Kandak Sema, a shift of old fairy tale

Reviewed by Saman Wickramarachchi

Translated by Ranga Chandrarathne

I thought of writing on Sumithra's novel as I saw it victimised in award lists. It is a tragedy that a book is victimised just because it got an award. One would be thoroughly disappointed when hearing cheap arguments at the pavement level. I think that Sumitra's book has not been objectively appreciated because of the awards' fray.

In Sri Lankan context, literary awards can be considered as the place where jouissance of the writer is identified. In Lacanian discourse jouissance is described as a limit to enjoyment. Beyond the limit of pleasure principle, pleasure becomes pain and this painful principle is what Lacan calls jouissance. Thus jouissance is suffering. Therefore, winning or not winning an award would cause pain of mind. However, the fact most of us forget is that the award will judge the 'Art of Reading' on the part of the award panel.

A year passed since Kandak Sema was published. I read it just after it had been out. I read it again to write this piece. When I read it again, the idea struck me whether how many would have read the book. Sri Lankan High Commissioner in Thailand, Prof. J.B Disanayaka who conferred the book the Swarna Pushtaka award together with Rs.5, 000,000, confessed that he did not read the book. When Godage Award was presented to it, what K.Jayatilake whispered Sumitra would have been that he also did not read the book. If we consider 'reading' as something more than physically reading a book, it is doubtful whether the members of Swarna Pushtaka Award panel had actually read the book. If it wasn't the case, the Chairman of the Swarna Pusthaka award panel Nihal Singh would not say that the award was given to the book as the book was a result of meticulous researches by Sumithra Rahubaddha. It was in this context, I re-read Sumitra's novel. That is to say that I have re-read Sumithra's reading on Japanese society.

When Slavoj Zizek wrote on James Cameron's film Avatar, he found something new in 'Titanic 'which was also a successful production by Cameron. In Cameron's previous blockbuster, Titanic, really about the catastrophe of the ship hitting the iceberg? One should be attentive to the precise moment of the catastrophe: it takes place when the young lovers (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet), immediately after consummating their relationship, return to the ship's deck. Even more crucial is that, on deck, Winslet tells her lover that when the ship reaches New York the next morning, she will leave with him, preferring a life of poverty with her true love to a false, corrupted life among the rich.

At this moment the ship hits the iceberg, in order to prevent what would undoubtedly have been the true catastrophe, namely the couple's life in New York. One can safely guess that soon the misery of everyday life would have destroyed their love. The catastrophe thus occurs in order to save their love, to sustain the illusion that, if it had not happened, they would have lived "happily ever after".

In Kandak Sema, Nupa marries an old Japanese farmer Masaya. After the marriage, Masaya flies back to Japan. Nupa goes to the airport with an agent. Let us now, write Sumithra's story again. The flight carrying Masaya explodes midair due to some reason. Then Nupa's dream of marriage also shatters. The illusion that left behind when Titanic hits an iceberg will leave for her and her family members. As such a catastrophe would not occur in the novel, Nupa has to face the real catastrophe. But Sumithra did something which Cameron didn't do. That was to present Nupa's super ego in the form of narrative intervention into the chain of events. Therefore, it seems that Nupa is a willing victim of the circumstances.

Nupa is a Sri Lankan girl who faces with an identity crisis. Jananatha, her lover coerced her into sex. Here, Sumithra recalls her super ego and makes the entire episode a joke. Masaya helps her to find an objective and build up her identity again. But in a world of symbolism, her hopes shatter into pieces.

Nupa and her family are in a fantasy. Their fantasy cannot be separated from the world of symbolism. As soon as Loku Prema dies, Nupa's sister forces her mother Podi Prema to register the marriage with father because they highly value the symbolic marriage as fantasy. When we try to separate reality from fantasy, the reality will suffer. Zizek says it is not incorrect to select one from either reality or fantasy. If we want to change social reality or to escape from it, the first step that we should take towards that end is to change our fantasy in accordance with reality.

Why Nupa has been disenchanted with the life, she has to lead in Japan? Her super ego reminds her that if she lived in Sri Lanka and seduced by a man, she will have to be contended living with a drunkard husband. But, she leaves the country after attending her mother's funeral and almost about to have sex with a man, not with a contended mind.. There is no barrier for any one to arrive at credulous conclusions that her negative perception of Japan is formed as a result of her being married to a domineering Japanese farmer in Nigata and the said farmer violated her rights. Members of the award panels who presented Sumithra with awards would have thought that Sumithra had done a lot of research and portrayed the Japanese society.

