Book Review : A deft handling of contemporary Lanka

'At the Water's Edge' - a collection of short stories
by Pradeep Jeganathan
A South Focus Press Publication
Reviewed by Lynn Ockersz

Light and unlaboured but deeply engrossing, these deftly-told tales by Pradeep Jeganathan - a Senior Fellow at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo - take us to the socio-political storm centres of contemporary Sri Lanka but with none of the sensationalism of the melodramatist.

Although unobtrusively and finely infused with some of the current 'discourses' on issues facing Sri Lanka, Jeganathan avoids being schematic in these short stories and refrains from pressing his plots and story lines into the service of preconceived sociological and political theses.

On the contrary, his characters take on the dimensions of 'living and breathing' persons, while some of his story lines are strongly suggestive of the inconclusiveness seen as part of life. A 'Slice of life' is what they offer us and quite a delectable one at that.

This slim collection of seven short stories could be said to be plumbing the depths of this country's present agonies: ethnocentricism, communal violence, poverty, social oppression, and sexual exploitation, to name a few.

All this is baggage which is quite burdensome for a short story writer, one may be inclined to think, but the achievement of Jeganathan is to handle it all in the manner of a nimble-thumbed impressionistic artist, who uses the medium of light, bright touches of colour to project his experience of reality rather than resort to the overwrought artistry of the Gothic and Romantic artist, whose mode is essentially melodramatic.

In these works the story becomes the 'thing' with the happenings being made to reveal all, while direct authorial comment is non-existent.

Some of these points are borne out in the first story of the collection, 'The Front Row'. It is all about the communalisation of a metropolitan class room. Krishna is the only Tamil student in a Sinhala class room, whose walls are adorned with murals of the mythic Elara-Dutugemunu confrontation and battle.

The air is thick with ethnicity as the occasions are not few when Krishna is reminded of his Tamil identity by his fellow students.

Krishna's conscientiousness as a student and his preference to sit in the front row is resented by Rohana, who eventually points out in the course of a confrontation with Krishna that the 'Demalas' are responsible for the country's woes. A round of fisticuffs follows, wherein the combatants are cheered on by the raucous classroom who identify them as Elara and Dutugemunu.

'The Street' is an engaging story about Sri Lanka's poverty-stricken, desperate and excluded women. Karuna who ekes out an existence by selling Rambuttan is inveigled into the "oldest profession of the world" by a small-time business woman of the street who promises her a life which would be both free of want as well as her bullying, alcoholic husband.

Karuna, however, cares deeply for her two children from whom she would never wish to part. But on this score too she is fooled by her business woman friend who assures her that the children would be taken into a home for children, once Karuna accepts her good job offer with no hint given as to its real nature.

In the last episode of the story, Karuna, glamorously clad on the instructions of her friend, is being taken away in a speeding car, dead at night, along with her children, to be launched on her new job. Karuna is dropped off at a junction where she is expected to join several other waiting women, while the car races off into the night with her children, her desperate inquiries notwithstanding.

'The train from Batticaloa' is a slick expose of the crippling limitations of the law and order approach to handling the ethnic problem and the issues flowing from it. Besides, it is a veritable character gallery of the social types peopling Southern Sri Lanka.

In the train compartment, which is the setting of the story is a cripple, a Commando, a student and several passengers representing the local middle and lower middle classes. The cripple is a permanent feature on this train because he begs for a living on it.

The Commando boasts of the prowess of his unit and elaborates on the merits of the law and order approach to settling our conflict but is found to be out of depth when sharp questions are put to him by the student. The story reaches a climax of sorts when the passengers are thrown into a panic on hearing thunder and mistaking it for a Tiger attack, while amid the arid wilds of Polonnaruwa.

Our Commando takes it on himself to restore order in the compartment and face the enemy, but all that he does to achieve this is to catch the begging cripple by the scruff of his neck and shove him off the train. This is the quality of his courage.

'At the Water's Edge', from which the collection of stories derives its title, is a somewhat amused, ironic glance at our academic types - particularly those in the Left leanings - their foibles and the rootless, double lives they tend to lead. They wine and dine at the plushest restaurants in town, while swilling the rhetoric of Leftism and writing laborious theses from a pro-people standpoint.

Krishna and Iqbal - two young intellectuals of this kind - bosom pals from their school days at one of the most prestigious educational institutions in Colombo, part company at the exclusive club 'At the Water's Edge' after a sumptuous meal and heady intellectual discourse, with the words that their dining place was quite unlike the CSC, because they "haven't let in all those buggers who went to Dharmaduta, and god knows where else...". 'At the Water's Edge', which was short-listed last year for the Gratiaen Prize for creative writing, thus, offers much to the discerning reader.

Its overall, beguilingly casual style marks off the author as one who could handle his subject with a marked degree of critical detachment - an essential for good creative writing.