Array of blissful human stories

The term, or the genre, ‘human interest story’ is used to denote a special kind of writing which depicts human experiences enhancing the reader regain courage or the will to live as against the negative aspects of thinking. It has commenced from the well known investigative reporting ultimately culminating in a creative communicative mode which is resourceful to the reader.

The reader is not only led to the state of being happy, but also to a certain degree of understanding the social reality in various dimensions.

In this direction, the senior Sinhala journalist Upali Samarasinghe had been engaged in writing a regular human interest story column to a popular Sunday newspaper (Silumina). He has over the years traveled to various quarters of the country, to gather fascinating human interest stories. In his venture he had managed in a Dostoyevskian fashion all types of people from all walks of life inclusive of hunters, mahouts, traders, vandals rioters, smugglers and swindlers.

Side by side he has also encountered such persons as monks who had led noble lives, physicians who had been noble in their professions, and even the cab drivers who had been cheated by some passengers. He has also hunted some inner interpretative stories of popular places and events. One such interpretative true story is retold about the well known ‘Lovers’ Leap’ in Trincomalee.

He had recorded, as told by a genuine informant, how a daughter of a certain colonial ruler had fallen in love with a handsome young fishmonger. Eventually as the experience unfolds, all arrangements had been made to give the daughter in marriage to a young man of the same clan. But in the exchange of messages between the daughter and the young fishmonger, the decision to run away or elope from the ceremony had taken place. What happens in the end? Like in a fantasy, the lovers who live together for a momentary happiness had the ultimatum to leap from one of the steepest, if not most dangerous, cliffs in the country situated near the Konesaram temple. The two dead bodies have been found later. Since then the cliff had come to be known as ‘Lovers’ Leap’.

The reader too comes across some true stories where the husband finds his loving wife having intimacies with his own friends and mother seeing their daughters disobeying them to run away with ‘good for nothing’ guys. Then the reader comes across poverty-stricken mother seeing their intelligent sons who stop their straying and joining the monk order as a measure of social welfare.

Most stories, it may look, end up in tragedies, but may it be said that the tragedy had another layer of expression that elevates the reader to a penetrative vision on the reality of the social context. Upali Samarasinghe titles his book as ‘Jeevithaya Mehemai’ (This Is Life), which is apt and catchy. Though very short and dramatic and running to about two and half pages, the human interest stories too envelope cast studies, psycho therapies and sociological insights in each of them. In order to collect source material, the writer Samarasinghe says that he had adhered to the method of participant observation in places like mental hospitals, court houses, police stations, prisons and remote villages.

This exercise, I sincerely felt, is the need of the time to rediscover the reality that exists among us.

An action plan should be taught to students in journalism and communication studies as a rediscovery of their function. The stories which revolve round young girls and boys to me looked like lessons that should go into our Sinhala textbooks at school level. I wish to cite the following examples.

The story of the boy who harmed the birds in the first instance and tehn reforms later.

2. How a rich father discover the inborn likings of his young son, who was dying and realizes the vanity of the riches.

The story of the young girl who loved her music teacher and struggled hard to save him from the pangs of death.

How an altruistic minded man tries to remove a stone ina bathing pond to save children from danger and in turn the stone happens to be a gem that brings property.

All in all the compilation of human interest stories ‘Jeevitaya Mehemai’ is absolutely an array of colourful tribute to the Sinhala reader. It could be really good if the volume comes to be translated into English as a cross cultural communication exercise.

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