What these panelists could not think about was that the origin of Nupa's disappointment was not only the reality (symbol). However much this reality would be perfect one, it would later make her disappointed. Such a perfect fantasy would make us frustrated because of its very perfect nature. Japan is an ideal place for such a perfect fantasy. What that perfectness signalled Nupa was that it was not what she thought of. This perfect fantasy collapsed before her eyes;

"I am going to Tokyo"

"Sora son, why are you disturbed? Tokyo is the capital of Japan. When you get into the electric train from Sanjo station, in less than two hour's time, you can reach Tokyo. Buy a ticket for me. Sora son, don't shake in this manner "

"Tokyo is a big city"

"I am going to Tokyo to become a Geisha"

"Nupa, you cannot become a Geisha overnight. Geisha is a trained artist. She does not engage in sex. I am not saying about our prostitutes. You have to learn from the childhood to become a Geisha. It is an art. Don't misunderstand our culture. Can you play the flute? Play Shamisen?, drums? Can you sing traditional Japanese folk songs? The dance from the beginning to the end of Japanese tea ceremonies. Nupa, Ghaisa is not a prostitute. "

What we have to understand is that Nupa's ideal ego is her imaginary Japanese society. It does not tell Sora son's perception of Ghaisah. It is as if Nupa son herself expressing her perception of Japan. But what Nupa son does see in Japan?

We can learn it from Slavoj Zizek. He wrote 'Japan through a Slovenian Looking Glass". In the article, he said Japanese society is ambiguous. ....

"You say no to your wife in one way, no to a child in another way. There is not one negation. There exists a small Lacanian volume, 'La chose japonaise.' They elaborate the borrowing of other languages, all these ambiguities. Didn't Lacan say that Japanese do not have an unconscious?

For the West, Japan is the ambiguous Other: at the same time it fascinates you and repels you. Let's not forget the psychological cliche of Japan: you smile, but you never know if it is sincere or if you are mocking us - the idea of Japan as the impenetrable Other. This ambiguous politeness. What do they really want? There's also the idea of the Japanese as the 'ersatz' Jews for the Americans. The Japanese governments together with two, three mega companies plotting. All this spleen, this palette of fantasies, is Japan for us. But what surprised me is that authors, whom I considered strictly European, are widely read in Japan, like for example George Lukacs. "

Even Devendora son in Sarachchandra's Malagiya Atto was attracted to this ambiguous society. There is phantasmic Japan within the Japanese reality. Slavoj Zizek says "And again, it can work both ways. What I like about fantasies is that they are always ambiguous." Not only Nupa who searched Japan in the farming village of Niigata but also Sumitra has also fallen into trouble. We cannot help the judges who presented Sumitra awards and who have also fallen into trouble.

However, it does not mean that Sumitra's novel deserves no awards. Sumithra's narration is a well crafted matrix. She recreates Nupa 1 and Nupa 2 simultaneously. Such a narrative practice is seen in Liyanage Amerakeerth's novel 'Atavaka Puttu'. But Sumira creates her Nupa 2 through stream of consciousness. It is this Nupa 2 that I perceive as Nupa's super ego. When Nupa tries to create a perception of Japan and tries herself to fit into it, her super ego intervenes and tries to take her to reality. There is no option but hapless Nupa to be a victim as reality is also a perception.

Kandak Sema is a displacement of old fairy tale. In the story either the princess will have to marry an ugly frog prince or poor Cinderella be able to win the heart of a handsome prince defeating her cruel sisters. James Cameron's Avatar is a film believes this fantasy. Accordingly a white boy marries aboriginal Princess in Pandora and fights against the whites. Ideologically, this an old feudal story.

What Sumitra does in the novel is to pace the old phantasmic story in symbolic. Symbolic is definitely a linguistic criteria. Subject is reduced into a culture by suppression of desires in order to be happy. Since culture is invariably semantic, Nupa's life can be divided into two stages:

1. Pre-marital sex with a young man and became pregnant

2. Attempts to economically liberate herself and her kith and kin by marrying to a rich Japanese farmer.

The first stage is the curse on the princess in the old story. Thereafter, she is subjected to tests. In order to live with a rich farmer she will have to pass the tests. The decisive moment of this test is Nupa becoming pregnant due to someone else (Sunimal). Novel ends with note of happy , coming back to the old story.

