Focus on flip side of people and events

Monsoons & potholes
Author: Manuka Wijesinghe
Published by Perera Hussein Publishing House

MANUKA Wijesinghe abounds in and revels in irreverence, ribald wit, humour, caprice, blasphemy, fabrication, eccentricity, lively fancy, in a huge binge of creative imagination, on a hard drive into her childhood, in this most exhilarating of autobiographies, called Monsoons and potholes.

One moment she seems true to life; the next she is on a flighty verbal vimana, with her god figure and icon, Ravana.

In this turbulent, and exciting trace of growing up in Sri Lanka Manuka portrays and interprets concepts and events, the meaning of which seems to have troubled her in those formative years: karma and chromosomes, Nirvana and heaven, horoscopes and destiny, Buddhism and Christianity, politicians and people, capitalism and socialism, Left, Right and Centre Left, Sinhala Only and Tamil Also, and comes down to earth, where sometimes chronology seems to kiss anachronism!

With whom do you think? Mrs. B [being Manuka, the name deliberately misspelt], JRJ and the exasperating conundrum of Sri Lankan politics in between.

A wilful child born after the Bandaranaike plus era, she is what she is. Like this. Playright, writer, actress, dancer, teacher, linguist fluent in Spanish and German, wife , mother of two and a prime admirer of Ravana!

She gives you her interactions with a parade of real beings, showing up their characters, behaviour in that particular milieu, making even monsoons look interesting and unheard of mukunuwenna sandwiches an item of food!

Potholes

Thathi, an engineer, quiet and bemused, dedicated to potholes, which Manuka says deadpan, he measures, examines for their texture and moods!

Ammi, a pragmatic, survivor/matriarch, down to earth and painted as painting her toe nails too often. Big brother, would you say with a tinge of jealousy, brilliant student, musical genius, budding cricketer presented as practising his strokes before the mirror!

A love /hate relationship if ever there was one and Manuka pokes fun at him with glee calling him T W Mozart!. A soft word for the endearing nenda, beloved baby brother and Podian, all entrammelled in the doings of grandparents relatives and domestic aides.

She hugs and ferrets about in the social fabric of her childhood at No.58 [with copulating ghosts she hallucinates about] and No 186, Cemetery road, the house nearby Kanatte, which found the family.

Soon she infiltrates into the political turbulence of the time, with her individualistic, idiosyncratic, subjective and oftentimes incisive interpretation of events and people.

It has a momentum of its own- not narrative, not smooth, not jumpy but flowing dramatically, with a highly readable connectivity which may leave you in fits of laughter, find you shaking your head in agreement or disagreement.

You will be irritated, dismayed but you will find her stylish, individualistic writing rather riveting.

Courageous enough to say what she felt about people and events, there is never a dull moment. Karma [which engaged her mind so much] has endowed her with a sovereign gold sense of humour, a sharp eye and a great creativity, even though she felt that big brother outshone her all the way.

Astonishing memory

She listens with her eyes, but remembers with an astonishing memory the fine observances she makes with a refined sensibility.

But oftentimes she takes pot shots, throws stones, rotten eggs and tomatoes and even spit balls as children do, and the oft recurring karapincha leaves at people-remarks which could cut to the quick or be embarrassing.

There she goes from the cradle to the flight into the outer world.

But the worst of the barbed cracks are at herself as she describes herself in the most ungracious terms: flat nose, dark skinned, coarse hair and nothing like her brilliant brother.

All of it goes with a smirk in the hands of this wild tramp, questioning arguing her way through the extended family, rebelliously. Nor could you ignore the blasphemy. Going to school was a bore, discipline was a pain and coming of age rituals were idiotic.

She pitches into Mrs. B's regime wickedly and calls it the seven year itch. Everything underwent condensation and minimization she says.

Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Zoology disappeared into a nutshell called General science. History, Geography, Ethics mutated to Social studies. Sinhala history was condensed into the condensed milk tin which had a picture of Parakrama Bahu V1!

