A welcome addition to Sri Lankan English Literature

Reviewed by R. S.Karunaratne

"Nothing grows under the banyan tree and other stories"

"Daily News" Anthology of short stories 2007

Edited by Malini Govinnage

Annual Publications Department, ANCL

Reviewing an anthology of short stories is more challenging than commenting on a novel. In this anthology 24 writers lay bare stories before the reader. I read them with great interest. But as usual some of the short stories are highly readable and they demand the reader's attention.

Short story writers create their own characters place them on their own stage and make them act to some purpose. A good writer must present his characters in action dramatising a fully realised theme. A good example is Usula P. Wijesuriya's "Nothing grows under the banyan tree". In this brilliant short story there are only two characters - Seela and Ravi. We see a romance developing between a Sinhala girl and a Tamil boy. But they do not go very far in their romance; they become victims of circumstances. Those who are keen to solve the ethnic problem should read this story to see the reality behind a false facade.

The action in a short story may depict violence, a lover's embrace or a stream of consciousness. whatever form the action takes, its function is to dramatise the event for the reader. Kamala Gunesekera's "The shadow of she elephant rock" is about the insurgency and how innocent villagers were brain- washed by the self-appointed liberators.

In some of his stories eminent writer Galsworthy had used a rather slight, closed plot which runs the customary course of complication, conflict, climax and denouement (resolution). He used plot and character to reveal the theme. Nanda Jayakody in her short story "It's a day" brings out the theme - loneliness in old age - through a closed plot. It must be said to her credit that she has managed to sustain the reader's curiosity right from the beginning to the end.

Patrick Jayasuriya's short story entitled "A sporting case" reminds me of the Sathasivam murder case in which a well-known cricketer was charged with killing his wife. However, he was not found guilty of the murder. Here the narrator is a criminal lawyer named Pon Thyagaraja. To make the story credible, the writer has established some authority outside himself. The lawyer makes a representative truth of the author's theme. It is a popular device to create a narrator whose point of view controls the entire story.

Sheshadri Kottearachchi's "A heart unfinished" is a beautiful story that evokes compassion for animals. To make us see things the writer uses a blend of panorama and scene. The panorama gives us the comprehensive and extensive view. The scene gives us the close up or intensive view.

Art is not life; art recreates a phase of life for a specific purpose. If the author fails to make it credible, all is lost. In some of the stories in this anthology such credibility is lacking. If the reader fails to feel the action almost simultaneously, the writer fails in his duty. In Sharmini G. Rodrigo's "The mansion" there is a distance between the reader and the action. As a result the reader finds it difficult to contemplate on the intellectual content of the action.

Samanthi Wijeyeratne in "Little Bo" employs the method of summary to tell the reader what happens in the story. Such a summary is valuable to supply background information that the reader needs to know; for instance, D. H. Lawrence used this method effectively in writing "The rocking - horse winner".

He began his story with a summary: "There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages; yet she had no luck. She married for love and the love turned to dust!" However, if you start writing only summaries neglecting dramatic moments, its detailed scenes, you fail as a short story writer.

Short story writers have to be patient and demanding self critics. They should be able to step out of themselves and to inspect a story as though with a reader's eyes. Some of the writers in this collection have ignored this vital aspect of short story writing.

Space does not permit me to comment on all the short stories. Despite drawbacks in some of the stories, the anthology is a welcome addition to Sri Lankan English literature.

Journalists... A tribe apart

Reviewed By Neville Weereratne

Journalists are a tribe apart. They are, in the slogan of a wartime newsreel, "the eyes and ears of the world". It is a highly responsible task and members of this fraternity need to have a wholesome appreciation of human nature, understand human foibles and exercise a sense of justice that is beyond reproach if they are to make a real contribution to the sum and total of human experience.

Journalists are also able to wield power through sometimes subtle and at other times obvious ways. They can influence the outcome of an election, for example; they can persecute innocent people if they choose to do that. It is, in the language of our times, an awesome responsibility and to exercise that power with caution, sympathy and understanding is the challenge that faces every member of the profession. It surely illustrates the claim that "the pen is mightier than the sword."

The author of The Serendib Spirit, a collection of delightful bagatelles, is a journalist of the most irresistible kind. He has above and beyond the demands of his profession a sense of humour with which he soothes the human breast.

He allays the many fears that lurk in the minds of people, those dark and dismal avatars that wait to spring on you when you least expect to be found out, to be exposed to a polite society which pretends all the while that there was nothing to hide, only to extol; that there are no demons to exorcise, only angels to celebrate. The art of the journalist depends entirely on its adherents' capacity to maintain a balance which is simultaneously mystical and prophetic, light-hearted and deadly serious.

When the journalist is encumbered with this great blessing or curse (whichever is most apposite to the situation), try as you might, he cannot be silenced; which explains how this book has come about. The pieces in it are drawn from a column our feted journalist, Gaston de Rosayro, contributed to one or other of the numerous newspapers on which he has worked - in Sri Lanka and in Malaysia, in Singapore and Hong Kong.

If you find traces of an irreverent mind in them, it is because the reader himself has now been converted. He has become irreverent, caustic, sharp, cynical like his mentor, but, and so much like his guru, never uncharitable. This critic of our human nature has done nothing more than hold up a mirror in which is reflected our passionate pretences, our fraudulence, our silly games of make-believe.

