Focus on Books:

A narrative on morals and values

Title: Narilatha

Pushpaya

(The Enchanting

Flower)

Genre: Novel

Author: Dr Premadasa Sri Alawattage

Publisher: S Godage and Brothers, 2008

Page count: 228

Price: Rs. 450

The novelist Alawattage is more known as a researcher in the field of classical and folk literature. To his credit he has been a recipient of the state award of his contributions several times. This is his first attempt at writing a Sinhala novel which too is based on some of the traditional value and moral patterns of the rural masses.

The narrative which alludes to several folk sources revolves round the protagonist, Upulatilaka, who is more saintly and pious than one can believe. He is also depicted as a social reformer who wants to adhere strictly to some of the basic teachings in Buddhist doctrine. He looks after his mother as a legendary Matuposaka, bearing all the sorrow and turbulences in the day to day life.

This reaches the extent that he passes time in the engagement of duties dedicated social educational and religious matters. He is known by the rest of the members of the community as a person who intervenes in the saving of lives of those buried in alcoholism and illicit drug menace. As a supreme saviour of the community on the other hand is also misunderstood by some others in the same community. He too has domestic tug-of-wars through his only sister who plays a diametrically opposed role in his life. She visits her ancestral town in the guise of looking after the ageing mother, but is seen as a lifter of some of the belongings in the residence with a stamp of inheritance.

Alawattage attempts to picture the pains and ecstasies in his life via series of situations which presumably are quite moving. One instance he is shown as a person enticed by the beauty of a young woman, with whom he would have got married, but sadly missed as he was bent too much on spiritualism.

Then comes a moment where he sees a tiring woman, a mother of a few children and a rubber tapper married to a illicit liquor brewer and drinker. This woman is Jane Nona whose husband is Kirinelis, a nasty man who symbolises all the evil forces reminiscent of the characters in old Buddhist texts. Though he passes time engaged in most helpful reforms at a particular moment, he comes across a suitable partner named Sunandani through an elderly relative, enabling him to enter into a peaceful matrimony. The pivotal effect of the matrimony is pinpointed as the hitherto happiness in his marriage which does not disturb his daily routine. He sees that his wife the new member to the family too is a close helper of his ageing mother, and a duty-minded suitable partner. But one turning point takes place in his life. The situation is the entrapment on the part of Kirinelis the illicit brewer who becomes his enemy, hides some of the barrels of liquor, and allows the police to catch him.

When the Police officers enter his premises he was in a pensive unexpected mood. At the police station he is shown as mentally tortured but in the end the head priest of the village temple and a retinue of the members of the temperance society enter the scene with the culprit Kirinelis. Thus the pious protagonist is rescued while the cruel antagonist is punished. This reminds one of the Bodhisatva characteristics alluded to in Jataka tales. Wherever possible the writer tries to drive in the spiritual uplift as the supreme power of an individual in material encumbrances. The protagonist Upulatilaka is shown as undergoing ups and downs despite his being a teacher and reformer more bent on the values mores and morals of Orientalism.

Alawattage as a creator shows several bypaths that a creative writer today could take. He shows the tendency to recreate as well as reconstruct from the folk and classical sources. The utilization of the research methods in the investigation of these sources are observed as his stock in trade. At times the narrative line bends more to a case study of an individual than the expression of a complex web of inner feelings.

The writer is more observed as a keen and sensitive reorder of social events. He selects them carefully in a colourful array of situations to build up his narrative. As such this narrative is a reminder that there are more events in the social strata that could be rediscovered as creative communication, for the contemporary society what is hinted in the end is the value of a same livelihood devoid of all evils. This super human being is symbolic of Upulatilaka, as the name itself suggests, the sign of the lotus.

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