With her sharp humour she calls the One day cricket match well ahead of its time, an extention of Mrs. B's minimisation!

The oddities, deformations, peculiar economic formations which brought shortages, queues, rice barriers, nationalisation of newspapers and other entities, repatriation, the mockery of non-alignment, and the emergence of the JVP which she calls the `red fungus' are lined up to take their punishment.

And rampant minimization leaves empty co-ops.She sees all this with deadly accuracy, though with some exaggeration.

Mrs. B comes and goes; Dudley gets a grand funeral and the hypocrisy of JRJ's dharmishtaness arrives. Creeping Eelaam is already on the way and the country is at the point when from the Left of Centre the country was turning Right before it turned nowhere! But not before in this melee, Ravana, and Arthur C Clarke take a tumble in space.

She takes huge liberties with people and history, and has a feisty twist to the way she describes them. But it is tantalizing.

Such a lot of ideas, happenings , themes, the Hindu pantheon, the Lion and the Tiger, falling in love, mainly with love, Thathi's red Bolshevism which nenda mistook for the Bolshoi, and even pregnancies jostle each other. You can hardly keep count.

The July 1983 riots shatter her, leaving her sorrowing, bitter and drained making both nationalism and Buddhism meaningless.

Her exuberance takes a dip as she faces the reality and cruelty of the world and the crazy trip to the cemetery to watch the funeral of the 13 dead soldiers brings home the danger in all its vividness. A deep sorrow overtakes this young girl.

Manuka describes the impact the killing and looting had on her and her comments are naturally harsh and she wept for it all, and for a very personal loss.

And she went out into the world.

- Mallika Wanigasundara

Pay attention to your spiritual life: be wiser

Vishvaye Yovun Niyamuvo
Author: Menike Sumanasekera
Author publication
27A Malwatte Road, Kohuwala, Nugegoda.
160pp Price Rs. 175

VISHVAYE Yovun Niyamuvo is addressed to the younger generation. Menike Sumanasekara plays the role of mentor giving advice to them on various matters. She explains the meaning and purpose of human life so that the young will not go astray.

Written in the spoken language the book can be read easily by any child who has had some elementary education. Without preaching to them on high moral principles the author tells them the bare essentials needed to lead a meaningful life.

For instance, in the first chapter the author invites the reader to understand the meaning of the universe.

Man is the most wonderful creation of the universe. However, children who have had no education find human life to be something to be wasted away.

Smoking, drinking and gambling are perennial problems the young people have to grapple with. If they are not advised on the dangers of smoking, drug taking and gambling, they tend to experiment with them.

Many young children are made to believe that education means book learning and filling their minds with facts and figures. In the 5th century B.C. Greeks believed that education included lessons on spirituality. No man was thought to be educated unless he was on a higher spiritual plane.

Spiritual values have taken a back seat in the modern set up of education. Children are trained to compete with others to get highly paid jobs without paying any attention to their spiritual life.

Vishvaye Yovun Niyamuvo fills a vacuum in the modern educational system. The emphasis of the book is mainly on spirituality.

One advice imparted by the author is that you should not leave everything to computers. Author says that the human mind is unlimited in its resources. If we understand these basic principles, we can undoubtedly lead meaningful lives.

While giving such useful hints on life, the author takes the reader on a guided tour of history. She says, Abraham Lincoln's letter to his son is full of wisdom.

The letter requested the son's teacher to make the boy aware of the facts of life. For instance, people are different. All are not honest. You must be able to face victory and defeat. What is more his son should be able to respect humanity.

The book upholds the value of living in a diversified society. The message is unity in diversity. People have different religions, different cultures and languages. The young should be educated to respect such diversity.

However, what happens in real life is that children are taught to differentiate and condemn other cultures, religions and languages.

Many books of this theme are available in English. As a result English educated children tend to be more broad minded than others who know only their mother tongue.

