Narrative poems with a mission

One evening just after the Friday Communication discourse held at the Sri Lanka Press Council premises a person not quite known to me handed over a slim collection of Sinhala poems. He wanted me to read his poems, and said that he would like to know what I think about them.

Several weeks passed by. He had sent me several printed copies of his collection to be distributed among speakers who so wish to participate in the discourse which was held last Friday. The poet is a retired teacher who had spent more time in literary activities and his forte seems to be poetry.

I had time to read his collection of poems titled as ‘Mamai Una Pandura’ (I am the Bamboo Bush). As it usually happens, the collection too had come out as an author publication. The poet is Nandadasa Wickramaarachchi, perhaps a matured unexpected senior new comer to the Sinhala literary scene.

In the first instance, the poet Nandadasa Wickramarachchi is sensitive to events around him. He sees and peeps into the inner structures of his events.

The poem titled ‘Pintaliya’, a pot of water which was placed in wayside resting places such as ‘ambalama’ for people who pass by to drink and quench the thirst. This was regarded as a merit gathering process, and the pot of water too was known as ‘pen taliya’.

The intention of the poet is to visualize, in several stages, the attitude of the people to this concept of the wayside pot of water. As he records in poetic terms, an old man with grey hair and beard had come from afar away place to place this pot of water with the noble intention of helping the others. He placed the pot of water under a spreading nuga tree. Those who passed the way, quenched the thirst and transferred merit to the person who so did it.

The man concerned who was large hearted came daily to clean the pot and pour fresh water. Until his death he did it as a routine duty. The second stage is that some youngsters had sprung up from somewhere. They noticed that the water is not fit to drink and replaced a filter instead. The wayfarers transferred the merit as usual and went off.

The poet says that the ways and manners of the youngsters had vanished, and the wayfarers also failed to quench the thirst. They were worried and abandoned the shelter provided by the Nuga tree. The poet says that third stage appeared where a kiosk came to be seen, where water was sold bottled. Those who came by vehicles stopped near the kiosk to buy bottled water.

Without any judgment passed, the poet just creates these three situations, making the reader consider the inner social significance interlinked. The poem is more a poetic narrative. The poet uses the traditional norms, myths and narrative patterns to express the inner layers of commonplace events. Take for instance another visionary poem titled as ‘Gon kathavak’, where a bull expresses his feelings:

‘I am no longer needed for the field

My dune which I drop down is no longer wanted as manure

The tractor has been replaced instead

The metallic shoes I used to wear

As produced by the blacksmith no longer comes out from the smithy

I am being sold by my owner to a trader, as he cannot feed me daily

The trader refuses to buy me,

As I am withered and dry skinned

So I stand here with my fellow mates

Until the inevitable hour dawns.

Then come the people who so desire to buy our kind for meritorious deeds

This they call ‘abaya danaya’

But those who come in that guise desire to fetch the cows who fleshy and milky

They would not cast their eyes on us as we do not have udders

This I felt is a poem with much depth and symbolic reference to human actions.

The poem titled ‘Hisata Kandak’ could be regarded as a tragic episode from the recent past, where tragic events like seeing heads hung on fences sans bodies. The poet recreates the grave situation where a head in that manner calls a walker and pleads with him to find his body. The poet transforms his image in terms of the traveller or walker and tries to help the head by traversing from place to place.

He says: “I will find either our own badge or any other body which will suit you. Then in his search his ultimatum is that there is not a single body devoid of a bullet hole. Perhaps the poet is more a saint or a prophet in the approach to human degradations. He sees the human calamity, the plight of the human frame in all its vicissitudes. The poet is seen as a grasper of knowledge and vision from religious sources. His use of language is more folkish and completely devoid of high flown use of Sanskirtised diction.

Though a number of devotional poems are included in this collection, I had the feeling that they fail to read the standards of a few poems of the narrative type. One of the finest poems in this collection is titled ‘Baata ha bata’. The poem records the inner feelings of a peasant who heaves a sigh of sorrow.

He lives in a small hut near a flowing river. He wishes that he prefers to be done, and live in darkness and wish that sun may not rise, as he has nothing fruitful to fuilfill.

He is portrayed as a sufferer in the hands of a landed proprietor, who only knows that he owns the land. In the end the reader realizes that he leads a futile life as there had been no harvest left for him despite his struggle.

As in many other creations, the poet does not pull his judgment, but leaves the judgment to the aesthete. Mention could be made on a sensitive poems in the collection like Mahaliya ha balliya. This embodies a parable about an old woman, presumably insane and begging accompanied by a bitch who is watchful about her interests.

Followed by the death of the old woman bitch too dies. But the venue happened to be the Galle Face Green, facing the sea. When the waves lap on each other, at times, the old woman and her guardian could be seen. This poem captures the essence of a deep seated affection of the humans and beasts unseen among humans themselves.

These poems invite the attention of more discussions.

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