It ends in the following manner:

"I went up to Man Chan. I handed over my life to old man. To this great man. I crossed seven seas seeking your refuge"

"Forgive me for all what had happened" , I pleaded Man Chan folding my hands together.

"Give me a kiss", I pleaded in faint voice

"I can give you so many kisses"

"But, will you kiss me!"

Man Chan took my hand with his shivering hands. We looked into each other's face standing on a line demarking past and future.

"Darling, sit on the mat! " The concluding wording is a kind of linguistic derailment. The phantasmic-ness in Sumatra's language , has shifted to a pure old love. This line of demarcation is only existed in imagination. It is like Moebius Strip become one at a certain point. One who runs the finger alone the Moebius Strip realises binary oppositions inside /outside have vanished off.

We like to perceive society and life through binary oppositions. (What Jacques Derrida deconstructed was this binary opposition which is the basis of Western Philosophy). But we have to read a life and society with a blurred line of demarcation. Nupa as well as Sumitra knows the folly of dividing time as past and future. Since we like to be disavowal, we would like to have a line of demarcation. This is the politics of Sri Lankan literature.

A novel that turns on lights and opens windows

Reviewed by R.S. Karunaratne

Daya D. Fonseka's 'Teheranaye Sirakariya' is the authentic Sinhala translation of Marina Nemat's 'Prisoner of Teheran'. It is a woman's story of survival inside a torture jail.

The novel has been the favourite of both writers and readers for more than 200 years. By writing a novel, the author tries to create the sense that while we read it we experience actual life. In other words, he creates a fiction. The problem with 'Teheranaye Sirakariya' is that it is not a fiction. It is claimed to be the true story of a prisoner.

Teheranaye Sirakariya Author: Daya D. Fonseka Sarasavi Publishers, Nugegoda

The term 'novel' is not applied to Jonathan, Swift's marvel-filled Gulliver's Travels'. Gulliver encounters pygmies, giants, civilised horses and noxious humanoid swine. As these are incredible, 'Gulliver's Travels' is not considered a novel. Probably Jonathan Swift himself did not want to write a novel but a satire based on man's close kinship with the beasts.

In order to decide whether 'Teheranaye Sirakariya' is a novel, we have to consider a modern definition of the novel. Today the novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the time in which it was written'.

Accordingly, the sense of the actual is the hallmark of a novel. Novelists have used many devices to achieve this sense of the actual. Some novelists wrote memoirs and autobiographies. Daniel Defoe, in fact, wrote a novel which included true confessions of a woman who had given up a life of crime.

Viewed against this definition of the novel 'Teheranaye Sirakariya' can be called a 'non-fiction novel' because Marina Nemat presents actual people and events in story form. Truman Capute wrote a similar novel based on the account of crime and punishment in Kansas.

He wrote it after interviewing the accused and others involved in the crime.

We have had a few non-fiction novels in the recent past. For instance, John Hersey's 'Hiroshima' reconstructed the lives of six survivors of the atom bomb. The author presented the literal truths so well that his 'non-fiction novel' had an air of immediacy. The same sentiments can be expressed about 'Teheranaye Sirakariya'.

Authors write novels grounded on facts probably to reform the world. For instance, Charles Dickens's novel roused Victorian readers to protest injustices in orphanages, asylums, boarding schools and prisons. Marina Nemat also exposes the dark side of prisons where human beings are treated like beasts. As the celebrated French novelist Jean - Paul Sartre says, some kind of political commitment is necessary to write such novels.

'Teheranaye Sirakariya', as if by turning on lights and opening windows, helps us behold aspects of other people and of ourselves. It opens our eyes to the stark realities of man's in humanity to man. After reading the novel a sensitive readers is sure to be disturbed by the first person narrative.

Daya D. Fonseka has done justice to the original novel published in English by translating the story in the spoken langauge.

The story flows smoothly facilitating the reader to comprehend it easily. After reading 'Teheranaye Sirakariya' you will come to the conclusion that novel reading is not a waste of time. It is one of the effective ways to understand the world and its inhabitants.