If for some reason, children cannot read such books in English, Menike Sumanasekera has brought wisdom to their doorsteps by writing Vishvaye Yovun Niyamuvo.

Any child who happens to read this book will become wiser than others.

- R.S. Karunaratne

In-depth study of multi - faceted author who wrote village in the Jungle

Woolf in Ceylon
Author: Christopher Ondaatje
Published by Harper and Collins : Canada
Sarasavi Bookshop, Nugegoda

"IT is true I am cold and reserved to other people; I admit I don't feel affection ever easily, but apart from love, I am fond of you as I've never been of anyone or anything in the world.

I love you and adore you and worship you and I never want anything else in the world than you. You don't know how many times a day I think of you and always with a longing to see you and kiss you."

Extract from a love letter written by Leonard Woolf to Virginia Stephen: quoted by Christopher Ondaatje in his book, "Woolf in Ceylon" : (P.283-284).

This quote has been picked for inclusion here purposely to show that, after all, there had been another side to Woolf's personality, contrary to what is popularly believed.

But this is however, not to deny that the more dominant aspect in his whole being was his almost robot-like, dehumanised approach to men and matters, whether in private or public life.

I wish to discuss Woolf's life and work, here in Ceylon (then) and in his own country, in terms of new light shed on him with a considerable mass of fresh material made available in the new book, "Woolf in Ceylon" by Christopher Ondaatje, whose publication coincides with the hundredth anniversary of Woolf's arrival in Ceylon in 1904.

The book has now been officially launched by its author and would, no doubt, benefit students of Woolf's life and work, particularly, his contribution to literature, here and abroad.

Such sentiments as expressed by Woolf, as quoted above, from a letter to Virginia Stephen (to be his future wife) may not come as a surprise to those who have only just a nodding acquaintance of Woolf, made perhaps, by reading only his novel, "Village in the Jungle", so popular in this country, ever since its appearance in 1913 and more so, because it is only natural that young men in love everywhere, to declare such love-lorn sentiments to their ladies in this manner.

But to those who have a deeper and more intimate knowledge of Woolf, his character, personality and particularly the making of his mind, by reading more extensively of his own writing mainly, his massive five-volume Autobiography.

Landmark

Ondaatje's book would remain a landmark work on his subject for, he has spared no pains in writing it; a vast corpus of material hither to unknown to readers in this part of the world has been dug up; to do it, he has visited places, consulted numerous people, examined archival records and for this he made two visits to Sri Lanka, travelled tirelessly throughout the island, faithfully covering the terrain associated with Woolf's life and work here and visited every possible place, jungle, village or town mentioned in his autobiography and in his diaries; he has included in the book some photos of relevant places in colour, of stunning beauty and culled some photos taken in black and white from a few old books on Ceylon by earlier European visitors, which no doubt, bring a whiff of the more relaxed and spacious times of old. The style of writing throughout the book is easy, unstrained and without artifice: it is a treat to read it.

Author Ondaatje's book would be unique for another reason: it is no mere run-of-the-mill biography; he has packed into it a mass of other material, entirely unrelated to Woolf or to his career. Ondaatje makes a record therein, in fair detail of the itinerary which he made in the company of two Sri Lankan friends in his quest for material, seeing places, talking to people, listening to those who could offer first or secondhand information connecting Woolf while he lived and worked here.

At least a part of the material found in the book would not be new to readers in Sri Lanka if they are familiar with the Woolf-literature commonly associated with Woolf's seven years in Ceylon ... the novel, the Diaries he kept as AGA, now published, his five-volume Autobiography, particularly, the Volume titled, "Growing" and, perhaps, the short stories he wrote with Ceylon as backdrop.

As far as readers in Sri Lanka are concerned, their continuing links to, and interest in Woolf are attributable to his unique novel "Village in the Jungle" (1913) a book which has generated much interest and, even a certain amount of controversy, both here and in England.

