Pro-story

I was just skimming through the eternally piling up stack of short stories when the copy landed on my desk. And when I realized who the author was, I knew I was in for a treat. Padma says that it was written long time ago, and was on the verge of pulling it out on the ground of it being ‘immature’ when I told her that I was planning to publish it, although it was a ‘pro-story’.

It took much imploring on my part to convince her that her short story - which she modestly referred to as being produced in the early stages of her writing career - was way above publication standards.

Well, Roshan - the house hunter who related the story to her - I too hope you would read “Passionate Pen” this week, because any story unrelated can be a burden on the author’s mind.

The Bandura Flower

By Padma EDIRISINGHE

English newspapers were never bought in our house nor for that matter in any household in our village during my childhood. But every Sunday morning Seeya (grandfather) would stroll to the Ambalama junction and buy the Silumina, the Grand Old Sinhala lady emerging from Beira House.

By the way much older than this grand lady was the Ambalama itself that provided a roof and resting place to fatigued travellers taking the road from Ruanwella to Negombo or vice versa. It was once the main artery that ran between the coastal area and Sabaragamuwa cutting through Attanagalla of Siri Sangabo fame...

Back to Seeya. I wait impatiently till he returns and grab Kamalakka’s page which was the popular children’s page then.. Kamalakka was my heroine. I would visualise her, dressed in a Jambu pink or scarlet Osaree, fair and small made and doing that page in an office overlooking the Beira.

I almost cried when later I got to know the stark truth about Kamalakka. No woman had ever worked in that long gone by age at Lake House considering it almost out of bounds for respectable females.

So a tough looking male masquerading under the pseudonym Kamalakka wrote all that sweet stuff with bony masculine fingers covered by tufts of hair. No slender fingers were ever involved.

The male would write little stories, melodious poems on birds and twinkling stars and even present illustrations to captivate small minds. Then tired of all those delicate acts he would storm into a nearby pub and have his tot and ask all messy children in Lanka to go to Timbuktu or Toottukudi for all he cares.

The news of this deceit practised by the main and only major newspaper office then just disgusted me suffering from the delusion that the mighty have to be always truthful and honest. Ignorance they say is bliss and till I knew the truth I just adulated the Kamalakka’s page.

I even sent up a short story to it titled “Lenage Lokaya” (The squirrel’s world). Sort of a philosophical piece that came to my mind as I watched a little squirrel up on a branch of the Kamaranga tree before our house. The fellow happened to watch the world go by through tiny eyes brimming with curiosity.

Did the story get published? Never and that, for the simple reason that it was never posted. It had lain in a pocket of the shirt of a brother to whom it was given for mailing.

Then it made its way to the abode of the Redi nanda (dhoby or laundry woman) who removed it before thrashing the shirt with gusto on a stone, a feat even recorded by that famous American writer, Mark Twain in his travels. Never anywhere than in Ceylon have I seen men trying to split stones with clothes, he writes.

He had seen them probably on the banks of the Beira, a laundering site that can be still seen from Elephant House cafe in Colombo 2. The Redi nanda returned my childhood masterpiece in a crumpled state.

To add insult to injury during the subsequent weeks I was nicknamed Lena by jeering family members, the first disastrous result of my journalistic venture that went completely awry.

Having given up short story writing for decades after that I decided to comeback to the field. After somebody had asked me why I don’t do anything better my ground shook. I forgot all those great short story writers like Guy De Maupassant and Chekhov and Somerset Maugham and felt that I had plummeted to some degrading field.

So again I gave that up too. Whenever somebody remarks that he or she misses my pieces in the press I blush like a coy maid and say that I have given up that sort of thing long ago.

Have taken to serious writing, I go on to say, I myself not sure of the boundaries of the domain of serious writing. A man probably in his early ‘30s changed my mind again and here I am. The man had come to my house through some error. It was the neighbouring house up for sale and not my house.

He had mistaken the two. Anyway as he rang the bell, it took me long to come out as I was computer doing serious writing or serious typing. The man was pleasant and I explained to him the reason for my coming down so late.

“You work on the computer?” he asked bemused as though I had been trying the impossible or the incredible.

“Yes. I have to. I am supposed to be a writer but no one writes these days but types”, I said trying a bit of humour, yet apology creeping in too for being rather non-conformist though seven years have passed after the dawn of the 21st century too... Society still expects women of my age to rest, better under the Bo canopies. At least one segment of Lanka’s population will be a contented lot then and can be counted on not to subscribe to the striking groups proliferating everywhere like locust...

But he was looking at me with interest after his initial error at coming to the wrong house was discovered... He would get to the correct house later, he said. Auntie, would you like to do me a favour? What is it, I ask. I swallow the “son” part. Why mother, everybody? There is a story I like to get off my chest. Will you write it if I give you the bare facts. Okay, I said. May be it would be my swan song. Is that the word? So here I go keeping to the skeleton facts given to me by that stranger who had comeback from a foreign assignment some months back. Roshan, we will call him. I said I could send it to a newspaper to be published if it was okay and he said that it was grand idea. Here is the story as told by Roshan and improved by me or so I assume.

