Remarkable addition to Lankan literature

The Banana Tree Crisis

A Collection of Short Stories by Isankya Kodithuwakku

Publication: Vijitha Yapa

Publication, 2006

Price: 399

Review Prof. K. N. O. Dharmadasa

FICTION: Almost every week we find new writers, especially new writers of fiction, presenting their work before the public sometimes in book launchings and often by other means. The Sinhala readership is very familiar with the small notices on books appearing in the literary supplements of the major national dailies.

As for modern English writing in Sri Lanka, although the readership is much smaller, the number of new writers engaging our attention proportionately seems almost the same. (As I am not conversant in Tamil I do not know about the situation in modern Tamil literature in Sri Lanka).

But the fact of the matter is, how many of these new writers produce something worthwhile? How many new books, which appear before the readership, show future promise?

Reading through Isankya Kodithuwakku's "The Banana Tree Crisis" I felt that here we have a new writer whose short stories, seven in all, each shows great promise due both to the insight the writer has on our society as well as the writer's extremely readable and engaging literary style.

The seven short stories in the collection have varied themes, but the strikingly common factor in each is the writer's deft handling of the theme with a keen sense to essential detail, while not losing sight of the larger picture and her ability to engage the reader's attention throughout the narration.

Topicality

A factor which runs through all these stories is their topicality. All seven stories in this collection relate to contemporary Sri Lankan society. Special mention needs to be made of "Buffer Zone" and "Shallow Canoes," which deal with the Tsunami and its aftermath and "The House in Jaffna" and "What I Carried" that have as their background the ethnic conflict.

In some stories both themes merge as in "Shallow Canoes" While the above stories are located mostly in the rural areas, "The Banana Tree Crisis" has as its location a middle class neighbourhood in the city of Colombo and "How Mrs Senarah Called a Marriage for Mala" deals with a Sri Lankan middle class household in Kandy in the central highlands.

The writer seems to handle with ease such a diversity of themes, locations and characters so that the reader can settle down comfortably to go through each story to its end.

Furthermore Isankya Kodithuwakku seems to be equally at ease when dealing either with the life of Colombo middle class or the changing life-patterns in a Kandyan household, and she can switch over and deal with the same ease with the poverty stricken fisher-folk in a Tamil-Muslim village in Batticaloa as well as with the dreams and aspirations of post-tsunami village life in a Sinhala community in southern Sri Lanka. It is remarkable for a new writer to have achieved such a feat in her first publication itself.

In "The Banana Tree Crisis", we meet the Mr. Martin, an American who works for an NGO in Colombo. The story while depicting a mini "Clash of Civilizations" brings us into intimate contact with a special type of Sri Lankan urban dweller: a single mother with a rather tragic personal background.

It is typical of the narrative art of Isankya to first introduce the reader to a "surface" knowledge of the characters involved in the plot and, while the narration goes on, to find a space, unobtrusively, to go deep into the history and psychology of the main protagonist (s).

This in-depth knowledge of the characters prepares the reader for the critical episodes in the story. Take for example, the case of Mr. Martin, the male protagonist in the "Banana Tree Crisis".

We are told that "he had grown up in New York City and his life resembled the map of his hometown". That tells all.

Just like the grid of numbered streets running crisscross south to north and east to west, Mr. Martin had an "appointment for everything". It was a thoroughly regimented life, daily, weekly and beyond.

And, he had strong views on many things, and in this particular instance, on the environment. For him a tree, whether it grew in his garden or not (in this case it was in someone else's garden) "is a part of the environment, a beautiful thing that grows and helps us".

And people should not cut it down and destroy it even if it happens to be a short lived banana tree, a part of the leafy environment New Yorkers are unaware of. The threat to the existence of the banana tree is brought about by a serpent that uses it to slither from one walled garden to next.

The single parent mother who has two kids notices the serpent and decides that the banana tree, which is such a dispensable commodity, should go for "security reasons", while the American, so intensely enamoured of the environment challenges the decision.

