The translator of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull passes away

By Gamini Akmeemana

It’s with so much sadness that I learned about the untimely death of journalist, writer, translator and humanist Malini Govinnage.

I first met her in 2000 when we were part of a group of journalists on a press tour of India organised by the National Peace Council. She was working for the Daily News. I was impressed by her sincerity and quiet but intense study of the daily life around her. Since then, I met her only once. Not a public figure, she was hardly ever seen at press events. I became aware of her prolific writing only recently, thanks to journalist Mohan Sriyantha Ariyawansa who informed me of her death (after a  battle with cancer) and sent me these two photographs.

I took a photograph of Malini in India. Unfortunately, I can’t trace it now, but I’m going to publish it when I find it. I regret deeply that I was so much out of touch with her life all these years. Her choice of books for translation reveal different sides of her personality, but they all share one predominant quality – an almost tangible longing for freedom.

Her deep rooted yearning for justice and profound feeling for those persecuted in the name of progress  is reflected in her books, which deal with subjects such as the persecution of American Indians, Ernesto Guevara’s Bolivian Diary and the cold-blooded campaign of murder carried out by Argentina’s military junta against the Mothers of Plaza del Mayo.

The same cry for freedom is reflected in a little known book translated by her – ‘Akeekaru Muhudu Lihiniya’ is the translation of  Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach, which became a bestseller in the US in my school days. It was actually a booklet, illustrated with black and white photographs of seagulls. Richard Bach was inspired to write it due to his encounters with seagulls at the seaside. He created a fictitious little gull called Jonathan Livingstone and recorded its struggle to prove itself – learning how to fly, how to battle headwinds, to escape predators and take its rightful place among adult seagulls.

May she rest in peace.