Scholars, not only of literature, but also of Sociology have taken a keen interest in this book, studied it in depth and continue to make pronouncements on its content, its value as a creative work and its lasting significance as a study of an era of Ceylon's social and economic transition, as observed by a keen and sensitive mind, of an outsider who worked here and saw and felt something beyond the day-to-day prosaic duties of a Colonial administrator, would have called for.

This novel with its pervasive note of grim fatalism, the like of which could have been conceived and given form only in a mind like that of Woolf, has evoked much comment from sensitive minds ever since its appearance.

Significance

In Ondaatje's book itself, though repeated mention of the novel is made, either the novel or its true significance as a tract on Colonial Ceylon or its merits as a serious literary work are not made major issues in it: the novel remains in the background throughout.

One other aspect of Woolf's life with which readers have been largely unacquainted, is about certain vital details regarding his personal life particularly, connecting his relations with Virginia before and even after his marriage to her.

One of the besetting dilemmas that autobiographers who set out to write their lives, is the difficulty of telling the truth, the whole truth, about themselves: and, Woolf's Autobiography, voluminous as it is, is no exception.

He has consistently failed to reveal the facts about his relations with Virginia, but today, after nearly thirty years since Woolf's death, details about their married life, courting time, their conjugal life are being revealed in this book, some of it for the first time.

Tremendous step

Readers of his Autobiography are aware that one of the reasons that Woolf trots out as the cause for his resigning from the Ceylon Civil Service, a tremendous step he took, knowing very well that it was to deny him a distinguished career ahead, a future Knighthood, and very probably, a Governorship in the Empire, was that he was in love with Virginia and that he wished to marry her, and that he had to get back to England to do that.

It is known that Virginia and her family the well-known Victorian writer, and intellectual, Leslie Stephen, his two daughters, Virginia and Venessa and his son, Thoby were close friends of Woolf and were co-members of that avant-garde Kultur Club, the famed, 'Bloomsbury Group'; Woolf himself, in fact, had taken the first tentative approach to Virginia, but for a long time while, Woolf was still in England, she had remained cold and unresponsive and, after he came to Ceylon, he had made desperate pleas through their mutual friend, Lytton Strachey, who was all for such a union. Incidentally, Strachey himself had earlier wooed Virginia and failed.

The heart-broken letters Woolf wrote to her, have been published now. Judging from information presented in this book, it is evident Virginia rejected Woolf' advances because she and her family thought he was socially below her, as English society prevailed at the time: recalling the origins of Woolf's family, one of Jewish extraction, whose earliest member in England and migrated from the continent as a humble tailor, she had once mentioned him to Strachey as "a penniless Jew", whereas Virginia and her family were known for their wealth, culture and social pre-eminence that way, her family was streets ahead of Woolf's.

Relentless pursuit

In the end however, responding to the relentless pursuit that Woolf kept up, Virginia consented and their marriage took place in 1912: But, what after that? Readers have all along been fairly aware that the conjugal life between Leonard and Virginia had been unsuccessful: that is all they know, but today, with the new material about this aspect, that is being made available for the first time in Ondaatje's book, we know better.

Right from the honeymoon night, which had been a total disaster it is said Virginia repulsed every sexual manoeuvre that Woolf tried their marriage was reduced to a mere companionship for the rest of their lives! For 35 years Woolf is said to have received such pleasures from a mistress the wife of a family friend.

But author Ondaatje does not leave readers guessing he leads the readers to the genesis of the serious damage caused, years earlier, during her first onset of adolescence, that resulted in, what may be called, a fractured psyche and left a life-long trauma in her mind a virtual neurotic, to be a frequent victim of a deep psychosis, which, in the end, led her to suicide.

A word about the book itself: book production today, is a highly developed art; if that is so, Christopher Ondaatje's book is a masterpiece produced in the large format, profusely illustrated as said earlier, it is printed throughout on art paper in clear type and the book is heavy and a pleasure to handle; its elegance should grace the shelves of any distinguished library.

- M. B. Mathmaluwe