Ithayaththin Unarvukal (The Feelings of the Heart) is a novella by Furhan B Ifthikar, an enterprising and versatile broadcaster and writer, who in some sense a pioneer woman artiste in bringing novelty in her innumerable broadcasts over Sri Lankan radio. Fluent in three languages, she holds a Master’s degree in Tamil. Her broadcast in Sinhala on a Muslim programme is also appreciated by many listeners. She is in the field since 1958. Earlier in 1999, her collection of short stories Pirantha Munn (Born Land) was published.
The present work was adjudged the best fiction in the competition for novel writing in connection with the Edirisinghe Sarachchandra Sahitya Festival.
Her theme of this short fiction is that according to her, “No woman at heart will accept that her husband is also a husband of another woman”.
Although a Muslim man could have four wives, if he can maintain all of them, usually it is ‘one man one wife’ that prevails in the country.
But in this story, a nobleman married happily to a rich beautiful girl and having two young sons and expecting another baby takes another unmarried mature woman as his second wife secretly out of lust and also in empathy to help the latter to enter into marriage.
The conflict in emotions of the two main protagonists- the husband and first wife- is the plot of the story.
But what is remarkable in the story is that after the birth of third child, the first wife decides on the advice of another woman who was confronted with a similar problem, punishes her husband by deciding to refuse any more sexual contact with her husband. She felt it was degradable when her husband had enjoyed the body of another woman.
In any case, there is a resolution at the end of the story.
But what I liked in this exposition of a kind of personal and social problem is that the craft in writing which the writer has employed.
I say this because many of the short story writers in Tamil ignore the attention that should be paid in the structure of a work of fiction as they are pre-occupied with narrating social problems as if they are pontificating in an essay for instance.
There is fluidity in her narration and the writer’s short sentences in her style of writing are welcome as the grip in the storytelling holds the reader with interest. Substantiated with excerpts from the Muslim Law enables the non-Muslim readers to understand the context better.
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