If laughter is the best medicine, a little chuckle goes a long way into appreciating our own uncertainties and inadequacies; and this is where our author embarrasses us into recognising our own shortcomings and lack of charity.

My first encounter with him was nearly forty years ago when he came into the editorial department of the 'Ceylon Observer' where I was its Features Editor. I marked him then for his zest - which was, indeed, the prerogative of his youth. He was forever spouting a variety of notions about the humorous, the mundane and the serious. He was bold and infectious in his enthusiasms, good-natured most of the time, somewhat excessive at others. In justification of his excesses you would enjoy the energy of Gaston's writing.

He obtains his fun from a mercurial cast of mind and an extravagant vocabulary. If you didn't know that the author was a distinguished craftsman of the language, you would suspect, as I did at the beginning, that he had a good dictionary and a well-thumbed thesaurus by his side. But that would have been the ultimate fraud in itself and furthest from the heart and mind of a totally committed journalist.

Words are, after all, are the stock-in-trade of every self-respecting newspaperman. The test of excellence is in the capacity of the practitioner to express himself without ambiguity, with a touch of wit, with interesting turns of phrase that demand applause, focused all the while on the perennial truths that govern our world if we would only take the time to consider these aspects of living with due seriousness and regard of their values.

It is just as easy, of course, to become overbearing and condescending in the practice of this art. Beware, therefore, of false prophets. I take up the task to offering Gaston de Rosayro this tribute as a means of acknowledging him as a master of his craft, one endowed with sharp, clear vision and sound hearing.

Today, some forty years later, you'll see that like Alexander Pope, another master of another time, he "lisps in numbers for the numbers come". He writes with great gusto and with an enviable fluency.

This talent with language in the different areas of newspaper journalism has seen Gaston de Rosayro prospering in his chosen trade. If I may change the metaphor, he has been engaged to play several roles - features writer, sub-editor and editor; but it is a theatre upon which the curtain never falls. Once you have entered this stage you became heir to a burden that every journalist has to bear for the rest of his days until, indeed, the final deadline is met. You cannot ever retire from being the eyes and ears of the world. You are forever shackled to the mirror that you must hold up in the hope of reflecting the truth.

Gaston has borne the yolk of editorial responsibility with all the care and concern of the missionary and thereby earned the admiration and applause of his readers and of his colleagues. To enjoy the confidence of your reader is the journalist's greatest reward; to earn also the respect of your colleagues is the highest tribute a journalist may hope to achieve.

The pieces in this volume of essays come from different times and different places, as I have said, but you'll see that they have not lost their relevance since he plays upon the perennial human condition in which, in all humility, he also finds himself.

These light and refreshing offerings will entertain today as they did when they were first published. In book form, (to turn to another metaphor), they are a handy means of dropping in for a quick draught of refreshment of which you are invited to imbibe, or to savour the gourmet tidbits he has laid temptingly before you.

Tidbits or a gourmet offering, sips of fine wines or large draughts, either way a feast awaits you.

Bon app‚tit

Poetry of dissent back on the shelves

The nineteen seventies was a notable era of the Sinhalese Poem. During this decade there emerged three poets who stamped their mark in the Sinhala poetic field. They are, Monica Ruwanpathirana, Parakrama Kodituwakku and Buddhadasa Galappatty. The three of them simultaneously brought out their debut collections of poems during the period. It was the beginning of an era generally known as the age of people's poetry. In 1972, Monica brought out "Thahanam Deshayakin" followed by "Obe Yeheliya Eya Gehaniya" in 1975 and "Angulimalage Sihinaya" four years later.

Parakrama Kodituwakku had his books of poems "Podi Malliye" and "Akeekaru Putrayakuge Lokaya" published in 1973 and 1974 consecutively. Buddhadasa Galappatty too had three collections of poems "Ketapath Pawra" in 1972, "Para Wasa Etha" in 1974 and "Reginak Henduwaya" in 1976 during this time.

Although some literary critics brand their work as "Poetry of dissent" even today they are still popular among the readers, the attraction being the warmth of the common man's life which exudes from these poems.

Monica's untimely death a couple of years ago created a vacuum in Sri Lankan poetry; nonetheless Parakrama and Buddhi have been carrying on opening new vistas in the Sinhala poem. Two of them have come out with their latest works.

The launch of Parakrama Kodituwakku's "Sansareta Mang Asai" and Buddhadasa Galappatty's "Nim Nethi Thunyama" will take place at the Sri Lanka Foundation Auditorium on January 18 Friday between 4 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. Ratna Sree Wijesinghe and Sunil Gunawardana (Poets) are billed to address the gathering on the new books of the two poets. Critic Gaminee Sumanasekara will be the compere.

The meeting will be chaired by Susil Siriwardane, who spearheaded the cultural struggle in the seventies by starting the cultural publication "Mawatha".

The People's Bank will sponsor the event which is open to the public.

The Wayfarer

"The Wayfarer" the maiden English novel of Professor Sunanda Mahendra, is now on the shelves. The book is an attempt to express the innermost feelings of a university don who is portrayed as a sensitive individual torn between his home and the world at large.