Inspired writing out of a spreading Asian backdrop

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Review - Trapped and other tales (7 short stories, a Novel and a Novella) by Premala de Mel - Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2007 - pp.316

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As Premala says in her introduction titled ‘Roots’ she writes from the experiences of her father’s and mother’s family - the two who first met on a passenger vessel coming out of England. Her Ceylonese grandfather disembarked in Colombo.

Later, he with his son and daughter visited her Indian grandparents in Rangoon. When the Japanese invaded, they had to flee to India. Among the Indian family was Premala’s mother, who later married her father in Delhi.

All this has given Premala an all-direction inspiration, nurtured as she was in a love for the countries in which her mother lived.... a mother brought up in Rangoon with Hindu relatives and growing up with Christian traditions as well.

All this courses in Premala’s blood and we have tales that are so different, nothing run-of-the-mill. This makes this book well worth reading.

We first meet a gaggle of schoolgirls...Ruchna, quite devastated...her parents want her to marry a man she does not know. The spotlight is then turned on Amithi, a beauty and highly intelligent. She meets Ruchna’s father, Mr. Akthar, whom she dislikes and who is looking for a beautiful girl for a film.

She refuses, but is virtually hijacked in Coloba by Akthar and taken to the film director. As Ruchna’s father, this makes things complicated for Amithi. Her girl gang urges her to enter films.

“Don’t let a chance like this pass you by, Amithi,” urged the innocent Ruchna. “How lovely it would be for the gang to be able to say that we have a friend who is a big movie star.”

They think Amithi was foolish in turning down the film director. And how can Amithi reveal that Ruchna’s father was involved? They ask Amithi to assume a new name-Pooja Parekh - and this is what she became - a rising star. Ruchna, still not knowing how involved her father is, says:

“You are so lucky....you are already a big star.....You were always a winner, Am.”

Of course, other Indian movie stars are jealous. One Mindy arranges an ‘accident’ and ‘Pooja’ is rushed to hospital, but returns to act and Mindy is filled with hatred. She had to pretend she was not Amithi when confronted by one of her mother’s closest friends. When the premiere of the film was staged, crowds chanted ‘Pooja! Pooja!’ but Amithi did not show up. Friends would phone her home. The new actress, they said, was the spitting image of their daughter.

The resemblance was uncanny. ‘Pooja’ disappeared, never more to shine on the screen. Her parents shrugged it all away, calling it mistaken identity. But Amithi had had her fling. Now she was ready to enter College, get the Hyundai her father had promised her, study economics, enter her father’s textile trade. And Ruchna? Oh well, she did marry her photograph man!.

Lowdown

Having given you the lowdown of the first story, I urge you to read the others. I’ll make passing mention of them, if only to whet your appetite. There’s ‘The Mystery House on the Hills’ where Sandya meets a ghost in her bedroom, then learns that their holiday house in Nuwara Eliya is haunted.

In ‘The Bridal Sari’ we are taken to Benares and it is believed that a sari with an indigo weave brings misfortune. Nyasa’s wedding sari with the indigo in it catches fire, but it is quickly stamped out. Do read this and breathe easier when it is done.

In ‘The Photograph’ a daughter in Rangoon finds among her dead mother’s books and possessions, a faded sephia photograph of an army officer. It had to be her mother’s cousin, Uncle Willie.

But it was also the photograph that her intended son-in-law said was his grandfather! Yes, her mother had been engaged to Uncle Willie. Now there was a missing branch of her mother’s family come to light.

‘Poem’ takes us to Delhi where the Business Attache of the British High Commission, Jonathan James, and his wife Jean come to stay. To Jean, there is a sense of deja vu. She meets Alan, who is married to sue, but Jean captures and haunts him. They know they love each other, and Jonathan knows he is losing her. He works up a posting to Rio in order to separate Jean from Alan....an uneasy ending indeed.

‘The Rise of Citizen Amarapala’ of Polwatte puts us on familiar ground, as Amarapala joins the United Humanitarian Party, studies Marx, Lenin, Mao and other leaders. As a young MP on the rise, he seeks a Pancha Kalyani - a young wife and settles for Deemanthi, the daughter of a wealthy man. But as he rises, he loses his purpose and corrodes his soul.

Deemanthi also enters the political game, grooms her son to someday take over her husband’s electorate. So is the ‘no-do’ and ‘empty-promise’ dynasty reaching for political stardom.

Bureaucrat

In the final story, even a bureaucrat decides that Love is more powerful and allows Martin and Meena to remain in Sri Lanka.

‘Trapped - A Novel’ is set in India and the two girl cousins on Malabar Hill are always up to mischief. Kareena and Shilpa and Shilpa is let down by Nikhil, the man she cares for. She consents to marry Ashok Kirtani even as she cried at her own wedding, becomes a sad, terrified wife.

Kareena also has marriage problems, but she shows some determination. She divorces and marries someone else. Shilpa runs away with her son. Now they can talk together in a new circle of happiness.

Finally, we have the Novella, ‘Ideal Wife’. It may become much of a muchness to read of the ordeals of wives and husbands, but as the author shows, it is something that is so commonplace in every country and certainly very evident in Sri Lanka and India, although much is swept under the carpet.

Caste and family manipulation plays a very large part in the recipe for unhappiness. This is the truth of this book.

Today, on the internet, you will find thousands of Sri Lankan women from 20 to 36, all married, who have posted their ‘services’ online, each claiming neglect, being ignored and asking for the attention of anybody and telling of their willingess to offer sexual services.

These women, names disguised, invite internet chats so that they can give details of themselves - and they are in their thousands - from the cities to the villages, from Galle to Gampola, Maharagama to Puttalam, Sabaragamuwa to Negombo, Kandy to Colombo. Who is posting all this on the web, and what has happened to life in so many countries? Yes, as the author says, everything can be a ‘trap’ and to be so entrapped is to live the way we now do.

Read this book with this in mind. It calls for our understanding of the forces that move beneath the glamour and hypocrisy of today’s society.

- Carl Muller