Book Review

Short stories, big ideas and deep emotions

Book RevieReviewed by Goolbai Gunasekara

Collected "Short Stories" by Maureen Seneviratne

A Journalist from the age of 17, Maureen Seneviratne is perhaps one of the best known figures in Sri Lanka at the moment.... and not just for her outstanding abilities as a writer. Her work concerning the rights of the child and of women, her commitment to the correction of social injustice and her dedication to the cause of international peace have all made her a world-respected figure.

Her recently published book of Collected Short Stories echoes her passionate zeal to these causes so dear to her heart. But more than this, one cannot but stand in awe of Maureen Seneviratne's deep understanding of human nature, be it that of a child, a mother, a young girl eloping, a soldier losing his love, a prostitute et al. Her stories run the gamut of all emotions and are told with compassion, often with heart-wrenching lyricism.

Take the story of 'The Awakening'. A little girl has "grown up" and her father, who had left the family, returns to carry on with his duties as a father.

But the little girl in a telling phrase laments, "My mother slept alone in the great bedroom. He did not come back to her." At no time does Maureen touch on the relationship between the parents and yet the deep, deep gulf of division between mother and father is evocative through mere suggestion.

I wonder whether the story 'My Son, My Son' was loosely based on the story of Richard de Zoysa's tragic end. A brilliant son lost to this country because of political games played by powerful protagonists. Included in this book are some of Maureen's publications in foreign magazines, in the UK and elsewhere.

My favourite story must be mentioned - 'The Soldier'. A young boy loses his girl to the attractions of a Dubai-based job and Romeo. The soldier's feelings of pride in his profession remain strong in spite of the perfidy of his lady love.

Most appealing is the understanding and kindness of his officers who allow their men the occasional phone call and treat them with a certain rough compassion not always possible in a war zone.

For any serious reader of fiction, or for any fighter in the causes of human justice, this book is a definite must. It is not just a collection of short stories. It is a book which offers a deep sociological and emotional study of contemporary Sri Lanka and speaking personally, I find it is a book that is hard to put down.

A Taste of Sinhala (23)

Ok, ok you are very pretty

By Prof. J.B.Disanayaka

One of the commonest Sinhala words you'll hear is "hari" , which has not one but several meanings. If you are in a bus, you'll hear the conductor shouting "hari hari" to inform the driver that he could move along. The conductor will also shout "hari hari" when the bus is being reversed to tell the driver that everything is okay.

When the word 'hari' is used before an adjective, such as 'lassana' (pretty), mahata (fat), usa (tall) or raha (tasty), it intensifies the meaning of the adjective. lt denotes the meaning 'very' in English:

kella lassana-y (The girl is pretty)
kella hari lassana-y (The girl is very pretty),
miniha mahata-y (The man is fat)
miniha hari mahata-y (The man is very fat)
kolla usa-y (The boy is tall),
kolla hari usa-y (The boy is very tall)
ko:pi eka raha-y (The coffee is tasty)
ko:pi-eka hari raha-y (The coffee is very tasty).

The Anaconda of the Ceylonese

So the film Anaconda (1997) finally reaches Colombo. Not before time, I would venture to suggest. Not just because three or four years is a long time in cinematic history, mind you, but also because the first dramatic story concerning such a snake is actually set on the outskirts of Colombo as long ago as the early 1760s. The fact that "Description of the Anaconda" contains the first known reference to this name in the English language is of further interest. That this outrageous story became widely known in England, and seems to have spawned the myth of the "Anaconda of Ceylon" - even though the name is of Sinhala origin - is the icing on an already rich cake.

Now that Anaconda has slithered into town, it is appropriate for me to introduce Sri Lankan readers to the little known original tale, which has played such a pivotal role in the history of the name in English.

This I tracked down several months ago at the London Library while researching anaconda and the other three dozen words of Sinhala origin that are to be included in the revised third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. I am fairly certain that "Description of the Anaconda" has not been published in the island before, so its reproduction here will, I trust, be of service to general readers and researchers alike.

With its monstrous qualities and fearsome appearance, it was just a matter of time before Hollywood stumbled on the cinematic potential of the anaconda. The only surprise is that it took so long. Starring Jennifer ("the sexiest woman in the world") Lopez, Jon (the glummest actor in the world) Voight, Eric Stoltz and Ice Cube, Anaconda is in many ways just another formulaic animal horror movie, much in the tradition of Jaws. Still, the oppressive jungle atmosphere and a handful of horrific scenes make it quite memorable.

