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| Wednesday, 8 December 2004 |
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Focus on books A new collection of short stories from the award winner by Prof. Sunanda Mahendra Kamani Jayasekara, Head of the Department of Western Classical Culture and Christian Culture at the University of Kelaniya, is the recipient of the State Literary award for the best short story collection published in English last year. To her credit, she has written quite a number of children's stories and research works linked with her subject, she teaches at University level. Her newest collection of English short stories, which are strangely short and readable, run to just fifty-six pages. The collection contains twelve stories of varying nature titled 'A Gambler's Day'. She, in her own way, observes some of the events of day-to-day life around her ending most stories in a narrative pattern that makes the reader think for a moment as to what it is all about. As such, most of her stories are like snapshots. These stories centre round events of people belonging to the middle class families and the lower middle class families. They include such persons as teachers, clerks, servants, academicians, parents and children, etc. In most stories just one central incident is selected and the focus of attention is on just one central character or a character in conflict with another. Reminiscences First story titled 'Doll's House', for example, reminds us of a similar story of Katherine Mansfield, though no direct influence is visible. The story forms one to the other for just a series of reminiscences in the life of a woman left for herself, ironically referring to her boring life with much to comfort herself, but in constant search for something beyond the plane level of living. The narrator cum protagonist has a house, a husband, duties to perform and wants to have companionship. Yet for all, there is something she lacks perhaps untold in the narrative. The second story titled 'Agony' revolves round the inner feelings of a woman, who is yearning to see a satisfaction not in the trivialities of the life around her but in something much more that in order to get rid of the boredom and dissatisfaction of herself. The story titled 'Halls of Learning' as I read it, found the best in the collection where the irony is the most interesting factor. The so called intellectuals of the first order have gathered to give verdicts to number of sorrowful lesser luminaries in academy in order to bring about a balance and an order between the two factions. But what happens is the most striking point. The narrator, though a member of the group, is much more sensitive than the others, to the point that she is mooning about those matters over the subject concerned. She feels that the gathering consisting of her like, are up to heated arguments and controversies which in no way disturb her own world or the kosmos. The world, where they attempt at giving judgments, is the place full of all niceties like air conditioning and the world outside where the victims come from, is the place where the sun blazes and makes one suffer. But in official terminology everything is attended to and a job done as scheduled. This indeed is a short story that comes from the administrative blocks all over the so-called halls of learning. The story titled "The Classic Theft" is yet another good story revolving round a university academic staff where a lecturer looses a wallet and the need to report the matter ends up in a series of experiences in a police station, where they find enmeshed more in interrogation than actual investigation. This is once again an ironic reference to those who are teachers of highflown subjects but lack the common sense of what is happening around them in actual reality. If someone loses his belongings one has to report that matter to a place like the police station but whether the matter will be settled then and there is questionable. Experience A Gambler's Game is an experience a wife gets when she joins to tour round a distant place with her husband not knowing the consequences of the sojourn. The unexpected happens beyond reason and the experience underlying is that at some given moment one has to face it. Though we commence some journeys as happy and merrymaking trips they sometimes end up in unthinkable tragedies. The story titled 'Different Strokes' reminds one of the incorruptible nature of the childhood mind, which could perhaps be polluted by adults with their leanings on matters of religion, caste creed and community. Here is a good example showing the minds of two children centred round the two festivals of Vesak and Christmas. I found the subtext of the narrative much more interesting than what is said on the surface layer. As a student of folklore I found the story titled Mahasona has more sense than we realize. The narrator Jayasekara selects a psychological situation where a sensitive young man named Chandana is shown as torn between two worlds the world of his working place and the place where he becomes a victim of a mental sickness. Some of the local beliefs in the Devil infest is highlighted in this narrative giving a twist to feel that Chandana is in his real self is a human and in another sense a dog who barks at the devil. The fact that exorcists have been summoned to treat him via their charms and magic makes him helpless and miserable. But the actual reason is hinted. The innocent Chandana has to be treated well and that alone will help him to live among other humans. My attempt is not to interpret all the stories written by Kamani Jayasekara in this flimsy volume of stories. But the stories come as new structures and narratives that deserve the attention of the reader. The readability is perhaps the most striking factor in these narratives. Her sentences are quite short and brief in expression. She does not over burden the reader with harangues and semantic noises. It looks as if she is writing in a relaxed mood recollecting events from the past as well as the present. On reading this collection of short stories ('A Gambler's Game', published by Godage Book Emporium, 2004) I was reminded of what once the British writer Somerset Maugham said on short stories: 'I can only say I wrote stories because it was a delight to write them. There are always snags and you worry about them, and then you circumvent them and go on." Lucid narrative with an emotional outburst Darkness at Dawn, Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" fills the reader with the thrills of the European greed for ivory - hunting by relentlessly killing man and beast in the African Congo. Jayantha Gomes' "Darkness at Dawn" denounces the pitiless pursuit of power crazy megalomaniacs abusing children by training them in the act of destroying men and property.