Episodes

The Banana Tree crisis reaches such large proportions that it almost leads to a court-case! Ms Kodithuwakku handles the characters, the mother, Mr. Martin, his woman-servant, the tree-cutters, the several episodes of the "crisis" and the dialogue, so deftly, that we are treated to an extremely amusing drama where several levels of conflict emerge: bachelor vs. mother, USA vs. Sri Lanka and West vs. East native vs. foreigner, and so on.

Finally, however, the Westerner's rather misplaced idealism leads him nowhere, and, to his utter dismay, he finds himself saddled with a substantial bill from the lawyers he consulted!

"The House in Jaffna" deals with the displacement of people from Jaffna during the war between the government forces and the LTTE. Mr. Nadarajah, now settled comfortably in London with his family finds to his immense joy one day that there is a cease-fire.

In his enthusiasm to go back to his own home in Jaffna, to which he has a strong attachment, he forgets that a "ceasefire" is not an end of the war and the establishment of a permanent peace. What he and his family have to go through because of this miscalculation is narrated with extreme finesse.

The author portrays the reality behind the appearances, the hopes and aspirations of the different actors in this drama. Fortunately, however, old family ties and loyalties save Mr. Nadaraja from disaster.

I have in this review dealt with only some of the stories. This is a work which shows much promise and I am sure that Isankya Kodithuwakku's amusing style of presentation of characters and situations, while highlighting human frailties as well as strengths, and her extremely readable style will make the "The Banana Tree Crisis" collection a remarkable addition to Sri Lankan literature in English.

Children, war and inequality in Sri Lanka

Children of War: Aspirations and Opportunities

Author: Muttukrishna Sarvananthan

Published by the Point Pedro

Institute of Development (PPID)

Review: Nimanthi Perera Rajasingham

WAR: As someone who is well outside of the field of economics, what I can say regarding this book will not do it justice. My work has been mostly in the East, and then in the area of feminism. However, what I found useful regarding this publication is its focus on disparities of development and regional variations.

Something we all know is the existence of extremely unequal levels of development in Sri Lanka. While we sit in the Western Province, we know that we manage to reap the greatest benefits of the Sri Lankan economy. The inequalities in the North and the East have been even more aggravated in the light of ethnic conflict.

What I want to briefly highlight today is a lacuna in present scholarship that I think Muttukrishna Sarvananthan's work helps fill in some manner. In the last 20 odd years, in the general political climate, attention has been focused increasingly on issues of identity and ethnicity. As a whole we have focused on the need to look at issues of recognition, of ethnicity.

Hence, we have developed an impressive archive of knowledge regarding issues of Tamil rights, ethnic issues, violence, identity, etc.

As someone who comes from the feminist movement in SL, I can also say that it has been similar within the feminist movement as well where the category of woman, or 'identity' has been the focus of the movement as has been issues of recognising women's right as human rights. No doubt, we have a great deal to gain from the politics of recognition and we have gained a great deal from it.

I think, however, that this politics has resulted also in a fallout, or an erasure of other kinds of politics. Nancy Fraser calls it the repression of socialist memory to be replaced by issues of recognition. We have over the last years spent a great deal of energy thinking through rights, but not issues of distribution or the need to redistribute unequal material wealth more evenly throughout the country.

We have forgotten to focus in other words on the economics of the material well-being of the people of Sri Lanka. Material Inequality in many instances can produce frustrations and these are linked to ongoing ethnic strife. Rights are only useful as long as we focus also on how we can distribute material wealth so that people are empowered to demand rights.

In a sense, the focus of this study, on the aspirations of children and the opportunities available to them ask just these kinds of questions. Some of these questions are, how can we think of equal rights for minorities, if do not think of poverty and access to resources at equal measure? What is the purpose of free education if children have access to low standards of education only?.

If we look at page 11 of Muttukrishna Sarvananthan's book, we see clearly an example of the disparities he keeps highlighting over and over again. He marks that the WP has 49 percent share of the national GDP in 2003 while the NP has the lowest in the country of 2.7 percent.

