Beautiful passages in an unpublished book

I wish to share with my readers certain passages I liked in a typescript of a book yet to be published. I find that the English style of the writer is pleasantly uncommon. The title of the work is aptly given as 'Autumn Leaves'. The writer is Charulatha Abeysekera Thewarathanthri who now lives in far away Seychelles. She is one of the daughters of an eminent personality in Lanka- the late Tissa Abeysekera.

Her work was shortlisted for last year's Graetian Award for best English fiction. Look at the way she dedicates s her work to her beloved parents:

"To Ammi...probably the strongest Peron I have ever known, who gave her all to me, and made me who I am today. And "To Thaaththi...who created for me, a piece of heaven, where I was never judged; only loved with pride"

In typescript form it has 129 pages of sheer poetry, if I may describe her writing. This is a kind of 'creative non-fiction' of an autobiographical anecdote that may be a little confusing to the readers who like straight narrative. However, the writer helps the reader to understand the writing by clearly demarcating the different strands in the structuring the account. There are two narratives running simultaneously- one explaining the present as if the narrator is alive and the other recalling the past, the present and envisaging the future. So it is a kind of 'experimental' exercise in Lankan English writing. So read it yourself when the book is out and compare notes. Meanwhile, as I stated above here are one or two examples of rich and evocative language the writer uses that adds to the interesting biographical and auto- biographical word pictures that is a reality in the writer's life.

Somewhere in the first paragraph of the opening Charulatha writes: "Aromas are sharp and strong. I am experiencing the world with the heightened senses, fully turned in, aware of everything with every single cell of my body. Yet, I am curiously detached from it all." The last paragraph of the above passage indicates to the reader the time and place of the narrative:" Today, there is only sorrow. My body seems to have swollen in an attempt to be on the same scale as the larger-than life world around me. I feel like a child inside a huge robot. I am crouching inside my own body, curled up and still, lonely, sad and weary. Life seems to have come to a standstill. Two weeks ago, life has come to a standstill with the wing beats of a butterfly. My thoughts are everywhere, like autumn leaves tossed in the wind..."

Then the story starts with the first person narrative of the protagonist's third birthday party where her father was not coming in time. Six months later, her parents were divorced. "I came to the conclusion that both my parents were dreamers, whose hearts ruled over their hearts, and they no longer dreamt the same dream" The story continues as the main character grows into a young girl. She inadvertently sees a letter addressed to her father from her mother. Her father calls he on page 15 and the writer through her main character writes this prose:

"There is a ringing in my ears that turns into the ruthless thrashing of ocean waves, and all other voices vanish and Father's voice calling me "Baby" from a distance mixes with the roar of the galloping, wild waves. It shocks me to hear what I a hearing, and I think of the book Narnian Chronicles and how the ocean flows out of a painting and takes Lucy back to Narnia. I gasp, and get even a bigger shock when I smell fresh cut grass, wood smoke and, most incredibly, the delicious aroma of the ripe mangoes. Mother's neat, precise letters, inked in black on the fluttering white sheet, shimmer and shift before my eyes, and suddenly swarm around me like thousands of tiny black beetles, and darkness closes in rapidly.' This work is really the association of a father and daughter minutely describing the day to day incidents of affection as told by the daughter who eventually marries and has a daughter and then meets her last days. That's how I understood the story. It has a metaphysical and philosophical undertones expressed in subtle terms. I like this kind of fiction or semi-fiction based on real life-like relationships expressed with imagination and creatively using language with strong verbs and adverbs. One could peep into some characteristics of the affable filmmaker and literati Tissa Abeyasekera seen through the eyes of his daughter Charulatha. And also added is the narrator' own growing up. I hope I am not far fetched in my interpretation of the work.

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