Back in the island after five or six years I began picking up threads. Travelling from one European country to another on my business assignment I had got cut off from all contacts with my friends, both male and female. It was challenging enough, this business of looking for old friends and I located a good many of them. Many had changed workplaces and some their residences, but I still located them. Among those I could not contact were Nelum and Ranjith. Ranjith had no fixed abode but Nelum certainly had one. A large double storeyed mansion she inherited from her parents as their only child. They had died in a car accident and after that Nelum lived all by herself in this mansion in a suburb of Colombo.

I don’t know what to call her, a collector, a horticulturist may be. She developed a passion for strange flora. I do not know her past though I was drawn to her especially by her looks. May be Botany was her favourite subject at school.

The upstairs of her house she had transformed into a sort of greenery. Lots of glistening glass cases and tanks for aquatic plants. Micro models of large trees done in the Japanese or Chinese way. Any visitor she would take straight up to and he or she would have to lend ear to the long lectures she delivered on her fascinating collection. Her parents had left her a vast fortune and she would fly to terrain as North India especially to the Himalayan regions and also to Tibet, Bhutan and Assam to hunt for some of the strangest plants.

A modern Sthree Hanuman on the quest of strange flora. Attractive young woman, she was and she would waive all regulations at the airport with her enchanting smile and winning ways to get those plants in. Soon she began to be almost obsessed with her hobby and many began to avoid her as they did not relish standing for hours listening to lengthy descriptions of a strange plant or flower, without being even offered a drink. Such social etiquette was foreign to her.

The centrepiece of her greenery was a bush of Bandura. Never would she forget to take a visitor to view this plant festooned with mauve coloured flowers that had large petals. Its peculiarity was that the moment an insect flew near it the petals would trap it by folding the petals. That Nelum was entranced by this spectacle was clear. I used to watch her almost fascinated as she demonstrated the process.

To be very frank I had matrimonial designs on Nelum. She was pretty, smart and fabulously rich. May be the pleasures of conjugal life could eliminate her undue obsession. Not only I, a good number of my friends were having their designs on her with the same fervent hope of curing her mania after marriage. But she seemed not to care for anybody.

A few days after my return I drove to her house. The gates were open and so was the upstair entrance. No servant came out to ask who I am. I walked softly along the corridor of the greenery and peeped through the glass wall.

Everything was gruesomely silent as if a foul murder had taken place with the murderer absconding while only the corpse remained. No one in sight. Then I saw a figure, a human figure standing with his back to me, carefully peeping into some jar. Yet there was something familiar about his shape. I tapped on the glass wall, on the fragile glass wall. One tap. Two. Three. He turned back. There was fear in his eyes. But I was getting closer to the mystery as to who he was. Then recognition seemed to flood within him too.

His eyes turned ferocious and threatening. He was coming to me, even the advancing steps threatening. Should I run away? There was something eerie in the whole setup. But yet he seemed so frail and emaciated that I was sure I could defend myself in case of an assault. He opened the glass door. Yes. It was Ranjith.

Ranjith, you here?

Yes. Me here. Remember? It was you who brought me here.

Told through gritted teeth in a mood to strangle me. I stepped back. And my mind too flashed back across five years. Ranjith was a newcomer to Colombo having relinquished the wilds of Nikaweratiya area. Got to know him through a friend of a friend. The usual contact system in this mega city of ours.

He was a handsome and robust young man with plump rosy cheeks and charming ways. I used to take him on rides in my car. He had no fixed abode and sometimes would fall asleep on a couch in my annex after sharing my dinner. About a week before my exit I remember having driven with him to Nelum’s mansion.

She was more concerned with her need for an assistant at the greenery than my departure. I felt that day that she did not care for me the least. “I need somebody young and strong and active,” she went on saying. Otherwise I cannot run this greenery. There is so much work involved.

“Get married to someone with those qualities”, I said almost jocosely.

“Me marry? That would be the last thing I do”

That reminds me. A very busy man who imagined he could run the whole world developed a sudden illness and the doctor sent for told him, “Eh, brother. I am sorry. You are going to die in a matter of minutes”. “Me? I have so much to do. Die? That is the last thing I intend to do”. And that is the last thing he did!

To comeback, as usual we were standing in her greenery and having our conversation. The door was ajar. An insent flew through the open door. A rather large insect. It went flying towards the Bandura bush. We watched.

Nelum, Ranjith, myself. The petals folded on the insect and the poor fellow disappeared from view. It seemed a planned demonstration of the cruelty of this flower.

Nelum gave a laugh. A wicked and loud laugh.

“See? Do you think the flower and that fly are now tying the nuptial knot and then going on to enjoy conjugal bliss? No. Bandura flower is gluttonously feeding on the fly. It is one of the most fantastic and cannibalistic of our flowers and indigenous too” I took her leave shortly wondering of the intense way she spoke her eyes glued on my friend.