Surely, no federal solution that does not discuss with equal rigour the redistribution of resources to those who occupy the lowest echelons of income in the North and the East can amount to much? This book is useful for just this purpose, that it highlights in a stark and straightforward manner the need to think of rights and peace along the lines of the material lived conditions of people's lives.

What seems to be the result of ethnic tensions and displacement, and I quote from the book here is that "the Northern population has become heavily dependent on relief/welfare handouts from the government and relief donor agencies, and remittances from kith and kin and friends abroad." (70) I do not wish to suggest that those affected by war do not deserve welfare opportunities, but that it should not be in the form of simply handing out rations.

These may enable people to manage, but it also sustains and encourages a heavy dependence, and discipline societies to be less proactive regarding their future aspirations. Often even when it comes to vocational training opportunities for youth, the training is of extremely poor quality, which result in badly trained youth.

This does not in many ways, as remarked by Sarvananthan, open the doors for youth to obtain skills, and those who are better skilled leave the region in search of better employment.

As a result of not only conflict, but also the unequal distribution of material wealth and the heavy reliance on welfare and foreign remittances, as a region the Northern has very little opportunity to catch up.

Children in such instances have little option but to search to migrate to the south, search to migrate out of Sri Lanka at all costs, and as for young women search for husbands outside the country as the means to escape poverty and conflict.

Let me turn briefly to look in depth at the statistics provided in this work.

One also notes the unequal employment opportunities for women in the region. Despite women outnumbering men, often men are hired at a much higher rate than women. Further young girls/women feel less able to move outside of their hometowns and desire in-house employment as an option.

As the book also remarks, when it comes to technical training most women were given training in conventional gender stereotyped professions. While these are of course useful and women may prefer sewing, poultry and other conventional kinds of employment, this also marks how women are still tied to notion of domesticity.

If we look at employment patterns as described in page 106, it is clear how few women are employed at the professional and senior levels. In Jaffna only 1% out of the 10% were women to be employed is managerial and senior positions.

Women in the professional sector in all districts in extremely low. As Sarvananthan states, except for clerical positions in which women outnumber men, in all other professions men are preferred for most jobs, even though women may be highly qualified. This puts to the test the transformative and disruptive power that the nationalist struggle has had in the North.

If liberation struggles have ruptured older forms of gender-stereotypes, why then are so few women employed generally? Occupation patterns in the Northern Province still in many respects seem determined by caste occupations as well, according to this book. Again, in our obsession to look at issues of ethnicity, we have forgotten to look at other social structures and hierarchies that need to be urgently looked at.

Hence, the caste dynamics at play, I think only hinted at in this book, are another aspect that I would like to know more of. Again, this too questions the transformative powers of the liberation struggles of the north.

I would like to conclude my review by simply highlighting what I stated in the beginning. This study highlights the lack of opportunities for youth in the North. This is due to the conflict situation in the North and we see how much employment opportunity has increased as a result of the Ceasefire Agreement.

However, this study also highlights the extreme results in circumstances of the unequal distribution of resources and opportunities in the last 20 years. This may not be directly a result of ethnic conflict so much as our loss of focus on issues of class, caste, employment, poverty, and redistribution.

It is also because of the manner in which both the State and the LTTE have monopolised all economic activities. As the conclusion of this book documents, the LTTE impose stifling taxes on trade, monopolise the trade of essential commodities, which in turn means that manufacturing activities are at a nil in the region.

Hence, Children of War: Aspirations and Opportunities is important for the primary level empirical details it offers us that highlight the need to focus on regional disparities as an important part of resolving tensions and fissures in Sri Lanka.

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Myth and realities of US war on terrorism

PERSPECTIVE: Senior journalist Latheef Farook's book "War on Terrorism - The Untold Truths", that provides a totally different perspective about the United States-led Western campaign against Islam to justify their crimes against Muslims was launched in August by the South Asia News Agency, established recently to supply feature articles relating to the region.

