Book review

Explorations into a 'brave new' Lanka
 

REVIEWED BY LYNN Ockersz

Arunella Wetenakota Vithara - a collection of short stories in Sinhala by Ajit Thilakasena

A Sarasavi Prakashakayo publication

AJIT Thilakasena, whom I have come to recognise as possessing a rare story-telling technique, is at his best in some of the short stories in this engaging collection.

Operating in the mock-ironic mode which is so characteristic of him, Thilakasena could be considered as having broken new ground in contemporary Lankan fiction with these stories, from the point of view of both content and style.

One of Thilakasena's chief strengths is his ability to hold up for our amused contemplation contemporary Sri Lanka with all its distortions, foibles and eccentricities.

In the course of doing so, the author could be said to be imparting to the reader a sweeping, ironic overview of the 'state of the nation'.

What is remarkable is that in this literary exploration Thilakasena consistently approaches his subject with a high degree of critical detachment, never lapsing into a mood of mordant cynicism.

Another strength of Thilakasena's art is his starkly realistic portrayal of all social strata and his sound grasp of the parasitical social and religious forces which compound the material and spiritual poverty of the ordinary people of the land.

Thus the author's artistic proclivities are at variance - and rightly too - with the traditional literary tendency to idealise those who are considered the common people. Thus, Thilakasena holds not only a crystal clear but also a shatteringly revealing mirror to our times.

The first short story in this collection, 'Aluth Para Nohoth Sisiliyaata Daruwek', has as its focus popular beliefs and traditional lore, but as is always the case with Thilakasena, there's no obtrusive authorial comment here. The unfolding happenings or drama convey all.

The story is peopled by betrayed wives, ageing, sexually-frustrated spinsters who try to find solace in religious rituals and scheming, land-grabbing clergymen who easily manoeuvre their female 'dayakas' into parting with prized real estate, and other valuable possessions, by playing on their superstitious beliefs and their habitual tendency to naively repose trust in anyone who dons the raiment of the clergy.

The high point of this short story comes in its concluding paragraphs where the writer adopts the language style and rhythm of the local clergyman-chronicler and story teller, to describe a dream a betrayed wife has of a visit to earth by the Shakra.

On waking she rushes off to her place of employment by train in a compartment exclusively allocated to women. An ageing beggar who painfully straggles into the compartment is identified as the Shakra by the credulous, betrayed wife.

On the beggar asking the women commuters whether they would like to give birth to a powerful male deity in heaven, who likes to descend to earth to assume human form, the ditched wife directs him to the home of an ageing spinster whom she had befriended during her visits to the village temple. Such are the 'mind forged manacles' of the religion-laden credulous.

However, almost all the women commuters eagerly express the desire to mother such a child. But a Dasa Sil Matha among these clamouring women wryly observes that none of the willing women is free of the defilement of extra-marital sex. Accordingly, they do not qualify to be the mother of this resplendent deity.

Another entrancing aspect of Thilakasena's art is his ability to turn the searchlight on the lumpen elements in society and the social dregs, so to speak.

Such seemingly rootless segments could be said to be on the increase in this brave new globalised world and in tandem with Colombo's ascendence to the upper reaches in the world crime league.

Two other stories in this collection, namely, "Weeraman saha Kanthi" and "Arunella Wetenakota Vithara", from which it derives its title, are absorbing dramatizations of the foredoomed but restive lives of these products of a Sri Lanka which is dangerously adrift on the seas of economic globalisation.

Weeraman who has just returned home after a stint with the Merchant Navy has a problem trying to locate his friends of yesteryear, who, like him, lived by their wits but who have now all gone their separate ways along the new avenues which have opened up, to making a fast buck by hook or by crook.

Meanwhile, his home town has changed beyond recognition into a hive of illegal and semi-legal enterprises, promising early, quick returns on measly investments.

Kanthi, Weeraman's fiancee from former times can never be his because she is in the clutches of relatives with a feudalistic mindset, who would not have anything to do with those who are considered to be of 'Plebeian' origins. Besides, Kanthi herself is dazzled by what the shopping malls have to offer and would not throw in her lot with one who is down-and-out.

In any case, Weeraman is even worse than 'valueless' now because his parental home has been demolished in a road expansion programme launched by the local Member of Parliament in connivance with the local authorities. Another bit of evidence of how politics devastatingly impact 'small lives'.

Arunella Wetenakota Vithara', deals more directly with the lumpen segments in the new socio-economic dispensation.

The narrator, a one-time insurrectionist, is today inhaling grass and is willing to hire his services to the criminal underworld as well as the big-time purveyors of superstition, the politically influential astrologers, whose services are highly valued by the operators of the present 'system'.

The narrator's eventful life ends in him being subjected to a bloody assault at an all-night wedding reception, the duration of which was 'lengthened' - we are given to understand - as a result of the narrator obtaining the magical services of a 'Mahaguru' who it seems, had the power over night and day.

Crime goes hand-in-hand with moral decay, social instability and a giant resurgence of superstition.

Arunella Wetanakota Vithara, therefore, testifies to Thilakasena's enhancing ability to come to grips with Sri Lanka's increasing socio-political contortions and his skill at translating these perceptions into an appropriate literary mode.