A novel with a riveting storyline

Reviewed by Edmund Jayasuriya

Senior journalist Karunadasa Sooriyaarachchi is also a novelist of repute. He has already written several novels and some of them have been shortlisted for the State Literary Award, the Swarnapustaka Award and the Godage Literary Award. Un Giya Den (lit. Let Them Go) is his most recent novel and is, I believe, quite different from his earlier works from both content and style.

Justin Wimalanaga, a surveyor now in retirement lives alone in a dilapidated, old house; his wife and daughter have migrated to Australia and his son, a doctor, is working in a hospital in a remote village of the country. As we begin the novel that is the backdrop that we are confronted with and, of course, there is nothing unusual in it. But as we move on, an odd series of events is exposed opening our eyes to a somewhat uncanny but a tragic human condition.

Living alone in an old house away from his loved ones, Justin has more or less reconciled himself to the situation. The ennui he experiences in his old age is piercingly depicted. The house that was full of warmth once is now desolate with no human voice; his only link to the outside world is the queer sounds made by a polecat at night living in the attic. But it too dies leaving him lost in a wide, bleak world. The tragic figure of a helpless man trying to endure what life has to offer him with resignation is portrayed reminiscent of Kafkaesque characters.

Burial

When his only companion dies, he removes the carcass for burial dragging the stinking mass to the courtyard. He digs a pit with difficulty and buries the body which seems symbolic of his own condition. Was he burying an ugly episode in his life?

Coming from the city Wimalanaga's son, the doctor finds the rural environment quite unfamiliar but finds a like-minded individual in the Head Master of the village school. A young man himself, he is imbued with a sense of altruism and wishes to help the village lads who lead more or less a primitive life. On the day after his marriage he brings two large tins of biscuits and with his wife treats the pupils with biscuits and tea with sugar. 'It was the first time some children had biscuits in their life and tea with sugar after a long time.

Mystery

It was our at-home.' So with the help of the doctor, he organises a health clinic for the lads to teach them at least the basic sanitary habits. It is here that Sobana, a young nurse in the hospital, and who is reputed as a good organiser enters the doctor's life.

So far the story seems simple and uncomplicated but it somehow envelops a mystery with a whodunit veneer to it. It is unravelled only at the end of the novel but I do not wish to go into it here. The tragic events that lead to the denouement are far more significant than the mystery element.

Essentially, the novel deals with the life of a community living in a remote village where 'civilisation' has barely touched. The villagers live mostly by hunting and the area is reputed as a place where girls are offered as domestic servants to the city, a business which the unscrupulous in the village carry on with impunity. A woman having sex with a man is as simple as picking a fruit from a tree. Just as there are no owners to trees in the jungle the stronger wins hands down.

Then there are the frequent suicides and abortions. This is why Sobana is reluctant to talk of her village where her mother, Siriya still lives and who in her young days was a domestic servant in the city.

As we read on we find that it was in the surveyor's house that Siriya found employment as a domestic servant. Wimalanaga's wife was a school teacher and mostly he worked in the jungles. At home for holidays, he found some solace through his relationship with Siriya who eventually finds herself bearing a child by Wimalanaga. Just five months after the confinement of the mistress of the house the servant girl too is with child.

'I vomited in the bathroom but she vomits under the goraka tree for the whole village to hear. I wonder whether other things too happened under the goraka tree! How could I face my colleagues in school? When I asked her she told me that she vomited because she ate a goraka fruit. She little knows that I too am a woman who had vomited twice in my life...Not only her but everybody around here seems to deceive me.' And so the argument goes on between the surveyor and his wife.

Shock

At last the reader finds that Sobana is Wimalanaga's child by Siriya. The real shock comes when he finds that the doctor has actually married his half- sister. But let me hasten to add that this revelation is not the most significant aspect of the novel. This is certainly not detective fiction but deals with a fair segment of contemporary life, both middle-class and rural.

It opens our eyes to tragic events which we usually tend to sweep under the carpet. It shows in a heart-rending way how people become victims of circumstances and are forced willy- nilly into certain situations in life from where there is hardly an escape.

In narrating the story Sooriyaarachchi employs a prose style adapted from the local dialect. It helps him to convey the hidden nuances in the local idiom and portray the atmosphere. His simple, lucid prose captures the essentials in a situation with a few brush strokes as it were.

In the end of the story Wimalanaga visits Siriya in her village. An arduous trip for a man of his age, he treks along mountainous terrain and reaches her hut with the help of a villager. Siriya cannot believe her eyes. Now old and sick, Wimalanaga is only a shadow of his former self. He leans on the bed, tired and exhausted.

Human warmth

Noticing a wound in Wimalanaga's big toe Siriya strokes it. His eyes were closed but she notices that they were blinking. She continues to stroke the wound gently. Again he receives some human warmth from Siriya.

Both share the secret of their children. And she vows that no one will ever know it and that it will die with her.

This final meeting is portrayed with much sensitivity.

As I observed earlier the novel has many aspects to it. Above all it portrays love and sympathy and human behaviour. As Sooriyaarachchi observes in his preface life is a complexity, not a single clean-cut entity.

The novel focuses our attention to this complexity with a riveting storyline.