Many affairs of an aristocratic woman

Gini kikili
Author: Dr. Nimal Sedera
A Sarasavi Publication

Reviewed by Vinya Kanchana

I purchased the Sinhala novel Gini kikili at the recent book fair at the BMICH. It was selected for three reasons. The cover was modern, the book was handy and the author was a veteran writer.

The story has its base in Hanguranketha and spreads its wings to Kandy, Colombo and to New York. The change of settings and flashbacks alone makes the novel lively. The author has personal experience in life to write a novel of this nature.

Siriya Panamure, the second daughter of an arisocrat family in Hanguranketha, has her basic education at Poramadulla and her change occurs only when she is exposed to a tuition class in Kandy where for the first time a girl in the tuition class addresses her as Gini Kikili and becomes a close friend. Her name was Mega. She is a key character in the novel and she provokes Sriya for a lesbian relationship.

Experience

Mega explains in the novel her experience of becoming a lesbian through an NGO affair. Mega later in life becomes a director of a international NGO and lives with a female British partner.

Sriya has three marriages in the story. Two of them were unsuccessful. The first one was an arranged wedding with a young man from the village where she was born. She remains a virgin even after three years of the wedding and that marriage ends due to a sudden stabbing incident. It was after this Mega enrolled her friend into the NGO she was working as a director and restores her lesbian affair again with Sriya.

Sriya changes her name as Sriya Erin Panamure in Colombo after her father's sudden death. The second affair she begins with an elderly media consultant of the NGO and leaves for New York and she soon becomes a fashion designer.

Mega even comes to New York to associate with Sriya. The age gap of Praneeth and Sriya distances them and Praneeth decides to allow Sriya to develop the love affair she begins with a black American. It was at this time Praneeth dies of a heart attack in Colombo on the very day he holds an interview to select a suitable partner at a hotel after a press notice.

Fashion designer

The third affair crops up between Sriya and the rich disabled owner Derick Allen of the business venture where she worked as a fashion designer. He embraces the Asian culture and Buddhist philosophy and takes a special liking to her and decides to come to Sri Lanka and marry her.

It is interesting to read how the members of Syria's family flock with her mother to the wedding. How the parents of her first husband attend the event and how Mega participates as a bridesmaid. Gini kikili would be an ideal story for a film and I presume had this been written in English it would have a tremendous demand in the west.