Complex web of relationships in an Asian extended family

Reviewed by Ranga Chandrarathne

Bami ha Bami is the maiden novel by Prof. Piyaseeli Wijemanne. Primarily the novel narrates the life story of a girl Shashi Pabha and her inconvenient passage from girlhood to womanhood in the context of a conventional middle-class Asian family.

Extended family

Although the story is about the protagonist Sashi Pabha and her miserable childhood and her life as a young girl, the backdrop against which the story unfolds is the extended family and the socio-economic environment in transition.

There are cursory references to the gradual collapse of feudalism and the emergence of new economic order signified by the liquidation of the properties of the landed gentry, migration (both skilled and non-skill categories). Migration of members of the extended family of the protagonist, almost, alters the life of Sashi Pabha as never before.

In a way, the turbulent events followed by the gradual disintegration of the extended family with the death of protagonist’s paternal grandmother led to her maturity.

Ever since the death of her father, an important role is played by the members of her extended family in general and her paternal grandmother in particular.

The novel commences on the 10th birthday of Sashi Pabha with uncle Sanju giving her a birthday gift. Sashi Pabha lives with her mother and her mentally retarded brother and that as later revealed uncle Sanju is her mother’s lover.

The girl grows up like a tomboy climbing trees and cared and loved by her paternal grandmother. Sashi Pabha’s paternal grandmother plays a vital role not only in her life but also in the lives of other members of her extended family.

First person narrative

The protagonist narrates the story, at times, as remembrances and at other times as unfolding events. Shashi Pabha’s accounts of events are interspersed with her rich recollections particularly of her paternal grandmother.

“I commenced studies in the Grade 7 with great interest after attending the Girls’ Guide camp held during the Christmas holydays…. In Gampaha, when we were engaged in such dangerous games, grandma would keep an eye on us. When I was very young, I had the opportunity of playing in a park during my stay at grandma’s in Gampaha. ”

It is obvious that from the very early childhood, extended family has played a vital role in the life of the protagonist Sashi Pabha. Since the death of her father, her paternal uncles, aunts and cousins occupy a central role in her upbringing and her mentally retarded brother. In a way, they have acted as editors of her life although circumstances and her social status greatly influenced her reactions.

One of the significant facts that the author seeks to establish is that one’s social behaviour, reactions to specific circumstances and development of a strong characters is determined by one’s class and social status. The author establishes the fact by way of a series of recollections and narration of the events from the perspective of the protagonist Sashi Pabha.

However, the author has taken great care not to make the character a proverbial victim of circumstances or victim of women’s oppression in Asian societies. The author has convincingly established the fact that Sashi Pabha has a strong character with a spirit for adventure. Most of the steps that she took in her life were unconventional by traditional yardsticks and by set behaviour for a girl or a woman in Asian society.

“I felt the time as well as events associated with my life disturbingly moving. My faithful relatives are drifting away from my life. It seems that I may not get any chance of getting close to them again.”

Although the protagonist’s character is strong, she also feels tremours of life and the inevitable factor of time which changes everything around her including her life and the lives of her uncles and aunts.

Factor of time

Time plays a prominent role in the narrative. For instance, the time frame of the entire narrative is within the period from Sashi Pabha’s early childhood to her maturity as a young woman. Towards the end of the story, the extended family disperses as most of her cousins getting into wedlock and going abroad in search of greener pastures, death of her paternal grandmother and the maternal grandpa. It is the time that brings about these inevitable changes almost reconfiguring the protagonist’s contemporary reality. As Sashi Pabha intensely dislikes her home, she makes friends and new social networks among the boarding mates and the host family. The author has skilfully made use of the individual life stories of the fellow mates to highlight the unstable economic conditions and uncertainties that they confront in their lives. It is the time and the allied circumstances that compel Shashi Pabha to enter into wedlock with Hasitha, the boarding master and widower with two children. The mosaic of events from her troubled childhood to her adulthood also marks the change of the milieu.

Impressive diction

Although the narrative is in the first person and the narrator of the story is the protagonist herself, the author maintains a diction which is demanded by the plot. The author has judiciously used both Sinhalese written and spoken idiom. Characterisation, language of characters belonging to diverse strata of society and sequences of the incidents are both convincing and natural. The title of the novel Bami ha Bami or web of ties is fitting on many counts. At one level, the novel chronicles the life story of the protagonist Sashi Pabha and at another level, it is about the web of complex relationships and dynamics of the traditional Asian extended family. If Martin Wickremasinghe explained the village in transition, Bami ha Bami captures the Sri Lankan extended family and the change of milieu which sees, towards the end of the novel the gradual disintegration of the extended family.

One of the significant features of the novel is the creation of dramatic situations. For instance, the incident where Sashi Pabha plays with a key of the motor bicycle is such an incident which cemented the relationship between Sashi Pabha and Harshitha. Prominent among the literary techniques that the author employed in the novel is Intertexuality. In fact, the background of the novel is the changing milieu and the evolution of Sri Lankan extended family and the support network. Bami ha Bami offers readers with an insightful novel which is not a mere the life story of a girl in trying circumstances.