A tale of terror, death, and duty
Professor Sunanda Mahendra
FICTION: Arthur de Zoysa's novel No Longer My Child (Vijitha
Yapa 2005) covers the socio-political history of Sri Lanka from 1983 to
1994, where the central narrative rests initially on four Tamil family
members: Tambiah and Rajeswari, and their two sons Harendran and
Shamendran.
The two sons diametrically select two different directions, as their
pathways in their respective professions; one being an army officer
committed to his cause, other a militant driven to disaster.
This situation is closely followed by, and interconnected with the
miserable life of a Sinhala girl Veena, driven to lead an isolated life
deprived of parental heritage. The girl is brought up yielding better
results in a convent, which in turn becomes a pivotal centre of
activities later in the narrative, due to various factors of both
destiny and luck.
Zoysa has collected, in the guise of an investigative reporter cum
researcher, a number of human-interest stories. Quite a lot of
information relating to the atrocities of the terrorist devastations
that bring disharmony to the life of the civilians in the vain hope of a
separate state.
He characterises the encounters of both Tamil and Sinhala innocent
families, as a gigantic prey for the monstrous actions of the
terrorists, with several layers of meaningful insights embracing
religious, ethnic, cultural, and historical significance.
The writer states he was an eyewitness to many an incident on that
fateful day in July 1983. He has seen massacres and dehumanisation in
unprotected settlements, shrines, and public places, where most of the
innocent children and women became victims of unforeseen tragedies.
This narrative, as pages move quickly, brings into light the various
historical incidents to the fore-front making a fictitious story look a
real life narrative transcending the mere historical barriers in a
chronicle, with a simple plotline, which though is sensitive and moving
where, episodes of love, morality, and religious susceptibilities, as
against the blind violence and terror are recreated as unexpected blows
to the common harmony of human existence.
Episodes
One of the most significant episodes is the author's way of creating
Harendran's character, who succumbs to a group of terrorists, as a
leader though shown as a gifted scientist, is nevertheless a person of
human degradation utilising his gifted abilities for a disaster
attempting to bring harm and ill-will to the entire mankind starting
from his own social background through the blind forces that manipulate
him in the name of violence.
He is shown as a man behind a master plan of making bombs for human
disaster to win a dream-state, which they deem as a haven for their
better existence at the expense of other innocent humans.
The novel also rests on such areas as the dignity of family morals,
as sensitively created in the characters of the parents Tambiah and
Rajerswari, so struggling to exist in the middle of calamities for which
they have no remedy around.
Then there is also the element of insight, which compels a person to
take up an optimistic standpoint against the terrorist actions depicting
them as cowardly acts brought about by a minority to mar the peaceful
existence of the majority of innocent people, totally ignorant of
terrorism.
Most of the disasters, as recorded in the novel, are symbolic
representations of this view, where one example is the life in the
convent with three female characters: the mother superior, Veena and
Ross, disturbed from time to time, depending on the behaviours of the
outer world full of disturbances sensitively seeping into the structure
of the spiritual surrounding. With terrorism, it is hinted that even the
structure of spiritual upheaval too is to be shattered.
Re-discovery
In the end however, nothing is achieved, but the steady-mindedness.
Author Zoysa is sensitive to the events in life, and penetrative to the
point, where he rediscovers in minute detail what is latent as
psychological factors and physical factors, and interlinks them neatly,
and makes observable mostly via the dialogues that ensue between the
characters.
The narrative shifts from one point to another, making the reader
feel that the attention should be drawn from several points of view,
rather than from one central viewpoint, as in the conventional structure
of the mere story-telling.
As such, the structure of this work is multi-dimensional, and more
modernist in outlook enabling the reader to perceive many standpoints of
his own, instead of depending on the mere authorial comments and views.
Some salient cultural elements in the life-styles of Tamil and Sinhala
speaking people are fused into the narrative, as factors that make the
reading of the work a more resourceful exercise.
While Zoysa is a creator of human situations selective of his own
manner, he represents a positive aspect of a philosophy, regarding the
humanism from the standpoint of an existentialist imagination, where man
has to face disasters, and be reborn out of it for a better existence.
As I finished reading this novel, I could go back to James Joyce's A
Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man. The quotation is so interesting:
"Welcome, O! Life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality
of experience, and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated
conscience of my race."
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