The Searcher, poems :

Poetic saga of survival and reminiscences

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The poet revisits the mileposts of memoirs of her idyllic days spent at the University of Peradeniya and turbulent period in which she had to part with her university colleagues for good and the life of solitude thereafter. By and large the anthology reflects on the life and times of the poet against the backdrop of changing socio-economic realities of the nation. It is these realities and the places, people that make the flesh and blood of the poems which in a way is a collective memory of the nation albeit from an individual perspective.

One of the prominent characteristics of the poet is the economy of expression and ability to relate life experiences to politico-cultural events of the milieu. At one level, the poems are individual experiences related from a highly individualistic perspective and at another level; they are the agonies and experiences of the masses. The characters that peopled the anthology are those who were known to the poet and at the same time, they are ambassadors of diverse social strata with their own world views and of different ideologies.

In most of the instances, it seems that the narrative poem is the poet's preferred mode of expression. Almost all the poems are either narration of personal saga of her survival or of people and incidents that made milepost in her personal history. However, most of the creations stand out for their organisation, use of appropriate metaphors, similes and brevity of expression. The poet has devised a beautiful yet insightful diction together with an equally attractive style which is appropriate for each poem. Her ideas seem to emerge effortlessly, unpretentiously from the bottom of her heart.

This is undoubtedly a piece of literature which can represent Sri Lanka beyond our shores.

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Reviewed by Ranga Chandrarathne

"The Searcher poems" is the latest anthology of poems by Parvathi Solomons Arsanayagam. The anthology is divided into five sections each making a defining phase in the life of the poet.

The poems under the sections of Lonely Peacock's Cry, Elephants, Yesterday's Postscript, and Paradise Lost, The Searcher and Soliloquies, deal with a wide range of topics ranging from socio-political issues to issues of identity and feminism. In the section "The Lonely Peacock's Cry", the poet sets the theme:

"I felt the sense of timelessness

In the exploration of my saga of survival

That night I heard the lonely

Peacock's cry, in the distance terrain

Piercing, penetrating my dreams,

This is a transitory mirage

an illusion of an oasis

for me the bare image of desolate climes,

empty stretches of paddy fields

in which they search for vestiges of grain"

It is this illusory "Peacock's Cry" which haunts throughout the anthology. The poet embarks on a journey in search of that "vestiges of grain" which is the saga of survival through a turbulent cultural landscape. Throughout the anthology, each poem relates to life-story of the poet and profound isolation that poet experiences. For instance, the poem

"The Monument" describes in most evocative manner the aftermath of violent youth uprising.

"The bus drifts through waves

Of afternoon light, as I return

After teaching the "other tongue to the

New students who have arrived

to resume their lives after the revolution"

..a cemented wall,

Memories of those departed

And I think of those invisible

Monuments inscribed in mind,

Remembrances for those who departed

Departed from those battle zones

Created by nameless assailants"

So soon forgotten those

Macabre enactments

Of a somber past..."

After the fresh term commenced students have "resumed their lives" six years after the "revolution", there is a concrete wall erected as a monument. The poet points out that what is most effective, however, are the "invisible monuments inscribed in minds".

Even those "invisible monuments in minds" would wither away with the passage of time.

As elegantly expressed by the poet, soon everything will be forgotten. "The Monument" is one of the evocative poems in the anthology. Apart from conveying the profound shock at the unfolded events and troubled time of the contemporary history of the nation, the poet has dawn on the readers the universal message that however profound and atrocious the calamity is, it will soon be forgotten and people would resume their lives. The poet uses simple diction and metaphors sparingly to arrive at the message and the poem concludes with a note of philosophy.

In the poem "The Village", the poet describes the pathetic situation in a village which has not seen the dawn of development and remains as it had been centuries ago.

One of the effective and memorable poems in this section is "Flowers-Harbingers of Time"; once again revisiting the civil war which upturned the lives of generations, the poet walks alone a familiar road that leads to the University of Peradeniya.

The flowers which evoke thousands of thoughts, have, here, been used as the most effective metaphor. It is the flowers which bring back the memories of the civil war which rocked the time.

"I feel my gaze seek flight with

The breeze that blow against this

Diverse landscape filled with subtle fragrance

Of violet convolvulus hedges

The stench of death then unknown

To my foolish perceptions".

I face the barriers and check a

points of this criss-crossed path

and encountered my own self-constructed

barriers, my own self imposed

silence as I witnessed the vicissitudes

of this civil war."

Here, the poet instead of mere narrating the events, analyses the way in which each faces the civil war with their own self "made confines and each has" spontaneous improvised scripts' of the unfolded events.

In the section "Yesterdays postscripts" the poet revisits the landmarks which make her personal or living history. The elegantly written poem "The past is scrutinised, the poet revisits the era of brutality and violence which consumed the lives of a generation. The poet recalls the memories of persons who survived in the "mindless violence".

