Disclosing love, agony and cruelties

Title: Mama Thavama Yami
Author: Karunadasa Sooriyaarachchi
Genre: Novel
Publisher: Dayawansa Jayakody

Veteran Sinhala journalist Karunadasa Sooriyaaracchi’s latest novel gives an insight into humanistic side of events that he sees and hears from time to time. He is a lover of animals, especially dogs, and eventually breeds one and looks after him like a relative. He too is seen as a lover of nature and fond of looking after patients and loves to see that he is detached from some central strenuous events that cause pain of mind.

He sees the agonies in the life of his friends and well-wishers. He sees various types of aspects of life inclusive of his own experiences and those of his near and dear ones. The writer uses a number of narrative techniques, inclusive of diary entries, notes, records and journals and thought streams, sometimes disjointed, but later linked to each other as the subtext of the narrative.

I recalled a saying which I read somewhere but not quite certain where I read it. The saying runs as follows: ‘The life is a collection of moments’. In the first three chapters as a general reader, I wondered what the writer is trying to visualize. The protagonist of the work visualizes many things while he is seated in meditative mood on the stem of a palu tree. He reads and writes there.

He is shown as a semi hermit who is in the process of finding things that matter and eventually record them in the form of a novel. But on further reading the reader will find that the protagonist is a journalist who wants to be honest and anticipates in the process of jotting some of the intimate events in his life- the agonies and ecstasies as experienced by himself. But fails due to certain circumstances unforeseen in his own professional practice. He is hinted as a failure in his venture. He is also frustrated about his surroundings.

Investigative skills

As such he becomes a ministry personality connected with a media unit, which is a usual function these days, the position held as a media staff member of a higher calibre entrusted to those who are closely linked to the workings of the particular minister and the ministry concerned.

Still he possesses investigative and creative skills where he sometimes acts like a searcher cum wayfarer into events of varying nature, inclusive of one murder of a young woman. But he is clueless in the first instance and inherently comes to grips with the entire event step by step disclosing some of the hidden background events that had gone into the crime. In this manner the novel also takes the flavour of a detective story of an alternative type.

The moving step taken in this direction on the part of the creator is the stance of the reader who comes to know that the protagonist has travelled and seen the aspects of the ascetic life to the fullest where he even comes to terms with the monastic life identifying himself as a Buddhist monk.

He lives in the remote rural sector devoid of the luxuries some monks enjoy in the more urbanized areas in life in well to do dwelling places with more dayakayas at their beck and call. He had seen and undergone the agonies in the life of staying in rural monasteries sleeping on floor with a yellow robe covering his body and partaking of a meal offered by the poor well wishers.

Side by side is the comparative experiences led by him in such places as circuit bangalows arranged by him in secrecy to enjoy his sensuous life with women whom he loved. This is a mix arrangement of scenes like in a montage a conglomeration of events of real human experiences. There are also scenes which capture some suspicion when the scenes are recreated as video visuals and sound tracks.

Are they mere fantasies in his mind or real portrayals of actual events? Though readable and page moving the narrative still remains at times a Jigsaw puzzle in the mind of the reader which has to be reconstructed by himself.

As such the narrative too develops into a mystery into some of the events recorded on pages. The dreams and fantasies play a major role in some of the modern fiction to a point like in a fairy tale, that the reader who is more tradition bound may fail to discern and gauge the technique from the human content of a mere narrative structure.

Elevated plane

This is more visible in this work of Karunadasa Sooriyaaracchi than in his earlier works. The inevitable factor of transience of human lay life and the need to be elevated from that plane is one of the significant factors laid down by the protagonist. This is presented via the unfurling of events in each chapter.

The high point or the point of illumination is the metamorphosis of the characters. Some disappear and some are seen as mysterious entities who come and leave the stage like in a play. All in all, the narrative is a record of a series of events that has to be linked by the reader and the conclusions have drawn from the experiences thus recorded as a series of self reference insights which play the subtext of the narrative. The terrific and sudden assassination of a much loved woman Rajini is one such example (p195).

The entire scene looks like a gruesome series of confessions of the onlooker who does not play a special role in the central narrative. The scene is recreated up to the point where the magistrate and the police officers too are involved to solve the problem.

The role of the journalist too plays a sensitive recording role in the process. The writer tries to hint how that could be seen from different points of view going to the extent of making an actual news more sensationalized. The enigma of the reader is significant: ‘Where am I now?’ may be the issue at hand from page to page as events unfold.

The most touching point from my point of view is the series of events laid down as dialogues that ensue between the skinny dog who is named as Natta who used to be a smart one in the first instance. But the reader sees that the dog too has changed with the events. The dog becomes once again smart and normal.

This metamorphosis records that some animals like the particular dog ‘Natta’ in the narrative are better than some cruel humans. When finally the jotting of the series of events is over, the writing process of the novel on the part of the protagonist too comes to a close.

The vision of the narrator seems to me is the desire and need to mould a better atmosphere for humans as well as animals humans. The reader is made to pose the issues that lay like sparks under ashes.

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