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Focus On Books
Dehi: The Lament of The Lemon Cultivator
Professor Sunanda Mahendra
The value of a novel could be discerned on a number of factors.
Perhaps one of the main items is the humane narrative, which remains as
the thread that links characters and situations covering most aspects of
a human struggle. Then follows the readability, which rests as the
pivotal effect in the narrative.
This quality of readability is the main driving process that
interlinks with a humane story embedded with various believable factors.
The latest Sinhala novel by the media person and the TV presenter
Taraka Vasalamudaliarachchi, titled as Dehi (Lemons, Sarasavi 2006) was
short-listed in several literary awards and went passed unnoticed.
As such I was much interested in the work to find why this had
happened. Perhaps the merits in some of the works short-listed remain
unknown and hidden to the extent that one fine day somebody will have to
uncover the salient qualities that had gone into the creative flux and
discern as to value. This will lead to the re-discovery of a literary
work that will set new standards of judgement.
Dehi centres round the lemon cultivating agrarian culture of the
poverty stricken minority of a group of farmers less known for their
efforts and struggles in one of the hard hitting areas of our own
country: Siyabalanduva in the Monaragala district.
While the author wants to retain her identity as a narrator of true
facts, woven into a story by way of a researcher into the field, she
nevertheless says that she had experienced this struggle through her own
eyes.
Thus the genuine effort as she states on her part is to unveil the
calamity and the humane aspects of the same, without making a made up
make belief story in the conventional pattern of story telling. True
enough, the fact is richer and fresher than fiction.
The narrative flows smoothly embedded with facts of human
significance from the cultivation sector to the free trade zone sector,
where the two sides are equally adverse climates for humans to exist.
The protagonist in the lemon cultivation sector is Herath Banda and
the protagonist of the other sector is Samanmali, who replaces her
father as the sole breadwinner with the failure to sustain the family.
She is the one who faces the tragedy of the latter scene and her
father is the one who faces the tragedy of the former scene. But both of
them are tragic entities from two identically opposed human grounds, the
basic similarity being the human exploitation.
The cultivator Herath Banda struggles hard to sell his lemons but
fails miserably as the market value goes down with the proliferation or
what may be called bumper harvest uncontrolled and unlooked after from
the cultivators' point of view.
The family of Herath Banda is driven to poverty resulting in a sheer
inhuman degradation, which the author brings to the forefront
sensitively. His wife too dies out of mental agony on seeing one of her
sons abandoning the traditional family bonds. He makes the family ties
loosened to the point that the turning point in the work rests on it.
This is where the starting point of the story too lies wherein the
human experiences are made to be woven into a story pattern. This also
gives way for the daughter Samanmali to search for better avenues to
make ends meet.
Samanmali who is made to meet one of her friends Damayanti, goes to
earn money from a free trade zone factory job. But the circumstances are
not at all satisfactory. The way the author handles the story is
questionable as the daughter who struggles is made to commit suicide in
the end due to her failure to face the circumstances.
Should one see this as more of a made up rather than the realistic
allowance of experiences to flow freely in the manner they are attuned
to or happen as they do? The writer makes an apology in the end of the
narrative by saying that the death of Samanmali, the protagonist from
one point of view is a thing that happens, and that she does not want to
kill her deliberately.
This section of the apology to my mind is not really essential as the
narrative readjusts in the manner needed for the structure anticipated.
I see that most of the ingredients that go into the making of a
modern creative work is observable. Though she is a researcher of a
sort, she is also a storyteller with sometimes an overpour of sentiments
- overused at times and perhaps undermined at times. One such example is
the advances made by a young army officer Janaka (or is he an army
deserter I wonder?)
The raping and the plundering of the money that belongs to Samanmali
on her return home from the free trade zone is one of the finest and
most sensitively captured episodes in the novel.
This leads the reader to feel that nothing is good, especially, in
this pattern of human behaviour, that which is unplanned, and suggestive
of the Marxian view that the man is bound by chains wherever he goes.
Though not mentioned via words, the writer hints that the tragedy of
the man is also bound with the destinies he or she brings from
birthright circumstances inclusive of climactic conditions. It is also
suggested that the man should be in a position to plan his living
conditions scientifically. Ignoring this factor may result in the
falling into dismal pits that are inescapable in the society.
Dehi all in all, is a resourceful product of a bubbling creative
mind.
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