Professor Sunanda Mahendra

FICTION: An age-old narrative experience of a family saga might possess a certain degree of sensitivity in the newness, or modernity depending on how sensitive the human experience is expressed.

A reader may sympathise with a single character, or with an entire cluster of characters, feeling that each one is connected to the other by a strange link of destiny, or a series of materialistic actions slanting them from one point to another.

I felt this a truism, when I finished the first novel Kanda pamula (At the foot of the mountain Dayawansa Jayakody 2006) by the journalist, which centres round the life and struggles in a traditional Sinhala village family saga, where the protagonist, a Sinhala village Vedamahattaya or the vernacular physician, not by mere profession, but by lineage as well, handles more yantra mantra gurukam, the exorcist practices than the actual medical profession, which makes him well known with his varying degree of behaviour pattern linked in alcoholism and humanism, blended together as forgivable by his wife and a few well-wishers, but detested by children.

It so happens that though the children are fear-struck by this mighty father figure, nevertheless exhibits certain signs of physical estrangement.

This factor of the traditional father figure is one of the most prominent features in this narrative sensitively recaptured by Suriyaarachchi, where the children in fear look at him as a stranger at times, but well cared by his wife, who is dearer than children: a daughter and two sons.

The two sons go in two diametrically opposite directions, and the daughter faces various types of modern fashionable claustrophobic attitudes succumbing to urban victimisation of her own self.

The episodes created by the author are flanked by the aftermath of the second world war, where one sensitive point is the man in search of an identity attempting to link himself to others, which in turn in itself is depicted as prisoners of conscience.

These humans can be disastrous, as they, by nature, are not too dear to each other depending on circumstances, though they pretend to be so superficially.

Traditional patterns

Jinasoma, the elder son of the family is seen making his life comparatively successful, in the academic point of view, being qualified to enter training college, the then well-known centre of education, where the teachers are brought to light by the traditional patterns, as well as the extant modern patterns of erudition, moulding the profession to fit one self as a school teacher.

But he cannot stand up to the figure of the ideal human teacher of great human qualities. Undoubtedly he ushers in pride of place to the family amid calamities, but he is yet another stranger as regards the family bonds are concerned, becoming a self-centred individual making the father feel sorry for his attempts to bring him up in the past.

It's a loss of spirit, or repentance sensitively created with humane situations.

The second son Gunasoma is shown as a good mannered helpful youngster, who in turn is spoiled by the circumstances giving way to all that is disastrous in the village set up making himself a good-for-nothing vagabond, who gets the evil side of things linked into his life style typifying a character in a modern day fairy tale or fantasy with good and bad blended.

The daughter Kusumalatha is shown as cited earlier, a victim of circumstances in the urban sector, where she yearns to be a typist cum office secretary shredding off some of her traditional rooted bearings, and eventually blooms into a pretty pseudo fashionable damsel, unknowingly withering off, becoming more futile than fertile to womanhood.

But the characterisation is not generalised, but suggestive of a human entrapment.

With all these as background trends, the author creates Esilin, the wife's character as an ideal mother, wife and a farsighted simple woman of the traditional village set up with a mind set for any shock absorbing process bearing the agonies of her children and the husband.

The gradual loss of spirit in the protagonist's mind is the culminating point in the work depicting that he wished to bring back one of the age-old charms of the practice of anjanameliya or the mystic vision through which one can read and investigate hidden factors.

He is shown as engaged in this stupendous mystic task in order to fulfil a gap that was created in his mind due to the vacuum created by the absence of his children around him.

In order to fulfil his mission, he struggles hard with limited experience by perusing and rescrutinizing some age-old palm leaf manuscripts (puskola pota) lying in his possessions inherited from his fore-fathers in vain in the mission.

Though immensely dedicated, the time factor becomes overbearing and tiring.

Death

What happens in the end is the death of the protagonist, which is hinted in the prologue to the work. This death is indicative of the loss of a certain type of anti-hero, who wanted to do something remarkable during the brief span of his existence, an entity that has to be rediscovered from time to time, as an oriental factor of spiritual vacuum.

In the first instance, the family members inclusive of his wife, mainly look upon this project, as one that is futile and aimless, but they finally feel that there ought to be something significant in the mission of the dear departed left unfulfilled.

Perhaps in a tone of acid irony, the wife Esilin is shown taking up the mission or trying her best to fulfil the task left over by her husband.

This striking though fantastic episode may raise several unbelievable creative traits.

But ultimately it is the convincible skills of the writer that matters in the narrative frame, and not the opinions and speculations of the reader.

The novel, in form, is simplistic, packed with vibrant folkways indicating the knowledge of the author on folklore, and wit and wisdom enabling to gauge the intensity of the changing nature of the family pattern denoted by some as the generation gap ('Your children are not yours, they belong to their worlds,' as cited by Khalil Gibran).

It is not the mere 'gap' that is hinted by the author that is significant, but more the circumstantial evidences in which that 'gap' was created on account of the human imbalances, follies and stupidities that entered the social structure via underdeveloped socio-economic and cultural forces.

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