Scrutinizing complex human emotions

Tender hand sensitive to social transformations understanding roots :

Q: "That Deep Silence ", the collection of short stories and poems which is still in manuscript form, is a book with moving short stories. The title story 'That Deep Silence', for instance codifying the erosion of cardinal values which make Asian family a unique and strong entity. How do you analyze the present generation admiring material prosperity and financial gains against sentimental values?

A: We can not expect them to have the same values we had because their life style is different. To begin with their living under a lot of pressure and stress to achieve something in their schooling and they have to pass examinations and achieve something in this world and without which they are not secure.

I do not think time for much sentiments and value of preserve human relationship because they are in a kind of a rat race to find a place for themselves. With modern parents, both mother and father, working and grandmother and relatives not being in the picture, they haven't got that sense of belonging to a family as such. They are isolated and very often left with tutors and television for company.

That is their world today and so you can not expect them to value the things we did when we were young because the entire world has changed and becomes a global village. Their values have also changed. They are also, I find, much more independent and able to fend for themselves. I find that they are much more capable of being on their own and managing on their own and being without people unlike we were. We were dependent very much on others. They don't need that kind of environment that we had. They do not get relatives dropping in, aunt and uncle living with them. This generation communicates through cellular phones. They keep in touch through their phones and cellular phones glued to their ears.

Q: Traditional place in a house for grandparents has gradually been diminished and instead 'homes for the Elders' and paying homes for the elders have come up along with high rising apartments. How do you view this erosion of long held societal values and the collapse of leisurely life style of the bygone era and emerging of hectic commercial lifestyle which its entire purpose is earning money?

A: Because I know a lot of elderly people who are today all by themselves or they have been put in to homes because the younger generation just

cannot cope with looking after all the people and also managing their own lives.

They are working and most of them are intent on making money and establishing themselves and therefore they have no time for the older people.

Q: This process of distancing of relationship among individuals has further been grotesquely described in a short story "No Grass for my feet "in the unpublished manuscript. How do you perceive the collapse of the old life and de-humanizing isolation that individuals feel in modern society?

A: I am still lucky in the sense that my children are around me though the couple of grandchildren have gone abroad. But I know a lot of other old people who are completely isolated and most of their children have gone abroad. They are completely without family around them.

If I take the story alone, that was when, as I described, the grass was there because the land was available at that time and houses had wide gardens. We were living with our grandparents and we were part of a family; grandparents, our parents and relations. But today, we do not get that atmosphere. In that story, the character ends up in a condominium which today is the popular way of isolation up in the air. And of course families live in condominiums. This particular person is living alone because the family is not there. Still condominium as contrasts with old homes with gardens, is quite a different today because there is no grass for children to play. I find a lot of children in Colombo running to the Viharamahadevi Park in the evenings and they are running there with bare feet. So living today in Colombo has changed.

Q: As most of the great writers, you had been a voracious reader before becoming a prolific writer in English. You are the most matured writer in English in Sri Lanka and most of your novels including "Giraya" was made into a tele-drama. How did you commence your trailblazing literary career?

A: I have been a voracious reader and my mother encouraged me and she bought me books at various stages of my life beginning with stories leading on with Enid Blyton. She was a craze for young people and her story the magic far away Tree would have made many a child live a world of imagination. And from there I read Bronte sisters and then Pearl S. Buck and Somerset Maugham and from stage to stage I went on reading. In fact, one complaint was that my grandmother didn't not like my reading and she said "this girl is always with her head buried in a book".

I commenced my career with the reading and I was not very comfortable with speech when I was young. Even at school I found myself in difficulty freely talking with people but I could express myself better in writing. And I suppose that's a kind of invitation where I eventually end up.

Q: "The Third Woman" was a collection of short stories that you penned in 1963 by and large reflecting the life in Sri Lankan villages. Even at the time, mentioning of a 'third marriage' or man having three women in a conservative society would have been a radical departure from the widely held norms of the society. How do you consider 'The Third Woman 'in your literary career and does it mark a milestone in your career?

A: 'The Third Woman' was at the beginning of my writing career. Its good reception gave me courage to keep on writing and it was the beginning. I think that beginning of my trying to keep to what I want to say, now reality and truth.

I believe in writing the truth. That was the beginning of my style of writing.

Q: As your first novel " The Waiting Earth " is an important work which deals with a story of a landless farmer trying to possess a land in order to pass it on to his children as an inheritance. From where did you gather material for your novel or were you inspired by any incident or person to write the novel?

A: Story was inspired by the people of that period. I came to know that such people did exist because my father and grandfather had land and people were working on them. I also came to know women who were the silent and patient carrying heavy burdens without complaints. Women, who worked there on the land and perhaps, even in our home. Today, we rarely do find such people and may be in a way that is a kind of advancement in Sri Lanka.

Q: Perhaps, "Giraya" which was made into a tele-drama made you a household name not only among English readers but also among Sri Lankans throughout the country. What inspired you to pen the novel? And you have, for the first time, mentioned about homosexual relationship in the novel 'Giraya' and did you think about this aspect when you wrote the novel or did it find its way into the plot quite unintentionally?

