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Focus on Books:
Messenger of gods or the messenger of humans?
Prof. Sunanda Mahendra
BOOK: The Messenger of gods (Devaduta)
AUTHOR: Udaya Prasantha Meddegama
PUBLISHERGodage International Publishers, 2008
PRICE: Rs. 650, US$ 7
PAGE COUNT240
It is widely believed that in the twentieth century, with its great
interest in psychology, storytellers and most often fiction writers
often abandon the chronological straight-line narrative that dominated
creative literature for centuries. The creative writers instead
preferred to make use of a more readable narrative form, which enables
the reader to move the pages faster.
The writer's change of form should go hand in hand with the content
or the experience embedded. In this direction the narratives tend to
make use of such forms as diaries, notes, dialogues, parables, and the
technique called stream of consciousness. This technique is a phrase by
the American psychologist William James.
Most of our thoughts do not come to us in complete sentences. We may
think logically within a few minutes. Most of what goes on in our minds
is a series of thoughts and images that switch rapidly back and forth
between the present the past and the future, as things and ideas remind
us of the things and ideas. Perhaps it happens in such a way that your
own stream of consciousness is not hard for you to interpret because you
are in it. For others, however, much of it would make no sense.
The modern English novel by Professor Udaya Prasantha Meddegama The
Messenger of gods - Devaduta is written in the form of a series of
recollections, but split into chapters, some long and some short. The
content or the embedded experience is of a young novice or Samanera, who
gradually becomes an erudite young priest sandwiched between two
sensitive worlds: spiritual realm and sensory world of sublunary humans.
His dilemma commences from his early stages as a village lad, groomed
as the most suitable messenger of gods (devaduta) to perform the
religious ritual known in the temple as dorakada asna. The reader is
taken down the memory lane, as I mentioned above, in a series of
reminiscences, once using the stream of consciousness in a minor way,
with another alternative narrator to change the mood of narrative. But
when all is said, it looks more a mere self-referential narrative where
inner and outer tug-of-wars take place.
The reader is kept in suspense as to what happens next to protagonist
narrator monk. He willingly becomes a monk, willing due to inner
conclusion, leaves the robe.
He comes to grips with lust, sex and love above all the issue of
flesh and spirit. In this direction the subject uncovered by the writer
Meddegama is more challenging than what most writers contribute in
Sinhala. Perhaps this may be the reason why the writer Meddegama states
that his is Sinhala novel written in English.
Then he adds that it is a Sinhala novel because it depicts the life
in a Sinhala village, a haunting picture of the interior of a Sinhala
Buddhist temple that reveals many aspects in the Sinhala Buddhist
culture so far hidden from the world.
For the reader, the aspects covered as experiences in the life of a
young monk are touching and sensitively captured. This is captured to
the point that it looks as if the writer tends to repeat some of the
sequences in form of a flashback. In this aspect, some of the
repetitions could have been tailored or pared down in order to obtain
more readability.
Towards the end of the narrative (170pp), it is observed that the
emergence of the alternative narrator depicts this aspect for though the
writer sees the need for a change in the narrative, (for me actually
such a nuance is not quite essential. The writer perhaps wants to change
the monotony, as he believes the narrative with this narrative
technique. One of the most striking effects of the narrative is the
capture and the enveloping of the trivial details in a monastic life
where the skilful young monk named Jina faces jealousies, agonies and
attacks from his fellow monks.
It looks as if monastic life of the protagonist is made to overshadow
with these human aspects, enriching the depiction of socio communication
effect of the narrative. This first novel of a scholar presumably is
fused in some of the hitherto uncovered aspects of the monastic life,
where the protagonist becomes a hero who struggles and achieves a
certain state of elevation to see a better world.
He, though fails in certain mundane matters, achieves ranks,
positions, travels abroad, scholarships, etc. But he sees all in all a
certain degree of transience. This then is a novel of religious
undertones. It could be subtitled as a religious narrative like a
reconstructed Jataka tale, or whatever you wish to call it. This factor
is heightened in the epilogue to the work.
I sincerely feel that the title 'Devaduta' is much more symbolic and
apt than the title 'The Messenger of gods'. As a reader I felt that the
protagonist, becomes a messenger of humans rather than the messenger of
gods, a plane of elevation from one stage to another. [email protected] |
