Penetrative moods
 The
protagonist or narrator of the short novel by Piyal Kariyawasam titled
as Vidurukudu Kevunu Kaleka (when glass shards are swallowed), is a
magistrate whose name is not clearly revealed. Perhaps the mention of a
name may not reveal much, for the writer’s intention is to create in a
series of episodes numbering to 14.
The inner feelings of the person torn between his world of judgment
collide with his outer world for which he repents as a matter of
perceiving the existential standpoint. I may be reading too much
speculatively to the situations embedded but I was forced to think in
that manner.
There is hardly a rounded or concocted storyline in the conventional
pattern of writing. But it looks as if the tiny speck of a human
experience enables the writer to peep into vicissitudes of at least few
character inclusive himself.
Mourning magistrate
First comes the opening the situation where the protagonist
magistrate, who had risen to that pedestal, has lost his wife Sita out
of a womb cancer. The funeral sets the scene to visualize them in their
peculiar wedlock commencing from their campus roaming, and other
paraphernalia interlinked.
Then comes his home background where his mother image collated with
those of his wife and sister. He is shown as a person interested in
creative literary activities revolving round short stories and poems.
He perhaps feels sorry that the time and the pressure of work and
most of all his drinking stupor had prevented him from most of those
activities, and left incompetent. The narrative in a very readable
manner penetrates into his inner tenet where he finds that some of his
batch mates – their names are mentioned - are no soul-soothers.
Instead they remain as material mourners over wealth and power.
Kariyawasam quite aptly brings out this tragic phenomenon in visual
terms; how the magistrate had been brought up in a remote village, his
father had been a teacher of some standing while mother an inspiring
life giver to his innermost feelings, especially of spiritual value.
Orderly life
The long letter sent to him by his only elders sister is a sensitive
revelation of his background and his present standpoint in life torn
between two worlds. He also has his own secretive life and intimacies
with his own secretary who had helped in his fieldwork and office work.
She is Mangala, who later become so close to him that it is
suggestive of their sex relations to be dormant. The world of the
magistrate is shown as a peeper into his own innerness, where he
rediscovers himself as a lost man whose left could be metaphorically
referred to as injured within himself.
As a magistrate he lives in an official bungalow, a driver and an
orderly cook. An average reader may tend to question as to why he drinks
so much. The most possible answer would be his inner loneliness.
But is it all that matters? Should not be a person of the calibre who
is shown as deeply rooted to the soil, succumb to this evil predicament?
But I am sure these questions are not to be answered by creative
writers. I could only say that the queer portrait of the magistrate is
too sketchy and limited to a few dealings as regards the life and living
process of an individual.
Novelty of the novel
As the French critic and creator Alain Robbet Grillet stated in this
‘Towards a New Novel’: A novel for most addicts and for most critics is
primarily a story. A real novelist is someone who can tell a story. The
pleasure h takes in telling it, which provides the impetus that carries
him through his work, becomes identified with his vocation as a writer.
Inventing, exciting, moving, dramatic incidents constitute both his joy
and his justification.
As a reader of creative works, novels in particular, I fully endorse
what Grillet says. At a time when the so called Sinhala literary
criticism too is torn between two worlds, rediscovering new tools for
criticism, and the world of the sensitive creative works, constantly
colliding with those of conventional writings devoid of a rooted to soil
this wok could lead to a better discourse.
I feel sure Kariyawasam provides the necessary background to commence
that journey towards a new Sinhala novel. |
