Recreating tsunami events as creative communication
by Prof. Sunanda Mahendra
A few months ago a certain Professor of comparative literary studies
from an Australian University visited Sri Lanka in order to collect,
according to his own terminology ‘tsunami narratives’, which he stated
would be useful as events from actual life to enable people of other
nations to understand the trials and tribulations of human life.
 On reading the Prof. Kusuma Karunaratne’s collection of short
stories, ‘punchikate vatura gihin’ (Wijesuriya Grantha 2005), I found
all the eleven stories centre round the central theme of the tsunami
devastation and aspects linked with it as to how some became victims and
others the living sufferers and solitary rangers catching glimpses of
sympathy and kindness.
The narratives are all woven with a simple humane and giving vent to
such aspects as human dignity the need of the moment and spiritual
susceptibilities. It looks as if all the narratives are culled from
actual experience on the day of the disaster with a tinge of human twist
making an exalted imaginative structure.
The first narrative Pavigiya Kasavata (p. 11-28) is woven around the
good hearted pious Buddhist monk who so visits a house in order to
accept alms from a well-wisher. But on his way the car gets floated by
the strong tidal wave into the sea.
The driver who foresees the disaster escapes with much advice to the
monk but fails to reconcile the situation. KK gives more flesh and blood
into an event and makes the reader feel that the event possesses more of
a humane interest than it is seen in the outer layer of reading.
How a small girl is dispossessed by her foreign parents in our
country becomes the subject in her next narrative titled Punchidoni
Alibalanta Evit (p. 29-38). A careful and sensitive layer of parent
child intimacy and the loss of one on the part of the other is seen
visualized in a poetic expression transcending a mere event of threshold
interest.
This I felt is the author’s most favourite area of expression - she
is seen giving more and more strength of expression in such narratives
as Baby Visieka (P. 39-50) and the title story Punchikate Vaturagihin
(P. 102-107).
Finest narrative
In these narratives, which are a sensitive true to life snapshot like
patterns that may be regarded as worthwhile studies of cross cultural
patterns as well.
One of the finest narratives is the one titled Attammage Maha Pinkama
(P. 89-92) where in the process of collecting items to be distributed
among the tsunami victims an age old grandmother too donates her newly -
worn cloth thinking that she too can join the share of her only
possession.
This reminds me of the narrative style in a sensitive folk legend
where the greatness is measured not in anything else other than the very
action closer to the heart. In the narrative titled Lekiri (P. 84-88) a
certain mother is in search of a child perhaps lost or missed in the
disaster.
Her eyes are welled with tears for not seeing her own infant child
and her breasts are paining for not getting the chance to feed her
child. But at this juncture she finds another infant child who is crying
in starvation. This mother whom we encounter as the most frustrated one
breast feeds the motherless infant.
This narrative contains for me one of the best and most sensitive and
humanistic experience written recalling the age old spirits of the
supreme greatness of the motherhood in its magnificance reminiscent of
the folklore creations down the centuries.
The nature of the family patterns and how it is disturbed by the
tsunami is also captured in several narratives like Deviyanta Barayak
(P. 65-73) Desember Visihaya (P. 51-64) and Ohu Enaturu (P. 108-119). In
the former narrative the reader finds a husband who is so nasty and
cruel and a wife and a child who are innocent victims of the family
pattern.
What the wife does is to find a solace through an offering or a vow
to the god Kataragama down South in order to see that the husband is
reformed. But on her way to the abode of the god the disaster strikes
making them the victims of the tsunami. Such is the destiny which
reminds one of the age-old saying that it is like the temple of the god
falling on the head of the pilgrim in the process of the worship (Vadinta
Giya Devalaya Hisekadavatuna Vagei).
Modern parable
The latter looks like a modern parable where the bride to be is
waiting to see the partner the would be bridegroom when she hears that
the he is a fateful victim of the tsunami.
In most of her narratives in the collection under review , I see a
certain degree of a story pattern that could be reckoned more like
investigative creations. In the name of help rendered by a man the
reader sees how he fights with his own conscience over a theft from a
dead body, the lifting of a valuable ornament from a dead woman’s body
in the story titled December Twenty Sixth (P. 51).
The man feels that he could make use of the ornament if it is sold as
he escapes even from the police eyes, but he fails to escape from the
conscience of his wife as well who throws it away making him feel that
he had been up to something cruel despite the stark nature of the need
and poverty in reality.
The impact one should say is notable from the point of view of social
ethics and sensitively disturbing, but the meaning withheld as a common
crude despicable happening.
A thief cannot be pardoned especially at a time when a disaster
occurs is suggestive in the underlying layer of meaning for the
sophisticated reader. In this type of narrative the characters
themselves become the ‘cultural spokespersons’ of a particular social
milieu.
The narrative titled Ekai Dekai Tunai (P. 80-83) comes as an isolated
study and a portrait of a mentally deranged man, once again a victim of
the tsunami who waits for and counts the number of relatives lost,
especially the small ones, who were nearer and dearer to him. It is a
sad little fantasy like legend where the man becomes an interlocutor of
the medical doctor where the medicine fails but the interrogation may
perhaps bring more inner calmness.
simple structure
All the narratives are written in a simple structure where the
dialogue that ensues between characters have an inner layer of meaning
that surpasses the barriers of mere trick ending situational
commentaries.
The sea in the manifold manners too becomes a character in all the
narratives hinting the intensity of the devastation brought about to the
humans as well as the environment. The struggle to exist and the ways
and means of overcoming disasters is also intertwined.
This is a good starting point as this is suggestively the author
professor’s creative debut despite her involvement and commitment to
literary activities at home and abroad. This collection of tsunami
recreations perhaps enables the author to experiment more on the same
genre enabling a change or a detour in the existing pattern of
conventional story writing.
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