Narratives with new dimensions

Professor Sunanda Mahendra

Fiction: Last year saw National Library Services Board sponsoring a project of tsunami based manuscripts. The project is activated in order to cover the positive sides such as giving courage to the victims survived from the catastrophe and enable to overcome the traumatic causes they suffer.

Quite a number of really good humane narratives are reported to have been submitted and selected for publication. Malraji Vanniarachchi's Punchi Suranga, [2006] happens to be one of the selected publications. The flimsy volume shows how the book is appropriate for children of all ages and for all other types of adults, aptly completed by an upcoming illustrator Nihal Sangabo Dias.

The narrative revolves round a family of two children; the brother aged twelve and the sister aged six. Their mother is in Dubai for more money with a plan of building a house. The father works hard and brings up the two children in a good atmosphere. The narrative then shifts into the tsunami scene making children deprived of the paternal love.

The pangs of the surging tidal wave lead them into a more miserable status than others as they had lots of hopes. But with the lapse of time the illuminating point in the narrative is that the elder child comes to grips with the reality and shows signs of maturity regarding the living conditions of fellow sufferers.

This is brought to the forefront where the elder child is made to know that this devastation is not merely confined to them but also to many others in the whole world.

As such the child gets gradually transformed into a child hero matured in the close association of his teachers, relatives, some of the survivors and priests who always make it a point that one fine day they could overcome the natural disasters and live in a better world with better understanding.

In this readable mini narrative a lot of sub texts are seen. One such layer is the importance of a teacher in a society who transcends the barriers of a mere classroom walls into a social worker. The importance of the fellow helpers around in need also gives a better deal to the challenging living conditions.

The other layer is that at least the fact that the mother will be returning from abroad makes the condition look better and heightens the significance of mother figure in a changing world full of calamities and becomes a saviour amid unforeseen devastations.

Finally there is also a religious layer where one agrees or not, the children are socialized to the point that in our type of society, the death alone is not the misery for those who undergo a physical death may be seeing the prevalent conditions in their worlds of transition from one birth to another.

Negative aspects

It is the portrayal of a determinate child not wavered by the negative aspects of living, which matters in the narrative.

From birth each one's life is a constellation of relationships from family at home to friends in the neighbourhood and school. Humans are connected to each other and that these connections make us who we are.

The truism about our species is that we are social animals. This concept is extended in another work of Malraji titled Radha, a collection of twelve Sinhala short stories. Malraji Vanniarachchi selects all sectors of society where the good things happen to humans overriding the evils and corruptions.

For example, the title story is about a poor but diligent young servant girl Radha nurtured in a house of a well-to-do couple, whose lineage could be traced to a foreign country. Radha makes herself a wonderful girl and the family pattern in which she lives makes her to leave the home life to go abroad for better prospects.

When the old master dies in the foreign strand, Radha is compelled to look after the lady who in turn makes a fortune for Radha. She gets more wealth as an inheritor than she could ever expect. However, circumstances make her look slightly dejected as her husband Yoga wants to live in this country and the country where he was brought from the childhood to his adulthood.

She fell in love with this gram seller and got married despite her parents' protests. But now the situation had led for her to accept what has happened and live in harmony. All these she remembers one by one as she is on board a plane returning to her native country, Sri Lanka.

What is indicative to the reader is that a person may be a wealthy one, but there is a vein of thin sadness running like a thread which could not be taken for grant at a glance. Is it the destiny? One may ask.

Tear drops

The other remarkable story in the collection is Senahasaka Kandulu Bindu [tear drops of affection] wherein the reader is made to feel the pulse of an adolescent child, who sees the separation of a father and his mother.

Due to the disagreements and incompatibility, the mother makes her life with another man, which in several ways make him think sometimes ill of her mother and sometimes ill of his father. He finds it difficult to adjust himself to the harsh reality.

The actual event in the narrative is psychological and bears two layers of meanings, where the outer experience of the story line suggests that the father is too harsh and as a result of his web of complexity of business dealings he is mentally deranged and the mother is shown as grossly neglected though innocent.

She loves the child to the extent that she stands at the school gate to get a glimpse of him. The child however becomes sandwitched between the two forces. Most stories centre round the downtrodden people or the oppressed class of people in society like the story of the old servant who pays a visit to the urban mansion where he served to see a garden party [Gilihunu Malak].

Then there is a narrative about the adjusting to tsunami conditions [Yathavabodhaya]. The attention is also paid to the necessity of providing homes for the homeless without making the homeless look dreamy [Ihata Vahalak].

The focus of attention sometimes shifts from the town to the village where a child is shown desirous of becoming a monk but fails in his venture due to reasons beyond his grasp [Panslen Abinikmana].

In this manner in both works Malraji Vanniarachchi maintains the personal strengths derived from the quality of one's achievements help him realize where he stands.

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