Campus life fictionalised

Milina Novu Aravindayak
Author: Abhaya Weragoda
Sarasavi Publishers, Nugegoda.

Reviewed by Kalakeerthi Edwin Ariyadasa

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom, into this liberal form.
Karl Wilhelm Schlegel
(1772-1829) German poet.

The ever-evolving landscape of university life is a pulsating, throbbing and ceaselessly vibrant cornucopia of resource-material for those who yearn to produce fiction. It is not every one, who threshes, one's campus experiences into a bumper harvest of compelling fiction, though they may have lived to the hilt the enchanted existence within the imposing portals of these institutions of privileged learning.

The average undergraduate arrives at the campus equipped with an ultra-sensitive mind-set. With the exception of a very rare precocious cynic, in youthful years, the general, tender wisdom seeker approaching the yearned for ivory tower, brings to his pilgrimage a keenly heightened alertness. His initial encounter with the shrine of lofty intellectual promise, is invariably tinged with awe and an unidentifiable stirring within the inner recesses of the soul.

Juvenile souls

Each little sensation, the stray snatches of conversation, those ordinary sights and sounds elevated into halo-adorned nuggets of cherished memory transforms the mind of this fresh novice, into a sacred casket of deeply etched emotional residues, that would, in most instances, last a life-time.

All these campus -haunting juvenile souls, compose their works of fiction, prodded by the fascination this new habitat has inspired.

But, in later years, when the harsh realities of the work-a-day world drive the ex-fresher, goaded by the inescapable imperatives of life, the incipient campus novel within him dies unborn, without ever seeing the life of day.

I have come upon an impressive exception to this generalisation, in the ex-fresher, ex-civil servant, ex-lecturer and ex-private sector executive, but parpetual humanitatian social worker and spiritual activist-Abhaya Weragoda.

Fiction

His work of fiction Milina Novu Aravindayak (The Unwilted Lotus) is an exuberant soul adventure that recreates his campus days, with meticulously detailed attention to the time past, when he was an undergraduate at Peradeniya University. He relives his freshman life communicating vivid “moving” picture of those by-gone days, re-kindling the intimate sensations that enlivened the youthful spell at the campus, by the side of the Great Sandy River.

I would not hasten to classify this work, as an autobiographical fiction-effort, since it is just much more than that. It is a piece of docu-fiction and a meditative self-reflection.

Chronologically the narration is set in the 70s. When one glances retrospectively at the campus life of that time, one cannot help but be intrigued by its archaic appeal.

Heritage

In total contrast to the frequent tsunamis that agitate the life led at today's campus-contexts, these recalled days at Peradeniya may seem a tranquil oasis or hermitage. Those tense inhabitants in some of the campuses today, may even suspect Abhaya Weragoda's university to be a time – wrap.

Abhaya narrates his campus story, with three characters as the focal points. They ‘hail’, if that is the right expression, from three distinct areas of the island.

Humour

In the course of the exchange of their uninhibited banter, the trio are branded as Paththaya, Udaya and Bayya the monikers denoting where they belong by birth.

Leaving the reader to be regaled by the intriguing events, episodes and instances recorded by Abhaya Weragoda, with a keen eye for the humour-eliciting situations, I find it important to look at some sociological aspects of this Varsity chronicle.

The novel can very effectively be utilised as an efficient benchmark to measure the subsequent evolution of campus life.

A comparative study could be made about the values and the mores, that activated the life-levels at the campuses in the eighties, nineties at the turn of the century in the first decade of the twenty second millennium.

The campus millennials can view the past styles of life at campus, making this novel the measuring instrument.

There is a special – seemingly ego-prodded – point I feel should be made here. Sri Lanka's campus life-style, originated in the 40s and the 50s, when the first undergraduates of Sri Lanka's first university, created-knowngly or unknowingly – the template for campus behaviour. We were among those campus pioneers. Abhaya Weragoda's campus life in the 70s seems to have travelled some way beyond the 40s and the 50s.

Human chronicle

As for his novel it is a highly readable human chronicle. Though the author in a formal disavomal clams that the characters are entirely fictitious – the main role player Gnanatilaka was a living presence at the ceremonial launch of this work.

Abhaya Weragoda, is to my mind, a born raconteur, and is an expert at keeping the reader's attention fully focussed on what he narrates.

His episodes – the rickshaw honeymoon for instance form an indelible etching in the reader's mind.

The novel's carefully composed details about various personalities, enhance the appeal of the novel.

It is an unwilted-living fictional lotus.