|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Tuesday, 24 June 2003 |
 |
|
 |
Features | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
Book Review : Worlds with their own calendar Jean Arasanayagam: Inheritance Publisher: S. Godage & Brothers, Colombo It may sometimes appear as if Jean Arasanayagam's stories take place in a world where a calendar, quite of its own, is valid. Of course the reader is now and then called back to the order of contemporary history, and a date or some other detail seems to prove that we actually find ourselves in the Sri Lanka that the daily news tell about. That is a Sri Lanka characterised by the bloody conflict between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority. But it is as if the writer wished to bring home how ambiguous history is, how different worlds may continue to live on - sometimes almost without touching each other. Old and odd worlds may be doomed and it is questionable whether they deserve any regret at all, but so far they are not gone. In Inheritance they are gradually conjured up in a meditatively repetitive prose - sometimes sad and subdued, sometimes suggestive. The perspective of the stories is almost exclusively female. The strange first short story depicts a sheltered, or rather confined, life of a young girl in upper class setting - and how a marriage with a sexually uninterested man offers the young girl a paradoxical freedom from all bonds. In the second story a world with almost Victorian values stands out. In a strongly anglified upper class the old colonial masters' example lives on. The actors themselves have aged but stiff hierarchies and a ruthlessly stern moral have remained - like the silence surrounding a 'disgraceful' secret. Some short stories deal with the high caste Tamil clans that Jean Arasanayagam herself has got to learn by marrying into and has depicted in prose as well as in poetry. Like many times before the hidebound mother-in-law appears. Here it becomes obvious how divided Jean Arasanayagam is in her sympathies. She has often depicted the conditions of outsiders and knows how many who in fact were excluded by the hierarchic order of the old society. Her new family never accepted herself and part of the pain probably originates from the fact that this affected her also as an artist. She was never allowed to make the story of the Tamil family hers, never quite allowed to step into it. But it would not have been Jean Arasanayagam if she would not time after another have tackled this enterprise - like for instance in 'Peacock and dreams' (1996), built upon the childhood experiences of her Tamil husband. In addition to that she sees how the rulers of the old order themselves have been set aside by the development, and she is capable of depicting the old mother-in-law's isolation with empathy and warmth. Sometimes a long-time-ago-countryside is conjured up - abandoned homes of childhood and fields, trees cut down, general decay. However, Jean Arasanayagam does not only write about an upper class left behind. In 'Inheritance' you may for instance find the servant woman dreaming of leaving Sri Lanka and therefore repeatedly sending letters abroad - to ever new addressees and with a new, made up identity each time. One story gradually and carefully outlines a portrait of the deeply despised and deeply wronged Mudiyanse - a man that has been robbed of his land in a family conflict. Last but not least it is an unusually beautiful book that S. Godage & Brothers have published, decorated with a photograph of a family that could have been taken directly from one of the short stories. - Anders Sjobohm |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
