Experimental novel on child psychology

Reviewed by R. S. Karunaratne

Aparajitha Author: Ben Rasnak Sarasavi Publishers, Nugegoda Price Rs. 450

Ben Rasnak's 'Aparajitha' is a pretty long novel. As such, a reader may not be able to read it at one sitting. In fact, the world's best novels too are long. However, readers do not complain about their length.

'Aparajitha' opens with an effective and unusual scene. The opening word is 'Kavuda?' (Who?) This is an invitation to the reader to read and find out what is going to happen in the novel. Then the story begins with its central character - Kumari - one of the most beautiful women in Diyabedigoda. The convent educated Kumari is portrayed as a paradigm of virtue. Villagers address her as 'Kumari Menike', a highly respectable way of addressing a woman. Being the only daughter of Henry Dissanayake and Dona Caroline Samanthika Menike, she is brought up with lot of attention and care.

Then we are told of the marriage between Kumari and Tikiri. Kumari revolts against the prevailing caste system and some of the traditional beliefs. After some time, she gives birth to a baby boy. Unfortunately, Kumari dies leaving her son and husband. Her death takes place half through the novel and the rest of the story is devoted to her son - Bernard. We are told of innumerable occasions when the distraught child undergoes traumatic conditions. Meanwhile, Tikiri gets friendly with a school teacher who does not care much for Bernard. Bernard feels the absence of his mother very much and he develops an unusual interest in trains. His fascination knows no end. One day he gets a free ride on the railway engine. On another occasion he is arrested by the police simply because he tried to run away. Thus, Bernard's growing up process undergoes radical changes to his character and the author has vividly portrayed him as a tragic hero. Bernard loves trains and bridges but he still thinks of his dear departed mother. On many occasions he visits the cemetery and tries in vain to communicate with his mother. Therefore, the second part of the novel is an inquiry into child psychology. The author has rightly understood the principal emotions of a child as fear, love and respect. A minor drawback in the novel is that some of the descriptions are far too long. It is true that the minute details show the author's keen powers of observation and language skills.

However, too many details can slow down the reading process. What is more, they can overshadow the main plot of the story.

Too many details of people and places can affect the readability of the novel to a great extent.

For instance, I had to re-read the first part twice because I could not feel my way through the novel easily. Apart from this shortcoming, the author has given us a clear picture of a child whose mother is dead and whose father is married to another woman.

The portrayal of the psychological turmoil in the child is perhaps a plus point of the novel. As far as the language is concerned, the author has used simple words and the spoken idiom of villagers. His command of the language is commendable.

He creates a world picture of a village in Sri Lanka between the first and the second Word Wars. The characters we meet in the novel may not be found in the modern society. With all its plus and minus points, Ben Rasnak's 'Aparajitha' will remain an experimental novel on child psychology and human behaviour.

Saga of a Kandyan patriot

Reviewed by Dr. Ananda Wickremeratne

The Pilimatalavuvas in the Last Phase of the Kandyan Kingdom (Sinhale)

The book under review bears the impressive imprimatur of two distinguished scholars, K. M. de Silva, Emeritus Professor of History and a scholar of distinction and Senarath Panawatta, a former curator of the National Museum, Kandy with a record of research in his own right. Not to be outdone, the author Ananda Pilimatalavuva himself is a Kandyan of distinction.

On initially browsing through the book I liked the following features: the book is literally what it promises to be; it is about the Pilimatalavuvas, their storied origins and spectacular rise to eminence in the eventful last days of the Kandyan Kingdom - a place which has acquired over time a profound, almost impenetrable mystique of its own. Overall, the author has done a competent and thorough job keeping strictly to the modest and unpretentious title of his book, avoiding the trendy phraseology and obfuscating prefabricated constructs which are sadly today the hallmark of the social sciences beginning with sociology and anthropology. Its final and tragic victim is history so well known through centuries for its chaste, disciplined and unpretentious prose and timeless balance.

At a precociously young age, Ananda Pilimatalavuva heard stories of the family from his father which filled him with curiosity and a desire to seriously get to know more about their family. This gives the book we are reviewing its depth of genuine resonance. It was a processional saga. Each of the Pilimatalavuvas makes his appearance on the stage of history. It is a long saga but its pinnacle of glory was when Pilimatalavuva, the third Adigar, becomes the chief minister to the king. This was the acme of the glory of the Pilimatalavuvas, their finest hour culminating in the decapitation of the great Adigar himself. Ironically, it also heralds the beginning of the end of Sinhale as the Kandyan Kingdom was known for centuries.

It is a saga reminiscent of Edward Gibbon balancing heights of glory with the depths of pathos. It was a long dolorous period of the obsolescence of a great family, the slow descent to the final sepulchral vault where silence and oblivion reigned supreme.

As is so often the case in genealogy of illustrious families, the alpha point of origin is shrouded in a mix of fact and legend, difficult to unravel. The author narrates a beautiful story of how two brothers and their sister crossed over from India to Lanka in a boat, how the sister dies but the brothers land in Lanka and find their way to the Kingdom in Kandy which was their destination. It tells too, how the brothers made the golden image of their sister which was endowed with talismanic powers of sorts for which reason the image was at all times carefully guarded. Since they were of royal blood and since such visitations occurred every now and then a standard procedure was followed. In time, after several visits they were given land as well as the titular responsibilities of office that went with it. The land was called Pilimatalavuva and became their family name.