"fossil fragments discovered

Of the once living caught

Up in the mindless violence

Which is now history

Of those forgotten eras

In this rain ravaged terrain"

One of the prominent characteristic of Parvathi Arasanayagam is her innate ability to create poetic situations out of seemingly insignificant events and to relate them to a landmark in the history. For instance the poem "The Past is Scrutinized" commences with "gleaming eyes" of survivors and the scene shifts to people walking on a rain filled road alone and the unearthing of fossilized remains of those once living who had been caught up in the "mindless violence". In "A Sense of Identity" the poet narrates her predicament of unable to find an identity in the journey of the survival. It is obvious that the poet's "Sense of Identity" has been shattered and there seems to be no port in the horizon to be called at. The last poem of the anthology "Survival", is also on the turbulent times in the aftermath of the youth uprising and a vanished colleague.

"I wonder what happened to those

Sewing machines your colleagues

Were to purchase for the halls,

To sew new chintz dresses for

the students,

or else listening to your quiet

advice, "do not trust everyone"

observing certain students

whom you did not trust

vanished, all of them,

vanished that past"

Without doubt "The Searcher, poems" is one of the best anthologies of poetry to emerge from the contemporary Sri Lankan literature in English. The poems are marked for their language and metaphor which is in Standard English. The poems are well grounded in the milieu and reflect the defining moments in contemporary political history of Sri Lanka. Among other things, the poet offers insights into the political issues such as the youth uprising, issues of identity, feminism and her personal odyssey of survival.

Display of brilliant narrative skills

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'Silver Lining'

A collection of Sri Lankan Short Stories in English

Author: Srimathie R. Weerasuriya

International Book House Publishers, Kurunegala

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Reviewed by R.S.Karunaratne

Many authors write short stories. However, have you ever asked yourself why you read them. The simplest and shortest answer we can give is that short stories provide us with pleasures of engaging the way the short story writer uses language to create a work of art.

On the other hand, by reading a short story we come to understand different characters including the writer himself. Literature is a form of invention and the short story writer is an inventor.

Unlike in the novel, a short story should contain only one connected episode. When there are too many episodes in a short story it fails to appeal to the reader. Although short stories fall into the category of fiction - meaning not real life situations - The measure of their success is how true are they to our emotions, how accurately they show the life that is lived by all of us. Therefore, every minor details in a short story adds to its strength.

More than a novel, we expect a short story to offer us a unity of life by focusing on a single episode.

This brief introduction to short stories was necessary in view of the book under review. Some of the stories found in the book are outstanding. For instance, "The door and Mr. Silva" is one of the successful short stories.

Here, the author has been able to maintain an uninterrupted suspense from the beginning to the end. Even the ending is so unusual that the reader will remember it."The awakening", another story found in this anthology, has a closely-knit plot and a theme that runs through all the events. It is a grim reminder to all young people that temporary satisfaction of their sexual desires and love without commitment can have serious consequences in their lives.

When an unmarried girl gets pregnant it is a serious problem for her and her parents.

"Sirisoma and Rathu" is a fairly long story with a neat plot. It is the story of a man who gets married to an elderly woman with six children. the protagonist, an unhappy soul in his own family, falls for a woman 16 years older than him. He helps her to bring up the six little children.

However, after the death of his wife, the grown-up children turn against him because he was not their natural father. This is a vert common phenomenon in our society. Yet the writer has managed to keep the reader in suspense through her brilliant narrative skills.

"Homecoming" treats another aspect of modern life. Today, children have no time for their aged parents. Mrs. Perera, an aged mother, decides to stay with one of her daughters. She is provided with all the creature comforts but her daughter has other commitments and priorities. Mother craves for her daughter's company more than anything else. However, the daughter is more delighted to spend her time with her peers than being with her mother.

In "The touch" a photographer falls in love with a woman whose husband is missing in action.

But Nilupa, the woman, does not give her consent to him. The story is beautifully crafted with restrained feelings on the part of the two characters. This is another successful short story.

Some of the other stories have not been successful. For instance, in "Youth" the author has tried to compare and contrast country life with city life. It is more a feature article than a short story.

The last story "The viper" looks like a report of a series of events. Even "The blouse" has an abrupt end. The reader might wonder what happened to the blouse!Like most books published locally, "Silver Lining" too has its own quota of typographical errors.

This could have been avoided.

Peep into complex human world

Reviewed by Padma Edirisinghe

Book: Butterfly kisses Author: Sharmila Jaaysinghe Niriella Published by Sooriya publishers

Armies, battalions, regiments - they power their way through. So do some books - that is along the mind. Of course, for a book to bulldoze through a mind it has to be very powerful..

One can begin to read a book with a prejudiced mind. Neither the cover design nor the title of the book under review appealed to me though the kid's face on the cover was very charming. No, it is not the reborn kid's or murdered kid's face. You are in for many more muddles. More prejudices. The author was almost unknown. Not even seen her byline in the newspapers. But strangely the book began an immensely power-ridden voyage across my mind even going on to make cracks on some beliefs hitherto held.

