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Focus on Books
Inner conflicts as Sensitive narratives
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Prof. Sunanda Mahendra
Title: Nimak Nethi Katha
A collection of eight Sinhala short stories
Author: Nanda Jayakodi
Page count: 94 pages
Price: Rs. 160
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With the literary experience cultivated via the translations of quite
a number of foreign short stories the writer Nanda Jayakodi over the
years had been a silent creator of original poems and narratives as
well.
In the collection of eight short stories, the original creator finds
some of the most sensitive areas in the lives of more females than
males. Six of her short stories lay emphasis on feminine inner
susceptibilities while two are mainly centred on males. The opening
story Piyaratna Mahattaya depicts the life of a widower who is left in
solitude and loves little children to the extent that he in one instance
makes a kite and reflects his inner feelings of the past while the kite
flies up and up reaching higher and higher in the sky. The point that a
moment comes when it snaps off from the binding thread, and lost. The
child cries while the kind hearted lonely man, Piyaratna tries to
console, saying that he could make another better kite next time. The
moment of illumination in the narrative is sensitive and human.
The other narrative that centres round a male is titled as Siridasa
where the lifestyle of a peon in a bank is portrayed as a happy-go-lucky
individual. All the time he is seen as a person who either sings a song
or hums a tune, to his own merriment as well as the consolation and
perhaps giving a sense of enjoyment to others in the premises. The high
point in the narrative is the hint of a tragedy in his life as he has to
face a certain interview before his superiors. Though he faces the
interview with all his preparation, he never knows whether it is going
to be a success or a failure. But the narrative hints that one fine
morning he may receive an official letter indicative of his failure. The
tragic dilemma in the life of a downtrodden one who so desires to lead a
normal happy life tends to be shattered any moment. This I felt is one
of the finest Sinhala short stories written by a Sinhala writer.
A similar story centred round the trials and tribulations in the life
of a young bank worker is titled as Malani. In this vibrant creation,
the writer Jayakodi portrays the picture of Malani as a young girl who
has successfully found a satisfying position as a bank clerk, where she
desires to fulfill her skills as a literary figure. But the impediment
as others observe is her stern judgment as regards her own personal life
as well as trade union interactions. The experience reaches a climax
when she desirably finds a remote bank branch in order to be cut off
from her former lover, who over the passage of time is shown as leading
a miserable married life. Her apparent sanity is misunderstood by others
as insanity and mentally deranged.
But to the narrator it is depicted as a higher form of humanism. She
becomes a miserable figure due to the fault of others and partly due to
their convictions. As such she becomes a victim of evil social forces.
She believes that her former lover should be prevented from seeing her
in the bank. As such she willingly gets a transfer to a remote place of
work. She too feels that the effort on the part of the fellow workers
who had launched a strike, were inhuman from her point of view. The
clamour for the right kind of trade union rights according to her was
totally absent. This resulted in her withdraw from the strike action.
She grips on to what she feels in her own conviction. Thus she is
depicted as sandwiched between the two forces her inner conviction and
the outer employment stance.
By this time she too is shown as a misfit in her working place, which
eventually forces her to leave the place of work. In several points of
view she is shown as molested and humiliated by others. But with the
passage of time, the narrator of the story meets her as a somewhat
different person, who tries to adjust her life as an independent person
loosening ties.
The story called Nilika is yet another narrative which depicts a
tragic events in the life of a young girl who gets married to a young
man known to her. But circumstances present factors which prevents the
husband to gradually dismember the intimacies they had early.
As the narrative unfolds, the reader comes across some of the latent
factors such as the husband’s trysts with a young several girl. While
the husband becomes a mysterious character, the wife uncovers his
behaviour patterns linked to the servant, who by this time leaves the
job of being a servant and lives in her own home with her child.
Though this may be the bare story outline, it is unfair to call it a
‘well made story’ as it embraces some of the subtlest details of marital
and extra marital factors. Perhaps this could be reckoned as a study in
a deranged mind.
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