Ratu Idda and plant neurobiology
 A new Sinhala novel has come to remind us that plants do talk to each
other and to human beings who are sensitive enough to listen to them. In
Florence, Italy, Prof Stefano Mancuso runs ‘The International Laboratory
of Plant Neurobiology’, the world’s only laboratory de cated to plant
intelligence. ‘Communication in Plants. Neuronal Aspects of Plant Life’,
(2006), is a book he has published, along with Frantisek Baluska, and
Dieter Volkman. The book discusses conscious comprehension of themselves
and of their environment by plants.
In the Kutadanta sutta, the ideal sacrificial offering is said to be
where no animals were killed, no trees were felled and no grass was cut.
In the Vasetta Sutta, the Sal trees are said to be ‘sachethanika’
(sentient).’ In the Theravada tradition we find the statement,
abstention from violent treatment (samarambha) of seeds (bijagama) and
plants (bhutagama)’.
Ellison Findley had argued that plants are integrated into the
samsaric scheme as a form of rebirth where karma is only consumed but
not accumulated, and exist between post-nibbana and pre-parinibbana
stage. According to her understanding of early Buddhism plants are
considered as liberated, Awakened beings, spontaneously bountiful and
compassionate.
 Patrik Jonsson wrote in The Christian Science Monitor of March 3,
2005, “the tiny strangleweed, a pale parasitic plant, can sense the
presence of friends, foes, and food, and make adroit decisions on how to
approach them....The ground-hugging mayapple plans its growth two years
into the future, based on computations of weather patterns.”
All this is in support of the view that plants are intelligent life
forms, capable of communication with other plants and other creatures,
that they too feel pain and pleasure.
Today the most pressing need, the urgency, is to protect our
environment and our Mother Earth, which is getting rapidly destroyed by
man, driven by his inhumanity, and by his greed for money and power. Due
to his foolish arrogance man has come to believe that the universe, the
earth and all living and non-living resources are for his exclusive
exploitation.
Karunadasa Sooriarachchi, Kasuri, as most Sri Lankan readers call
him, would have picked the Idda tree, (Wrightia antidysenteria) because
it is an indigenous plant with a beautiful white flower, as symbolic of
the treasures we have and should be preserved. He tells us of an attempt
to make it produce red flowers.
Sandhawathi’s mother in ‘Ratu Idda’, is our own Mother Earth. Mother
Earth who had been enslaved, exploited, abused and degraded by man. Her
moans, running through the story, is the moaning of Mother Earth
herself.
Sandhawathi’s father was brutally murdered before the eyes of the
family, by timber thieves, and it is from that day that mother lost her
speech.
Sandawathi appears to me as a true Buddhist, a real daughter of
Mother Earth. As she was the loving and devoted daughter to her mother,
she is also the loving mother to her sisters, their families and to all
fauna and flora around her. Only a writer who himself is deeply in love
with nature and values all life could create such a character.
The madness is not in Sandawathi, but in the people around her and in
all of us. It is not a madness for which we can find a cure through
Western medicine. Perhaps we could find some relief by reading this
book.
When Sandawathi’s sister asks her if she could cut down a jack fruit
tree in their land, her reply is that she has to ask Mother Earth. Then
her sister’s response is that Sandawathi is pretending to be mad,
fooling herself as well as others. That statement covers all of us
living on earth today, who try to fool ourselves that trees are not
sentient beings, that they do not have feelings.
Today all over the world, scientists, university dons and students
are getting roped in to be used as cats’ paws for the Great Gene
Robberies. In Ratu Idda we read about a project to study the genetic
immunity of our native dogs and steal the genes. Our native dogs have
been in our country for the past several thousand years and have
remained with the same features as we see in our ancient stone
inscriptions. (Buddhannehala pillar inscription of Kassapa V). There
could be some truth in this as we now hear of attempts to do DNA tests
on the imported dogs, said to be for their insurance. And we also hear
of on-going genetic studies on our native goat population to study their
greater immunity than imported goats.
With his long experience in media, Kasuri would be aware of such
incidents, as one more development in his novel is of a well planned
attempt to introduce an infection to our tea plantations. Kasuri also
brings us a message about the ‘Island mentality’ and how multinational
business concerns are using the carrot of ‘Global mentality’ to exploit
our resources and assets. Often it is too late by the time our scholars
realize that the carrot has been already poisoned. Globalization should
be for the benefit of all living beings on earth, and not just for the
privileged few among the beast named Homo sapiens.
Ravinatha in Ratu Idda, tells us how our attempts to destroy nature
will someday hit back at us in a way that we will never be able to
recover.
It has been accepted that Ratu Idda is Karunadasa Suriarachchi’s best
novel todate. Yet I see this as the first Sinhala Novel to bring out the
issue of the threat to nature and our environment and that it should be
translated giving an opportunity to people around the world also to read
it and be aware of the issues, because even people who did not bother to
read Rachel Carson, or more recently Al Gore and Vandana Shiva would not
mind reading a good novel. We should make globalization work for us
instead of against us.
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