A: I found it while wandering through the Colombo museum. That extra ordinary "Giraya", was with a head of a woman and hands clasped in a prayer and it gave me an idea and I was like possessed by that. I came home and I wanted to write a story on it.

As for the homosexual part in it, I did not invent it was in my own backdrop. "Giraya" is the only novel that did not need research. I think most of the material came from my own background. That is the Walauwa, a kind of house I lived. It was in Colombo. "Giraya" was also there but not in this shape. It was an ordinary one. It was used very often for arecanut slicing for my grandmother and my mother as well as use for cutting lime for "Asvaha" and other rituals. So that it is something I knew from my own background and mystic elements came naturally because my grandmother was superstitious and they did a lot of those ceremonies.

The homosexual part came from some one I knew was that way inclined. The story was imagination.

Q: 'Giraya' also reflects socio-cultural milieu and also relationship between member of the manor house and villagers. Especially Lucia Hamy is a character which etches in the minds of the readers although she is a mere servant in the house. How did you make these characters? Did you do research into village life before embarking on writing the novel?

A: In Village life, there was one similar to Lucia Hammy in my background. I only exaggerated.

Q: Although the inmates of the manor house in "Giraya" speak in English, they are deeply entrenched in superstitions. The element of superstition plays a vital role in the plot. Did you include mystic element into the plot?

A: Again from my background of my own where people in the house were talking both English and Sinhala, but also believe in these superstitions. I was also familiar with them from my childhood.

Q: 'The Rebel 'a collection of short stories written in 1979 and was based on the JVP insurrection. In retrospect, how did the 1971 insurrection influence you as a writer?

A: I felt its impact only when we underwent same kind of terror now in Colombo over bombs. There were no bombs then but there were shortages of food and shortages of drugs in hospitals because my own daughter had to enter hospital and we had to bring drugs down from abroad. JVP insurgents would patrol outside the hospital prevent workers from coming to work. There was a threat of water being cut in Colombo.

I was not aware this insurgency was to take place but the strange thing I remembered was Mrs. Sybil Wettasinghe and I went to interview just a day before it started. Girl students answered questions quite normally. Then we learnt they were also into this.

Q: "A way of life "which you wrote in 1987, is an important work in terms of its literary value and In terms of recollecting your life. As a matured writer who has witnessed the changes that country has been going through since the independence, how do you perceive your life? What is the philosophy which guides the course of your life?

A: I know the changes because my family was involved in politics before independence. I remembered we were under Colonial rule. I went to school managed by sisters from abroad. I felt having this resentment deep inside me that everything we had to eat, was imported just from abroad; tinned foods, toys. I felt a kind of a rebellion in the way we were living. But life has changed. Today I think we have a better balance between our own way of living and the West.

I have gone through a lot of changes, good and bad. We have lived with our back to the wall but I have never had the desire to leave the country unless I was compelled to.

Q: "Yukthi" (Justice) which came in 1991, is also a collection of short stories where you have been influenced by political upheaval culminating in the signing of the now defunct Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement. The main story is woven around navy officer who attacked the visiting Indian Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi. How do you view the entire episode and subsequent events which changed the course of the country?

A: I viewed the episode of the naval rating's unfortunate act with great interest. I followed all the newspaper articles. I felt moved by his feelings as if I too felt myself his feeling of injustice. He was a man who had fought against our enemy and almost sacrificed his life. Suddenly there are some changes being introduced into the country.

Unlike most people in Colombo I felt I had a feeling of sympathy with this naval rating who I felt had a reason to act in this manner. That he must have felt injustice that after having fought for the country, here the foreign intervention was being brought and it was insult for him to be a guard of honour for the Prime Minister who had come to divide this country.I wrote the story in the form of a court room where he is being judged. He was kind of standing up for the country. That was the chief story in the book.

But later on, I came across newspaper cutting of his own story and I was amazed to find it was very close to what I have imagined.

Q: "Amulet" is considered as one of best novels you penned. Besides winging the coveted Gratian Award, "Amulet" stands out on many aspects of life such as social adaptability, murder and incest. Is it born out of personal experience or a creation of your fertile imagination?

A: This to begin with, this was like a sequel to "Giraya" because I was asked to write a sequel to "Giraya". I found I could not do it because the chief character was dead. So I created "Amulet". Based on a mystic quality. It is a the story of a girl, who had been brought up like a potted plant in her own home and sent to her husband's home, she married later and took root.

But she was so protected like a potted plant so she did not know reality.

When she came to husband's house she was bewildered with what she had to come to terms with. It was there she found, to her horror, the husband's diary and read out what her husband had really been. He had had a incestual relationship with his own sister which was, to a large extent, promoted by their domestic aid to bathe together in one bath tub. Incest is followed by murder.

Q: What are your views on contemporary Sri Lankan writings in English and literary circles like the Wadiya Group of Writers, English Writers' cooperative, Galle Literary Festival?

A: I am happy today people are taking writing in English very seriously and which it was not there when I began writing.

There are many writers as today and many literary festivals. Today a lot of encouragement was given to writing which I am very glad. There are good writings and bad writings but generally we are progressing.