Mastery of the language props fictional unity

Author: Yamuna Malini Perera
A Kinkini publication
Reviewed by Somapala Arandara

The first portion of Yamuna Malini Perera's novel Ninnade reminded me of three literary works, namely, Gunadasa Amarasekera's Karumakkarayo, R.S. Karunaratne's Yatura which is a Sinhala version of Junichiro Janisaki's novel, The Key and Weraduna Tena, a purely pornographic book said to have been written by a well-known writer under the pseudonym, Rasadat.

Of these, Gunadasa Amarasekera's novel sent a shock-wave through the Sinhala readers with its radical approach of displaying the vulgar behaviour of a father and his two sons sharing the elder son's wife. This unorthodox sexual misconduct seemed to explode the very bedrock of morality in the traditional outlook of the Sri Lankan placid society.

The pornographic work Weraduna Tena did not make such an impact simply because it was distributed on the sly like blue magazines of the day. It narrated how two elite prostitutes seduced an innocent young man. And this book was popular among adolescents to a limited extent. I had a chance to read both these books way back in 1955 as an adolescent.

Direction

Ninnade confounded me at the beginning about the author's direction of thought. The first part of the novel was clumsy, meandering and insipid. The diary notes are too long and boring. I, however, reluctantly went ahead with my reading. Reading it half way, I began to guess what the author was driving at. Was it her intention to dramatise the reality of married life or attempt to analyse the social spectrum with a wider range of human behaviour with particular attention to the ever suffering women under the yoke of male domination?

Sasheek, the central character serving as the author's persona, is a seasoned womaniser with the aim of sexual gratification and exploiting his girl friends for money.

The character of Sasheek has a striking resemblance to that of Gino, the chauffeur in “The Woman of Rome by Alberto Moravia. Both of them are adept in flattering girls and seducing them.Nimna's own repentance with regard to Sasheek's carnal bent appears below:“Men are egoists.

I think he made a toy of me to satisfy his desires by pouring out the agony and suffering of his life. I had the fear that he would abandon me. After several encounters with him I became a puppet dancing to the tune of his passion. Why did he do such a crime to me? Sasheek is a mighty rogue.”

Sasheek and Manorama are a fitting couple like the man and wife depicted in Somerset Maughan's short story, “Hotsam and Jetsam”. In Sasheek's own words, “Mano is a wonderful girl, quite the foil of Nimna. Even as compared to manners and knowledge, Mano is higher, she being a pragmatist. She doesn't brood over dreams”. She is a dilettante. Moreover, she is a nymphomaniac. She had an insatiable appetite for sex.

There was a justifiable cause for that too. Her husband, Ginhan was sexually impotent. She says, “I had to come out with this fact openly as he and his mother went on vilifying me by spreading my faults.

I can't refrain from disclosing Gimhan's bad habits and misdemeanours. I was attached to Sasheek because of this estrangement.”

At another point, Manorama calls Gimhan “a pleasing figure to the world but an extremely dirty beast!” The professor in Junichiro Janisaki's The Key is a better dressed, cleaner husband who shrewdly creates situations for an affair between his wife and friend to get involved in a sexual relationship. He acts so benevolently because of his sexual impotency consequent to his old age.

Domineering girl

Nisala Niranjala is an equally conceited and intolerably domineering girl as Sasheek. She pricks the bubbles of his high hopes just as cunningly as he had deceived his girl friends.

Nirupa is the illegitimate daughter of Sasheek and Nisansala. When Dulaj recounts the details of her mother, Sasheek's disillusion dawns heavily on him. Sasheek is an incorrigible character. Although he makes a determination not to step in to that club again, yet it does not mean that he avoids his club-life altogether. This manifests his lewd frame of mind.

Yamuna's vision of life revolves round the issue of woman's place in a man's world. She tries to point out various ruses and tricks man uses to win over a girl to his own advantage, that is, seeking the fulfilment of his carnal desires. The mature woman in the writer describes love and life thus! “Love is a folly done at a particular stage of life. Love is used as a subtle method of satisfying one's sexual urge. Whether anybody agrees to it or not, that is the stark truth. One has to fulfil one's physical needs. It is this business that men and women do with their bodies. Eating, defecation, sleeping and seeking sexual satisfaction are all mechanical, subtle and opportunistic activities.”

The dynamic activist of the women's lib struggling in the writer aims at securing and safeguarding equal status with the aggressive males by unravelling the sex perverted indulgence in using women for the sexual purpose only. The role of wife and mother in the author with her weather-beaten wisdom and experiences tend to admit the frailties of women in the matter of sex.

Thus the overall intention of the author seems to be as follows: “However much educated and knowledgeable, every girl is silly in the act of love.”

Mastery

The author of Ninnade deserves a special word of praise for her mastery of the language. It is rather seldom that we come across a good piece of writing like this novel.

It embodies fine diction, correct idiom, accurate grammatical structures, allusions to classics and a host of visual similes and caustic remarks: Sadda Paetaw gaehillak (spawning of noises); gona pasupasa yana karatte wage (as the cart that goes after the bullock); Gaeeniyek wunama owa witarada ona ban? (Are only external comforts enough for a woman?); Issellama gaeeniyek suran kanne gaeeniyakma tamayi (First of all a woman is exploited by another woman); Wela deka kanna naeti wena kota me tiyena adare wena atakata sankramanaya wewi (When poverty enters through the door, love flies through the window). Like most of the present day Sinhala novels, Ninnade too, does not break the bounds of bourgeois or middle-class values. The writer is, however, successful in designing the form of diary notes.

Her point of view is character narration and the omniscient narration appears at some points. The author has skilfully managed to give fictional unity to her novel.

The numerous printing mistakes are irksome to the reader. And it tends to tarry the quick grasp of the contents. No proof-reading appears to have been done at all.