Iranganie Serasinghe: Longevity and success in a world of films, theatre and trees

• Iranganie Serasinghe celebrates her 98th birthday
• She was a journalist with the Times of Ceylon while she was raising a family with two sons

Iranganie Serasinghe packed a number of careers, projects and issues into her long and eventful life, but still looks serene as she celebrated her 98th birthday, just two years short of a century. Is her signature serenity the secret of her longevity? 
She made her theatre debut in 1948, film debut in 1960, and has outlived most of her theatre and cinema contemporaries. These are very demanding and stressful arenas of work. In addition, she was a journalist for the Times of Ceylon, another stress-filled field. At the Times, she was accompanied on assignments by famous photographers such as Nihal Fernando and Pat Dekker. As if this wasn’t enough, she was raising a family with two sons and took up the cause of environmental issues.
Perhaps the key to her serene nature lies in her roots in the pastoral Ruwanwella area. In a later interview, Iranganie said that village life was placid. Even after being educated in bustling Colombo (at St. Bridget’s Convent) and living and working in the city as an adult, she must have found those ingrained qualities derived from that placid, serene pastoral landscape a solid bulwark against the daily stresses of urban life and demanding careers. 
And her love of trees and nature surely owes to that childhood and background. A lover of trees, she put such prodigious energy into Ruk Rakaganno, a volunteer, non-profit organisation which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. According to one famous story, she once stopped her car and berated a crew for cutting down an ebony tree near St. Bridget’s Convent, causing a traffic jam.
But the public knows her best as a film actress. Though her film list isn’t large, she had the good fortune to take part in several memorable films by outstanding filmmakers such as Dr. Lester James Pieris, who gave Iranganie her first film break in his own debut feature ‘Rekhawa,’ followed by his 1960 historical epic ‘Sandeshaya.’
Subsequently, she acted as the mother of a playboy son (Tony Ranasinghe) who tries to hide a fatal motor accident under the carpet in Lester’s ‘Delowak Athara,’ and Deepa Mehta’s 2005 film ‘Water.’ Her second husband and life partner, Vincent Serasinghe (they were married in 1960 and were together till his death in 1999) was a gifted film and stage actor, too.
Like many talented actors of that era, Iranganie started with the stage, in the 1948 production ‘The Second Mrs. Tanqueray’ by Prof. Cuthbert Amarasinghe. She was auditioned and got the role. She showed her stage acting talents at another historic moment—the opening of the Lionel Wendt theatre in 1953. The first play staged at the new theatre was Maxim Gorky’s ‘Lower Depths’ and Iranganie played the role of Nastya. 
It was because of her modest and serene nature that Iranganie found good friends and advisers. This was of immense help when it came to building ‘Ruk Rakaganno’ from scratch from 1975 on. The idea came from nature lovers Nihal Fernando and Pat Dekker, and among her supporters were famous, gifted personalities such as the director of the Dehiwela Zoo, Lyn de Alwis, cartoonist Wijesoma, artist Laki Senanayake and bird photographer Dr. T. S. U. de Zylva. 
If Iranganie had focused solely on her film career, she could have built up a more impressive filmography. But it looks as if her love of nature was as deep, if not deeper.