.<br /><br />But being Sri Lankan, you cannot help hearing anecdotes about Banis Maamaa (or amude maamaa)<br /><br />I can add only this. I won't be able to write such an article about most politicians today (even though I have seen what they do, unlike in the case of Daha).Chamara Sumanapalahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05619780972198766465noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4773560866504269501.post-66850109038327830922014-10-24T14:15:45.155+05:302014-10-24T14:15:45.155+05:30Thanks, Chamara, for your very enjoyable writeup a...Thanks, Chamara, for your very enjoyable writeup about an eccentric genius of an honest political player of the early post-independence political arena in our country. True, he changed sides at the slightest excuse as it seems, but his allegiance to the common people he represented remained as firm as ever. As young schoolboys in the early 60's we used to hear many amusing anecdotes about Mr Dahayake. I remember the picture of Mr Dahanayake in an amude near the parliament in 'Dinamina', which gimmick changed his nickname Banis Maama to 'amude maama 'overnight, if my memory is correct. You of a much later era must have done some good research to write so knowledgeable a piece about an exemplary politician who worked and moved among ordinary folk. He had been a teacher as you say. He was a bilingual orator in the real sense of that term, and used to rattle off passages from Shakespeare plays, and versify impropmptu in English in the course of his speeches in parliament, we were told by our teachers. A well known journalist of the time Tarzie Vittachchi calls him 'Jabber Wocky' in his 'Trials in the Island in the Sun', a collection of some satiric pieces he had written to a SL English paper under the pen name "Flybynight", and gives an amusing portrait of the man. (But I may be wrong in this identification, I have no access to that book to check this out). Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com