Ananda Pilimatalavuva's book is a rich resource but it is also a restricted parochial narration of the genealogy of a single family with its idiosyncrasies and sui generis traditions. One might ask what light could the narration throw on the larger society with its own diversities and stratifications. What was Kandy in the seventeen hundreds let alone in the century prior to that? Were such societies in a permanent state of immobility or atrophy? And what were their elements and built-in potentialities for change which would save this genre from obsolescence? However, it becomes evident that it is not a fair question to ask the author given his commitment to unravel the saga of the Pilimatalavuva family which in its very nature becomes a formidable occupation. As part of a critically important ambience, the author rightly focuses too on the Nayakkars and narrates how the radala elements of Kandyan society progressively became indebted to the Nayakkars who were by profession traders. They did vastly better than the traditional Kandyan aristocrats in a society that was becoming partially monetized with a market of sorts in commodities coming from either the maritime districts of Lanka or from South India.

The cash strapped radala elements began to sell lands in a market the Nayakkars controlled and monopolized. The Adigar Pilimatalavuva became one of the victims of this process. One might say in a near cynical way that this was not the ideal way for rulers to win friends and influence people. The enterprising Nayakkars knew better - namely that if you were by lineage and kinsmanship a part of a small caucus controlling political power as the Nayakkars were, these niceties mattered little. Insufferable arrogance and conceit was the mark of them all, best and tragically concentrated in the last of the Nayakkar rulers, Sri Vickrama Rajasimha.

In spite of its professed focus, Ananda Pilimatalavuva's book soon takes on the aspect of a national history to do with the Kandyan Kingdom, its sovereignty, territorial integrity on the one hand and the pressure of a new European power, the British replacing the Dutch as the new power occupying the entirety of the maritime districts of Ceylon and even more significantly possessing the ability to control their territories in India by exercising their proverbial naval power with its wide compass. Trincomalee once regarded as an integral part of the Kandyan Kingdom, became the key to British power in South and South East Asia. No longer could the rulers of the Kandyan Kingdom assert their claims to the sovereignty of the entire island. They did not have the power and the capacity to do so. Aware of this, the British (Colombo and London) leisurely bided their time. The ceding of Kandy in 1815 was in this sense, an anti-climax. The delay also had much to do with the way the British saw Adigar Pilimatalavuva as a sensible, pragmatic and mature statesman, a cut above his maverick volatile master.

The Adigar saw opportunity when all seemed lost. His basic strategy was to bring about an equilibrium (however uneasy) between the two entities, the British on the one hand and the Kandyan king. The tension would make each entity virtually inactive unable to really take a decisive initiative, unknown to the other. After 1796, each entity was dependent on Pilimatalavuva. It was by somehow manipulating the equilibrium that the Kandyan Kingdom in spite of the liability of the king, could keep the British at bay, retaining thereby more than symbolically its pristine independence. The two entities shared ironically a common asset which was the Adigar. The British kept in touch with him and consulted him on their modus operandi. Meanwhile, the king may have had some personal views of the Adigar but in the 1800s was more dependant than ever on him. For almost a decade, the Adigar maintained the uneasy equilibrium, loyal to the very last to the Kandyan Kingdom but not to the king. It would be a mistake for the historian to assume that the Adigar was a traitor.

The question remains, if so traitor to whom or to what? It is and continues to be in Kandyan histology a naive characterization, a rush to judgment of sorts. What Pilimatalavuva tried to achieve is best understood in terms of detente of modern times which in our own day and age has been a vital element in diplomatic transactions.

Pilimatalavuva was far ahead of his times.He was a modern man, reconciled to seeing opposites as the means of achieving equilibrium. It is surely deeply ironical that Sri Vickrama Rajasimha, the ruler of the Kandyan Kingdom should charaterize the Adigar as a traitor.

In this context the word 'traitor' simply meant someone who for whatever reason had contact with the enemy, meaning an enemy government. Sri Vickrama Rajasimha it transpires had personal trading links and associations with the Maritime areas under British rule. The British took this strictly in terms of trade. By Sri Vickrama Rajasimha's definitions it was hardly credible that he could openly and formally accuse Pilimatalavuva of acts of lese-majesty. Knowing more than any other Kandyan about what was happening on both sides of the divide, Pilimatalavuvava who could not have possibly made this point about the king's own involvement with the British, maintained the dignified noble silence of the perfect martyr.

As the phrase goes, 'the rest is history'. One of the problems I had with the book was that what was indisputably the unsurpassed climax of the author's narrative comes in the middle and is not choreographed to come at the end.

The author's description of the last hours of the great Adigar's life when he is summoned to the Audience Hall and the king begins to play the unusual role of the chief prosecutor is unsurpassed as narrative of the finest sort.

The king was a protege of the Adigar. The Adigar helped him. he should have known, given his great maturity and poise that the classic way to make an enemy would be to help a man who paradoxically would deeply resent because of the burden of obligation to the very man who had helped him.