Now after five years, here was Ranjith in the same place, so changed from the plump round youth to a walking skeleton. I could vaguely piece out what had happened during my long absence. Either Ranjith, rid of the boons of my company had comeback here foolishly to ask her for shelter and employment or Nelum herself, a resourceful woman had pursued him and got him down.

Now he was different from the trapped insects only in that he was physically outside the trap. But I wanted more explicit details rather than mere conjecture. “What exactly happened? I asked.

“What exactly happened? Can you not remember what happened that day?”

“Yes. I remember her eyes on you. But you were a fool to get into her trap”.

“I flew too close to the Bandura flower” was all what he said. I hope Roshan would read this and find it satisfactory. He left no address or telephone number with me but only a skeleton of a story which I hope is true.

There was just no need on his part to sit and fabricate a story for me, while house-hunting.

John Donne Master of metaphysical conceit

Compiled by Ishara Mudugamuwa

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John Donne was a leading poet during his time and was also the most outstanding of the English Metaphysical poets. He was born in London to a prominent Roman Catholic family but converted to Anglicanism during the 1590s. At the age of 11 he entered the University of Oxford, where he studied for three years.

According to some accounts, he spent the next three years at the University of Cambridge but took no degree at either university.

He began the study of law at Lincoln’s Inn, London and in 1592, he seemed destined for a legal or diplomatic career. Donne was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, keeper of the Great Seal, in 1598. In 1601 he secretly married Anne More.

Donne’s poetry embraces a wide range of secular and religious subjects. He wrote cynical verses about inconstancy, poems about true love, Neoplatonic lyrics on the mystical union of lovers’ souls and bodies and brilliant satires and hymns depicting his own spiritual struggles.

Whatever the subject, Donne’s poems reveal the same characteristics that typified the work of the metaphysical poets: dazzling wordplay, often paradox; subtle argumentation; surprising contrasts; intricate psychological analysis; and striking imagery selected from non-traditional areas such as law, physiology, scholastic philosophy, and mathematics.

Metaphysical poetry is logical and soul searching. Donne’s poetry depends upon passionate argument. His rhythm shows the stresses and strains of his careful thinking. Sometimes his word order is complicated and uses an additional vowel in spelling. This makes it difficult to understand Donne until people get used to his language.

John Donne is considered a master of the metaphysical conceit, an extended metaphor that combines two vastly unlike ideas into a single idea, often using imagery.

An example of this is his equation of lovers with saints in “The Canonization”. His poetry represented a shift from classical forms to a more personal poetry. His works suggests a healthy appetite for life and its pleasures, while also expressing deep emotion. He did this through the use of conceits, wit and intellect - as seen in the poems, The Summer Rising and Batter My Heart.

Donne’s principal literary accomplishments during this period were divine poems and the prose work Blathanatos, a half-serious extenuation of suicide, in which he argued that suicide is not intrinsically sinful. Donne became a Priest of the Anglican Church in 1615 and was appointed royal chaplain later that year. Donne died on March 31, 1631 due to stomach cancer

The Patchwork Quilts

Our mother made us patchwork quilts
Of odd remnant fabric Patched together in a pattern
To keep us warm.
There is a special kind of quiet in the house
Which my mother only knows
She knows it when she is busy
She knows it when she sews.

Charmaine CANDAPPA
 

Sky-The background of life

Sky’s blue - Sky’s white - Sky’s gloomy And nothing to watch
Full of clouds-blowing winds-flying birds Always amazed me
Lively chats - as a kid
Enjoyments of once victory
Thoughts I seek - for future plans
You are there for the background
For gloomy days full of misery
Sparks of thoughts you shaded over me
Best remedy for sadness and helplessness
What novelty you brought to me
What not more my mentor - Sky
The background of life

H. G. S. Tissera

To the much loved sky

I used to stare up at the sky with marvel. When I grew up I tried to knit the sky and myself: the earth together. I strove so much. But I was not strong enough to satiate the sky. He was so energetic and always overruled me.

Gentle glances, pleasing words were too feeble in satisfying him. He always desired the hardest and the most difficult which were too harsh for the earth to bear. So she always hesitated in satiating him to the unhappiness of the sky. But the earth never withdrew.

She admired the sky as usual. Gradually wilderness started conquering the earth. The earth was so sad for she could now see the sky only slightly. She now doesn’t have the full leisure to be obsessed by the charisma of the sky. She wept alone. But nobody saw her tears.

Tears didn’t have any price in the eyes of anybody. The sky also didn’t bother too much about the hidden earth. He thought the earth is now quite comfortable with the new-found companion, wilderness.

But nobody knew how the earth yearned in the deepest recesses of her heart to be together with the sky. Wilderness covered the whole of the earth. The earth was so disappointed. The pain she underwent killed her morally. One day she died. But nobody knew about her death, not even the much-loved sky.

- Indu Gamage