Satpattini - seven long stories

Professor Sunanda MAHENDRA

FICTION: Though a young university don, Susantha Mahaulpatha of Kelaniya University's Sinhala department had been continuously releasing a number of short story collections, all of which belong to the experimental narrative genre of creativity, there is no resourceful discussion on his creativity.

His works include Sandakatpavura [2003], Divyangana [2004], Melapalandana [2005], Sudumalvila [2005], and the latest to come out is titled Satpattini [2005], a collection of seven stories.

Satpattini shows the extent to which he is inspired by the realities of life, and the classical grace in which he could mould them in the creative skill possessing an identity to himself as a narrator.

All the seven stories embedded in the collection are quite long, and perhaps one could say that they are not short stories as laid down in the conventional way in literary canons, but long short stories with stories within stories.

Take for instance his opening story Sirimat Asirimat, where an educated father of a little boy recollects his childhood days, and gradually develops into his present stance as an opinion leader and with hardships became a grown up, who goes to the university to obtain higher education, where he encounters various types of scholars with varying degrees of qualities, some of which he finds repulsive and some attractive and some humane as well as inhuman, harsh, partial, and competitive.

The narrative line shifts to a prize-giving ceremony in a school, where he is scheduled to address the gathering of students, teachers, and parents.

This also eventually becomes the venue, where he meets one of the girls whom he admired so much during the university days, and thence he enters once again to a flashback.

The entire story is based as a series of flashbacks within flashbacks, at times making the reader enter into a winding circuitous path full of pitfalls.

Well-wishers

When the flashback comes to an end, the reader finds himself with the little son answering some of his questions especially alluded to a poem titled "Sirimat" written by great poet Cumaratunga Munidasa, clarifying the good qualities of a schoolboy named Sirimat.

The narrator remembers how his well-wishers in the past used to call him by that name alluding to the poem.

The separation or the alienation from the realities around a narrator entering into a series of events, dialogues, monologues, and thought streams, and returning once again to the same spot of the central experience seems to be the mode of communication visible in all the stories.

He does this with perhaps ease, but I am not too sure whether the reader will wonder as to why this works all the time. In this manner, the reader encounters the writer as well as the persona of the narrative speaking to the reader addressing as 'Dear Friend...' or 'Dear Reader...' As such the narratives become mini theatrical episodes linked to each other by a commentator.

The best example comes from "Ekathanahami Nohot Sujata Sujani Putra", where the narrator is a dead woman, who had undergone a breast cancer operation, and she emerges as the narrator from an unseen place addressing the living beings whom she knew so well especially the younger generation of sons and daughters around her [as found in some religious literary sources where a dead person is intended to lead a period of time in incubation until he is born once again denoting the transitional period as "Gandabba Atma"].

She also addresses the worldly people in order to find an audience to narrate her tale full of agony and sorrow. This story recounts in many ways, the narrative flavour as found in some of the age old folk tales, where the mother emerges as the main narrator or as the dear departed.

Her laments and forbearances are listenable and moving human experiences for all times. The writer sensitively captures this folk conscience in his modern narrative to create a link of eternal significance.

Tragi - comic events

"Galkutti Rankutti Saha Mohotti" is a narrative based on the tragi-comical events in the life of a young man, who inherits a wealth and at the same time knows no technique of making use of it, and becomes a gradual prey to various other people around him. This story too revolves round the flashbacks shifting from the urban to the rural sector.

In this direction he makes the reader know lesser known facts and methods of the cunning friends who approach in the guise of helpful benefactors. The narrator makes use of the puns and ironies in words to evoke verbal pictures of human situations, with a smile behind the human frailty.

One fine narrative is "Satpattini", where a servant woman narrates the sporty. She is shown as bored to death during the absence of the lady of the house and the master, who go to work leaving the household activities to the servant woman named Kirimanika.

She has harangues to narrate, but she has no one to listen with attention, and as such, she fails to narrate them in full and above all those listening to her say that they want her to narrate her experiences in the shortest possible manner.

But all the experience she is compelled to listen is full of sorrow pertaining to her past life led in various places.

In the present context she dislikes the mannerism of the younger generation, especially the young women who are clad in modern garbs exposing the major part of the anatomy. What she likes to see is a baby born to the lady of the house so that she can look after him or her.

But she too repents on the absence of this situation and gradually as events unfold she becomes a victim of her own self disillusioned by all what she sees and hears around her, and in the end she decides to leave all these as good for nothing material factors of sheer absurdity [vikara].

Interspersed in the narrative is a number of romances of the past brought to light creating a portrait of an elderly woman, who had lost all her roots and left abandoned from those who would have given her the guardianship.

Classical structures

Traces of close influence of classical structures as found in the Sinhala Jataka tales on the narrative structure is found in "Salapatalamaluva".

Though the writer is sensitively influenced by these structures, I presume the repetitive manner in which the contents are presented makes the reader perhaps lose the grips of readability.

This particular story with foresters, monks and novices and the visitors to forest abodes is cluttered by a high flown traditional outlook full of mysteries and fantasies and as such the writer ought to reconsider his stance of likings and leanings to classics and the traditional structures therein, with a more open minded vision.

As a storyteller and communicator Susantha Mahaulpata is observant and sensitive and possesses a human interest social mission. His aptitude to new creative innovations needs aesthetic revaluation.

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