Over the course of years (countless years?) I had settled for the belief that Life ceases after Death never to be resurrected. Heretical, for a Buddhist, some would say but I just had no 100% belief in it. And here was an author, whom I personally learnt was not of my faith narrating a tale of re-incarnation in a most convincing way. It is a muddled motley of humans no doubt!

Shania, she is, the little heroine of the book, a 4-year old wisp of a girl. From Down-Under where the author herself is domiciled. Murdered by her own Daddy. Strangely Daddy's Girl she was known. Death reported as by drowning after which her Life or mysterious elements of the phenomenon called Life float across the oceans to a rural village miles away from Colombo.

One wonder of this book is that it is the re-incarnation tale that predominates while the Murder tale is underplayed and limited to a span of about 30 words that occur right at the beginning and right at the end, and that too in a an obscure way. That can be described as a master- stroke by a novelist just entering the field and foretells very bright vistas for the future. That affliction, verbal diarrhoea that amateur writers suffer from is totally absent here and no wonder, the blurb informs that the author is a long standing newspaper woman in Sydney.Never have I read a book twice for a review but this I did just to locate any sign of murderous tendency in Daddy but could not. He loved his autistic daughter deeply. Then what made him do it? Only cue I found was where he expresses his agony that once he and Christie, his wife are no more that the child would be utterly helpless.

Some years back I was handed "Fourteen cases of Re-incarnation" by Ian Stevenson for translation into Sinhala, which translation I never did for some now forgotten reason. But I read the entrancing book and came to these conclusions despite my shaken belief in the theory itself. 1. That most of those children endowed with Jathismarana wisdom (the wisdom of peering into past lives) have been subject to sudden deaths such as accidents or murders 2.

That they begin prattling about these past lives at the age of 3 or 4 as soon as they pick up the first words they hear 3. That the memories come back in a painful way as bouts of hysteria, in many cases 4. If it is murder that a family member is usually the culprit.

In such cases either the murderer goes free since no body suspects him or her or even if found out the matter is hushed up to evade scandal. It is obvious that the author has made use of the novel to compare and contrast the busy sophisticated life of urban Australia and the sylvan, sublime, relaxed atmosphere of a typical Buddhist village in rural Lanka. The white sands of temple compounds glistening in the silvery sheen of moon-lit nights, the no-leaves raining down with gusts of winds, the white clad devotees on Poya nights, the clay lamps lit in hundreds to honour the Blessed One, the saffron robed monks chanting Suttas of a 2500 year old vintage in a deep sonorous tone...these images are whipped up into a totality in the narrative when Christie (mother of dead Shania) comes over to Sri Lanka in search of her daughter now in new surroundings.

Her husband refuses to accompany her and you already know why. Dead, they say carry no tales. But the Dead reborn with Jathismarana wisdom can be very dangerous though no Courts take on their evidence.

All in all, it is a book that gives a peep into the complex nature of the immense human world and its knots and issues that lie unsolved despite all the scientific advances. It carries a tale well told via a rich vocabulary (proof reading wanting), tale of suspense yet pregnant with spiritual significance.

Good luck to the blossoming writer.

Book on 'Solar Eclipses' launched

Anura C. Perera, the well known science writer, who has won state recognition has created another world record with his latest book on eclipses titled 'Soorya Grahana saha Chandra Grahana'. This book was launched at the Kokeliya Army Training School grounds in Vauniya with the participation of a large number of academics and army officers when the eclipse was taking place.

Nowhere else in the world, has a book on solar eclipse been launched while an eclipse is taking place. The first copy of Anura C. Perera's book was handed over to Mrs. Rani Kumarasinghe, Regional Assistant Director of Education (Science) of Bandarawela, by Madusha N. Dedigamuwa, an active member of the 'Astronomical Association of the Ananda College', Colombo at 1.20 p.m. on January 15. A distinguished gathering including Col. A. Marasinghe, Lt. Col. Sudarmasiri, Lt. Col. Prassana Liyanage and many army officers were present at this book launching ceremony.

However due to the sudden death of his beloved wife Anura C. Perera could not participate at the observation camp and the activities connected with the launching of his book. Although he made it possible for the whole country to watch the eclipse he had to spend the time near his wife's coffin on this day.

It appeared to be an irony of fate and showed that no one can go against nature and the eclipse is also a part of nature.

The solar eclipse observation camp at the Kokeliya Army Training Camp in Vauniya was successfully organised by Dayasiri Perera an Amateur Astronomer from Bandarawela on the guidance of Anura C. Perera.

A large number of academics and army personnel participated at this Solar Eclipse Observation Camp and the book launching ceremony.

'Soorya Grahana saha Chandra Grahana' is published by 'Sarasavi Publishers', Nugegoda.