Two books by Anura C. Perera

'Tarakaa Vidyawa' - Obe pilitura harida'

'Abyawakasha Vidyawa' - Obe pilitura harida?'

Published by 'Sarasavi

Publishers (Pvt) Ltd.

Reviewed by Thusitha MALALASEKARA

From the beginning of the human civilization, people have been curious about the heavenly bodies. The sky was a puzzle which the people tried to solve. Earliest men asked each other what are these moving objects? Why are they in the sky? How do they move? As they observed the sky they wondered about their meaning.

In order to explain these mysterious happening, different civilizations and cultures invented various theories. They thought these were gods who had influence over the destinies of men.

They commenced observing and calculating the movements of these heavenly bodies and after some time were capable of predicting the future movements of them. We have come a long way from those days and thanks to the invention of equipment such as telescopes, today we have a better idea about the sky and the universe. This is the science of Astronomy. According to the present knowledge we are not the centre of the universe, as people thought earlier. We are on a small planet revolving around a star which is only one of the millions of stars that have planetary systems of their own.

Picture presented by the astronomers today clearly demonstrate to us, how insignificant we are in this vast and infinite universe. The size and age of the universe are beyond ordinary human understanding.In a cosmic perspective most human concerns seems insignificant and even petty. Our future depends on how well we know about our universe in which we float like a speck of dust. Attempt made by Anura C. Perera to bring the basic astronomical and space related facts to the Sinhala reading public is very commendable. Even a basic knowledge of astronomy and space science will make us look at our world in a broader perspective. Anura C. Perera has been in the forefront of popularizing science and has written extensively from the sixties of the last century. With his close links with number of astronomical associations round the world he is well qualified to bring this vast store of data and information to the reading public in Sri Lanka.

Author has also put forward a new idea through his own observations that the five planets visible to the naked eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) are within one sign or closer and if the moon also travels to the same area of the zodiac, there will be atmospheric disturbances leading to changes in the weather pattern on earth.

In addition to the questions and answers both books consist of large numbers of illustrations which help the reader to understand the facts more easily. The historical sketch on astronomy at the end of the book also provides very valuable information to the reader.

Supplementary books for children

A series of supplementary books titled 'New Environment Studies' and 'ABC Easy Way with basic rules of English Grammar 'by Geraldine R. Piyadasa offer a good read as well as informative learning materials for children. The books are designed in such a manner that they appeal to the young readers. The "New Environment Studies", a series of books, gradually and effectively introduce concepts with pictures. In 'ABC Easy Way with basic rules of English Grammar' the author has introduced words and rules of grammar with pictures in such a way that it becomes a kind of game for children to do the exercises.

Revolutionary trails
 

T. Perera's "Revolutionary trails of Edmund Samarakkody: A political profile" has been reprinted and is available once again at Soorya Bookshop, Colombo 10. The book is published by the Social Scientists' Association. Edmund Samarakkody was a co-founder of Sri Lanka's first socialist party, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, along with Philip Gunawardena, Dr. N. M. Perera and Dr. Colvin R de Silva. Samarakkody was a political activist, trade union organiser, lawyer, urban councillor and Member of Parliament from 1952-1964. He rose to prominence when the first strike wave swept the plantation sector during the World War II. The author being a close associate of Edmund Samarakkody offers a close-up of the revolutionary against the background of significant events, movements and controversies.

How to help your child to learn
 

‘Daruvanta uganvanna vere darana Mavupiyanta’

Parents having realised the need to educate their children, sacrifice their hard earned money and undergo untold hardships including many anxious nights. The author of the book K. D. C. Perera queries whether all such efforts parents make, give desired results. In the hope of promoting their studies, most parents keep on threatening children in many different ways. He says that no amount of threats could motivate a child to learn, just as much as you cannot make an unwilling horse to drink water. Learning, he says, is entirely a different exercise. When high hopes end in disappointment, this again affects the innocent child who has to face future exams. The book tells parents how to help their child to learn, rather than being a threat or a nuisance. The book priced at Rs. 125 is an author publication, available at 38/1 Temple Road, Kalubowila.

'Butterfly Kisses'

Sri Lanka born journalist Sharmila Jayasinghe Niriella, domiciled in Australia, is launching her maiden novel titled 'Butterfly Kisses' in Sydney on November 6.

Prior to her migration she was involved in the print and electronic media both in English and Sinhala. She continues to be a free lance journalist in several international newspapers originating in Australia. Her maiden novel 'Butterfly Kisses' portrays the story of two women whose destinies are bound together by a child who was born twice in two different countries in Australia and Sri Lanka in different births. It is a story of rebirth or "Punarbhava" .

Her style of story telling is unique in that she takes the reader from one scene to the other as in a movie. The plot of the novel unravels slowly but steadily keeping the reader in suspense as to what the next move would be. Published in Sri Lanka by Sooriya Publishers' "Butterfly Kisses" is presented to a large elitist gathering of Sri Lankan, Australian and other nationalities in Rouse Hill Auditorium in Kellyville in New South Wales, Australia.