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Books

An illuminating read
Out of Darkness by Vijita Fernando. Reviewed by Lakshmi de Silva
Vijita Fernando's acute and sensitive response to Gunadasa Amarasekera's slim but far from slight volume, 'An Unreal Story of a Death' (Asatya Katavak) and its sequel 'A Surreal Story of a Love' (Premaye Sathya Katava) has resulted in a Gratiaen Award and a timely gift to the reader in English, whose attitude to Sinhala novels might reflect Indira's reaction to the offer of Nimal's diaries after his death.

"No, there is no need for that. I don't think there is anything in those that I don't know about. Also, my Sinhala may not be up to my understanding what is written in them."
However, for Indira, the reading of the diaries makes her examine herself, the extent of her knowledge and ignorance, her motivations and brings intimations of a way out of the darkness.

The translation is likely to reward the reader not only because it is forceful and makes excellent reading but because it confronts him with realities that he may have missed or misinterpreted... such as Nimal, a figure all too familiar on the stairways of every university, a threat to himself and to others.

"Nimal was born in a village, but his upbringing has been fashioned by middle class values." "Isn't this a problem that we have discussed...? That such a rural middle class - a separate class - emerged in the recent past?"

There is also his brother "a helpless looking foolish man" who dares not let anyone see him take off his banian, because he has only one, and cannot afford another, a man of not uncommon type (though perhaps new to the Anglicized reader), devoted solely to mother and brother, a lifelong victim, who gains his rightful promotion by unexpected "luck".

Treated to another sort of fare by English writers, it may be good to be aware of lives of quiet despair "The lightless depths that beneath them lie". The two novels pose the question "Did Nimal fall because he was pushed? Or did he jump?" a problem never fully resolved, though the weight of probability is indicated. It is a form Gunadasa Amarasekera has created to activate the mind of the reader to a constant state of alertness and doubt.

I remember when I first read the novel in the late 1970s with my experience of the 1971 uprising including the groups of young men brought in front of my husband as a formality before they were marched to the jail on the hillock above our bungalow and the gunshots that shattered our panes and tiles one night. "For what reason did thousands of young fellows die? It would have been surprising if such a thing did not happen in this country."

Now I realize that Gunadasa Amarasekera's novels - more properly novel, since the two books appearing respectively in 1977 and 1978 are complementary - was a work before its time, a work whose richness of technique I was then unable to grasp.
Accustomed as we then were to identify the voices of characters with the author's values and not as yet alerted by Bakhtin's insights to see the novel as an interplay of contributory voices, a view that did not reach us till the 1980s, I did not see the full complexity of the novel as a canvas that captures the history of our condition, the tragically divisive states of consciousness that have proved and may again prove perilous.

The reprints of the original in 1994 and 1996 must surely have been welcomed by the newer generation. "Translation it is that openeth the window to let in the light; that breaketh the shell that we may eat the kernel".

What Miles Smith wrote in his Preface to the King James Bible in 1611 holds in this case too, for the quality of this translation depends on something more than linguistic competence.

It is true that Vijita Fernando on entering the University of Ceylon studied English, Sinhala and Economics and had a full year of Pali studies in school; that so sound a foundation must surely have helped her to enter into the text with a depth of response, emotional and intellectual, denied to those with a more superficial acquaintance with the culture and the language.

It was this undoubtedly that led to the earlier short-listing for the Gratiaen Award of another of her translations, 'Madara', by Soma Jayakody. It is also true that she is no mere interpreter, but herself a creative writer, the author of much anthologized short stories such as 'The Homecoming' and 'Circle of Powder', which reveal an understanding of the economic and emotional pressures that affects the thinking and lives of the people she depicts.

It is this empathic quality as much as the skill with which she captures the tone and tempo of the sociolect that distinguishes the village-bred, much-enduring Somaweera Madurasinghe and the confident English speaking upper middle class Indira that gives the book the emotional validity and power that makes it compulsive reading.

Stress in your life
Stress has only recently been given a great deal of attention. Our ancestors, the hunter-gatherers were helped in "fight or flight" by a physiological device i.e. the hormone adrenaline produced by the body. They had it easier when dealing with stress than we, as they had periods of rest. Today, for most people, stress never lets up or people don't give it a chance to let up. Stress can be considered in terms of a positive or negative reaction.

Positive stress is when we are in control. Negative stress controls us. Negative stress puts us in a constant state of ‘flight’. This leads to self-destructive states: heart failure, hypertension, high cholesterol levels and diabetes. Dr. Edwin L. Herr, distinguished professor of education states in his foreword, "Negative stress is epidemic. People in more and more nations are finding themselves in situations filled with stress whether they are in the family, the community or at work.

The international threats of terrorism and violence, economic survival, family dysfunction are the major causes of negative stress for a growing number of persons for whom the ability to cope with such difficult circumstances leads to a variety of stress-related behaviour: alcoholism (drug abuse), rage towards other persons (road rage), physical and mental disorders". This reveals the magnitude of the problem affecting much of our population.

As a medical nutritionist researching into the causes of the major non-communicable diseases, (such as heart disease, hypertension, obesity and diabetes) all these revealed stress links. Our diet is at odds with our genetic make-up, increasing our risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and immune disorders.

The coronary arteries, which supply the blood to the heart, have a muscular layer that gets its supply of nerves from the same nervous system that produces the "flight and fight" hormones. Stress causes the nerves to react in such a way that the muscle tissue of the arteries contract. This is called a spasm. In an individual with no blockage in the arteries the potential problems with spasm are great enough but when the arteries are blocked by plaque formed by cholesterol deposits, the spasm may shut down the flow of blood to the heart.

The result is a heart attack. In less severe cases, when the spasm is brought on by stress, an individual may experience the chest pain known as angina, signalling that the heart is not getting enough of blood. This is the stress cholesterol link to Coronary Heart Disease discovered in the late ’50s. After extensive research, books and drugs were developed to control the cholesterol in our blood supply by reducing bad cholesterol (Low density lipoprotein or LDL), through dietary means and drugs. But little action was taken to nullify or eradicate the effect of stress.

Dorothy Abeywickrama's book ‘Stress and You’ does just that. It is a must for everyone. I was overjoyed to note how clear her understanding was of the subject. Through years of research, counselling with working people, people looking for work, parents and teenagers, couples with marital problems, dual career women, school leavers and drop-outs and those appearing for examinations, she concludes that negative stress could be successfully addressed and defused. Her main emphasis, however, is on self-management of stress for which a thorough understanding of your self is vital.

All individuals must take control of their own health and be educated to monitor and manage their own stress. Dorothy Abeywickrama's book on a 9 -step behavioural learning model for self-management, gives us a clear insight on how this can be achieved.

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