Focus on Books

First self-referential Sinhala novel of a film journalist
 

by Prof. Sunanda Mahendra

It is a strange phenomenon that many journalists all round the world have produced some of the most popular as well as outstanding fiction to the reading world. Perhaps the main factor behind the fictional creativity is the way the events are interpreted, analysed and correlated as a habitual process in the profession.

In the world of Sinhala fiction writers of the calibre of Martin Wickramasinghe, Piyadasa Sirisena and W.A. De Silva stand as the best examples as they have been the pioneer journalists turned Sinhala creative writers well acclaimed by the reading public as trend setters.

In this line of creators we come across quite a number of journalists of some standing and the latest I suppose is the film journalist A.D. Ranjit Kumara who has just brought out his first Sinhala novel Sanda Langa Taru (stars by the moon, Dayawansa Jayakody Publishers 2005). Being a film journalist working in some of the well known newspapers, he had gained sufficient experience at home and abroad about film festivals, the way they are organized and how the interviews with film personalities are conducted.

For quite some time he was also an innovator in the Sinhala film writer’s field where he wanted to help the reader by compiling various kinds of film aesthetics materials to build a better taste in the cine scene.

conventional studies

In fact, the protagonist of the novel Ruchaka centres round it is evident on these lines of the pains sensitively captured in the mind of a young scholar who was more interested in cinema and journalism than the actual conventional studies in order to become a stereotyped person torn between the illusion and the reality in the social matrix where he is forced to exist.

His falling in love with a girl Manavi, is rather different from his own lifestyle becomes the central conflict between the two, which is depicted in a series of flashbacks dramatically presented enabling the reader to follow the track of his life more closely as is normally found in one of the readable biographies.

This novel though sentimental from the point of view of nostalgic recordings, as is needed and demanded for the weaving of the story intended, it is nevertheless investigative in many ways pinpointing some of the historic moments in the life of the protagonist.

The reader is made to reflect back into the social history of the late sixties and early seventies which culminates in the social rebellion where the youth take part in a revolutionary measure a need to change society in which they live.

One sees and perhaps enjoys the misadventures of one’s life struggling hard to achieve some intended mission like love and intimacy.

This goes as the backdrop of the entire experience especially as the protagonist happens to be a motherless child. He also utilises the urban scenes in the fullest sense of the term in a better form than most other novelists of today due to the fact that he had sufficient experience living in such quarters.

This factor is better visualized in his biographical notes published prior to this publication titled “Kosgashandiya’. He had watched the urban gangs and underground groups at work much more sensitively than most other writers.

But the main issue, as I see it, is that he projects them rather than fuse them into his central narrative structure. It is visible that the novelist Ranjit Kumara utilises the short dialogue form above his commentarial descriptions.

situational dialogue

I noted that even some of the present episodes would have been moulded more on the situational dialogue above the commentary. As a result of this technique the writer is seen as an impartial commentator on social matters than an actual partisan enabling him to visualize more about situations above a mere concocted story line.

He utilises many a name and place known to the reader in order to make the narrative closer to the reader. In this regard one can say that the events look more true to life than detached artificial elements.

A number of places such as the universities, newspaper offices, film studios, media agencies such as broadcasting corporation, cinema halls, film corporation and advertising agencies are cited. The type of work and the trends connected with them are also recorded as embedded material in the narrative.

The protagonist the writer creates and characterises is hardly the persona that we normally encounter in most other Sinhala novels. This is a plus point to be clarified, for the character Ruchaka is a person who had a good education and depicted as a person who had been tempered in an urban culture where the sage like inner patience inculcated over the years counts above the rest of the external challenges of life.

Thus by creating a balanced minded persona via the protagonist who has got the courage to bear up stress and strain of evils [or perhaps unwished and wilful happenings] makes the reader feel that the world of the writer is broader than the normal expectation. In many ways, as is observable in a number of Sinhala novels of the day, it is significant that the writer Ranjit Kumara does not sermonize his issues.

Undoubtedly this is harmless popular writing which will help kindle the reading interest.

Mail to: [email protected]

..................................

<< Artscope Main Page