This well researched book dealing indepth with some of the burning issues since the collapse of former Soviet Union in 1990 was first launched in Malaysia by the Patalang Jaya based Strategic Information, Research and Documentation Centre, SIRD, last May.

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamed who lamented in his foreword that Muslims have neglected their responsibility to defend the religion and the Ummah, commended the book as "a lesson and an eye-opener to the whole world."

Mysterious attacks

Perspective readers will realize what has actually been missing from the major news media which has become an integral part of this destructive global campaign. With the end of the "Cold War" people all over the world thought that there would be no more war clouds and there will be peace all over the world.

They were wrong because America and its Western cohorts were quick to seize the opportunity to focus on a new "whipping boy"-Islam. They replaced red communism with Islam and unleashed a well orchestrated ferocious global campaign against Islam to dehumanize Muslims to justify their crimes.

The US exploited the mood in the aftermath of the mysterious 9/11 attacks, raising many questions still remain unanswered, as an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination of the Islamic world.

Latheef Farook who led a group of Sri Lankan journalists in 1979 to re-launch the Dubai based Gulf News, is familiar with the politics of the Middle East and the US and European interest in the region and had written the book with an authoritative hand, describing the US led war against terrorism as a fraud.

After three weeks' of bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan. Three years after the illegal invasion of Iraq, described by British Nobel Laureate Harold Printer as "an act of banditry", this oil rich ancient nation is today a virtual slaughterhouse where killing innocent men, women and children has become a daily occurrence.

The book is powerfully persuasive, credible, serious and well-researched, For students of politics it would serve as a good refresher course or rather as a crash-course in the major events in the world in general and the Middle-East in particular and US politics.

Indeed, the Cairo-based British commentator on Middle Eastern Affairs Linda Heard has this to say in her message about the publication: "This fascinating and compelling book, one that I would have been proud to have written myself, should be required reading for all serious students."

There are many wars being waged on Muslims that started as political issues in places such as Chechya, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Algeria, Gujarat and the smouldering Middle East where the Palestinians continue to bleed while the Gulf pay the price for possessing oil wealth. And then on to Afghanistan and Iraq where there seems no let up to the brutal massacre of innocent civilians.

The author dismisses the Bush "war on terrorism" as deception and reveals the Realpolitik behind the aggression against these Islamic nations.

Invisible but powerful forces such as weapons industries, oil companies, the financial oligarchy, corporate conglomerates and the Zionist Jewry are among those who have instigated this crusade against Islam. They all form a complex dominant coalition which makes and unmakes governments in the West, including the US.

Results

The book also assesses the results of the US attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of the predominantly Muslim states. It exposes the human cost and examines the bigger geo-strategic picture of these invasions that may lead the world towards the next global conflict.

It is heart-rending documentation of some of the poorest, most stricken nations being terrorised by the most powerful, where cluster bombs are deliberately being used. Their sole purpose is to kill and maim people.

It also shows up the tyrannical puppet regimes installed by the West in many of these Islamic states, especially in the Middle East, turning a blind eye to these crimes to protect their power and comforts and thereby helping the Zionist and the Jewish dominated US led west implement their designs on the region. The latest being the merciless destruction of Lebanon and Gaza and the senseless killing and maiming of civilians there.

Describing the situation a frustrated Egyptian journalist said, "thanks to the Arab dictators today Arab means shame and disgrace." But behind the entire West's justifications had been the craving to expand American economic and military power in what is tantamount to the biggest energy and oil grab in history.

There are several more questions that beg to be answered such as what the violent deaths of innocent children, the harmless elderly and women have to do with Osama bin Laden.

The book makes gripping reading as it gives the world a divergent dimension of the obscene abuses perpetrated on innocent Muslims which include torture, rape and genocide. It brings a balanced analysis of world affairs amidst the turmoil of doctored evidence and a shamelessly complacent Western media. Its contents are certainly an eye-opener and are desperately needed in a war-mongering climate such as today.