On reading Jayantha Gomes' novel "Darkness at Dawn", it occurred to me that there is a striking similarity between Anne Ranasinghe's poem, "Plead Mercy" and Gomes' "Darkness at Dawn". It is, in fact, the sub-title, "Sabbe Sattha Bhavantu Sukhitatta" that matters in the similarity. Its meaning is "Let all beings be happy!" That sub-title pervades the whole scrotum of the poem's theme inducing pity in the mind of the reader. Although Gomes has not furnished a sub-title to his novel, it is implied that the following quotation from the Dhammapada underlies the entire gamut of its theme - the adverse effects of power hungry politics misguiding the innocent children using them as cats' paws in realizing their own perverted purposes. The Dhammapada stanza runs like this: "Mano pubbangama dhamma mano settha manomaya Mind is the forerunner of (all evil) states. Mind is chief; mind-made are they. If one speaks or acts with wicked mind, because of that, suffering followed one, even as the wheel follows the hoof of the draught-ox.) - English version by Ven. Narada Thera. While Anne Ranasinghe arouses feelings of compassion in the reader, Jayantha Gomes evokes an emotional outburst of hatred towards the perpetrators who misguide children along blind-alleys to their own ruin. The protagonist, Jayadeva Pathirana, represents the whole lot of the misguided youths who had fallen prey to the strategies of scheming terrorists. The reader is introduced to the crux of the matter right at the opening paragraph. Jayantha Gomes arrests the readers' attention with the stature of a veteran author and keeps on with that flame of interest persistently upto to the end of the novel when peace dawn on Jayadeva. There is rich imagery employed in this novel. For example, the image of kittens getting disappeared forebodes the impending doom of school boys being arrested in a prison cell at a tender age without their knowledge. The absence of the pealing of the bell looms ominously eerie. The guilty-conscious is always perturbed by weird feelings as seen in: "Jayadeva sensed something strange" as he entered the classroom. The tension of the situation is vividly described by the writer and as cleverly expressed in English by the transcreator, Edwin Ariyadasa. The use of the first person point of view stamped with flashbacks makes the story appealing to the reader, and more, it excites a note of confidence. The narration is lucid and resembles mostly the style of telling detective stories with the precision of facts and the mode of conducting inquiries held to ascertain the involvement or otherwise of the accused. The restlessness of a guilty mind is well depicted with Jayadeva's ever present vigilance distracting his attention from the studies: "The first sight that met his eye in the direction of the gate, was that of two men clad in khaki coats." Jayadeva's character traits of being callous and insolent resemble those of the protagonist of the French novelist, Albert Camu's "L'Etranger" (The Outsider) - translated into Sinhala as "Pitastaraya" by Prof. Somarathne Balasuriya. But in "Darkness at Dawn", Jayadeva is reawakened while under arrest by his irrepressible bond of parental and fraternal love which is absent in the French novel. Besides exposing the heart-rending and pathetic plight of an innocent young child representing thousands of similar ones misguided by the power-seeking leaders, Jayantha Gomes deftly builds up a frame of mind in the reader to analyse further the socio-political problem at issue: What are the causes that led to the circumstances where the growing minds of the young could be ignited with hatred. Jayantha Gomes gradually, shrewdly and effectively prepares the spade-work for the reader to perceive the corrupt body-politic and awakens the readers' active involvement in this problem. He favours the line of Mahatma Gandhi of India and Nelson Mandela of South Africa who paved the way to salvation through non-violence. Jayantha Gomes, seems to advise the reader to turn away from the destructive approach and to cultivate a constructive attitude with our experience gathered through trial and error, using social friendly strategies based on Ahimsa taking, for example, the models mentioned above for emulation. The transcreator of this novel is of a similar calibre of Leonard Woolf and R. L. Spittel in the command of the English langauge. I feel that would be the most fitting tribute to Edwin Ariyadasa. And I strongly believe this novel will one day be acclaimed as an indelible saga portraying a particular period in the annals of Sri lanka. Somapala Arandara **** Back **** |
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Both Joseph Conrad and Jayantha Gomes use the titles of their
respective novels with a symbolic meaning in the word,
"Darkness". In the former, it means the greed for wealth and the
latter indicates power - hunger. Both parties aspire to achieve their
individual ends by foul means taking all the unfair and lethal short-cuts
imaginable.
