From a local village to Toronto; a young man’s life unfolds
View(s):Walakulu Bamma is the latest creation from the award-winning novelist and poet, Chandrarathna Bandara. He began as a student in 1982 with a collection of poems, named somewhat unconventionally as the “Asikkithayage Sihinaya” – loosely translated in English as the “Dream of an Uncouth Man” and went on to win the D. R. Wijewardene memorial award for the best novel in 1992 for “Wana Sapu Mala” that was translated to English as the “Hostage City.”He has recently published collections of short stories (Undercurrent, 2009) and poems (Kata Kirill, 2007) while living in Toronto.
One of the underlying themes of his work spanning three decades is his fascination with the traditional Sri Lankan village life guided by Buddhist values.
This story is set in Sri Lanka in the 70s, around the life of a young man called Piyasiri, who hails from a small hamlet in the upcountry. Chandrarathna is able to vividly describe how village life shapes Piyasiri’s early childhood. His insights into the socio-economic and cultural landscape of Piyasiri’s surroundings are expressed in a powerful manner through several characters and colourful narrations of religious celebrations in the village.
However, while admiring the seemingly unadulterated village life, Chandrarathna has shown his capability to see the ugly realities in that society too. He does it with some discretion upholding his allegiance to their way of life.
| Book facts: Walakulu Bamma, by Chandrarathna Bandara. Published by Sarasavi Publishers (2015) |
The reader may sense a certain fatigue by the end of Piyasiri’s early childhood with many repeated accounts of customs and celebrations in spite of the vibrancy of the language.
Piyasiri’s life takes a little detour when he enters a Christian high school in Kandy. He makes a lifelong friend, Wanasundara, who entices him to take part in a production of Shakespeare’s Othello as the beautiful Desdemona. There are quite a few quotes from the translated version of Othello by one of Sri Lanka’s cinema giants, late Tony Ranasinghe (Chandrarathna does not forget to acknowledge Tony Ranasinghe for allowing him to include quotations from his book even before it was printed).
Piyasiri’s life turns upside-down when he is enrolled in a drama class and meets a character called Udumalagala who had a long history of left-wing political activity but unknown to Piyasiri has also become a hardcore LTTE activist. It appears that Chandrarathna has lost a golden opportunity to develop this personality in detail since he too has a history of left-wing politics as an ardent supporter of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party since the mid 1970s.
Circumstances created by a number of unfortunate incidents land Piyasiri in Toronto, a diametrically different city to the place he grew up in.
Piyasiri now answers to the name Clifford!
Piyasiri starts relationships with two partners having entirely opposite outlooks. The author’s writing style evolves as the protagonist finds love and joy. The writing becomes fairly salacious although he manages to see complexity in the characters of both women.
Piyasiri’s return to Sri Lanka is uneventful except for the emotional encounter with his mother. The ending is also somewhat of an anti-climax, for the reader but may be not for the protagonist since Piyasiri hears joyful news from Toronto at the end of this tale.
Walakulu Bamma is an excellent example of realistic fiction and I hope it will be widely circulated and most importantly discussed in Sri Lankan literary circles.
- Pramod Kandanarachchi