I must confess I am always on the lookout for animal horror movies that break with the stifling conventions - and therefore limitations - of the genre. Take, for example, the unwritten rule that the animal in question has to be slain in order for natural harmony to be restored. My attitude no doubt prevails because I once made an animal horror movie (Rampage, 1977) that challenged such conventions. Anaconda palpably does not, which explains why it is so bland and predictable, yet so successful at the box office.

"Alone among snakes, anacondas are unique. After eating their prey, they regurgitate in order to eat again." This opening line foreshadows just one of the horrific scenes that the film has in store for viewers – a half digested human corpse covered in gastric juices being ejected from the cavernous jaws of a giant anaconda. However, as so often happens with cinematic renditions of reality, the scriptwriter has bent the truth for dramatic gain. In fact, regurgitation is common to all snakes. It occurs mainly to allow them to defend themselves effectively when disturbed by predators after a heavy meal, and not in order to eat again.

Anaconda has been noted for its biblical allusions, images and symbolism. It begins with a documentary film crew travelling upriver into Paradise - the Amazon rain forest - in search of the untouched Shirishama Indians, known as the "People of the Mist". As might be expected, though, there is trouble in Paradise in the form of a serpent. The trouble begins when, during a violent storm, the crew picks up a shifty ex-Catholic priest, Paul Sarone, whose boat has stalled.

Dr. Kelly, the hero of the film, has a death-type experience after being stung by a highly venomous wasp and is placed in his tomb-like cabin. Sarone claims to have knowledge of the Shirishima and offers to take the crew to meet the tribe by a different river-route.

His real goal, however, is to find and capture a giant anaconda. When he does encounter the 40-foot monster, there are ghastly consequences for most of those onboard. The crew finally catches on to Salone's deceit, however, and Dr. Kelly is resurrected and helps to liberate his colleagues from the evil priest and the monstrous snake.

Just as the film begins with images from the Book of Genesis, so it ends with images from the Book of Revelation . . . And that's all I am prepared to reveal so as not to spoil the dramatic climax for those who wish to see Anaconda.

The director, Luis Llosa, was probably unaware that in 1768, an unidentified plagiarist calling himself 'R. Edwin' sent a letter to the Scots magazine concerning his supposed encounter with a tiger-devouring serpent in Ceylon. This was published in the Appendix of the 1768 issue of the magazine under the discursive heading, "Description of the ANACONDA, a monstrous species of serpent. In a letter from an English gentleman, many years resident in the island of Ceylon, in the East Indies." In this account, Edwin claims, among other things, that "the Ceylonese seemed to know the creature well; they call it ANACONDA, and talked of eating its flesh when they caught it." Furthermore, Edwin entertained a number of Ceylonese, who spent the time in "relating the amazing things which one or other of the company had seen of this sort of monsters; in short they told me a thousand things that far outwent my credulity."

Because of the story's etymological and philological importance in the emergence of the name anaconda, and as it is almost completely unknown, I make no apologies for reproducing it below in full:

"Some years since, the commands of my directors carrying me to Ceylon, to transact an affair of no little consequence, I had an apartment prepared for me on the skirts of the principal town, facing the woods. At some distance from my window there was a rising ground, on which stood three or four very large palm-trees, that afforded me every morning, as I lay in bed, a delightful prospect. One morning as I was looking at these, I saw, as I thought, a large arm of one of them in strange commotions, bending and twisting about, though there was no wind, and often striking one end to the earth, then raising it again, and losing it among the leaves.

"I was gazing at this with great amazement, when a Ceylonese coming up, I begged him to look and wonder with me. He looked, Sir, and he was much more amazed and terrified than I; in short, a paleness overspread his whole face, and he seemed almost sinking to the earth with terror. He conjured me to bar up all my doors; then told me, that what appeared an arm of the tree to me, was in reality a serpent of that monstrous size, diverting itself there with its various commotions, and now and then darting down to the earth to prey.

"I soon found out the truth of what he told me; and looking more nearly, saw it seize a small animal before me, and take it up into the tree. Enquiring after this miracle, the Ceylonese told me, that the wonder was, only that the creature was so near us, for it was a serpent but too well-known in the island: but that it usually kept in the inland parts and woods, where it often dropt down from the covert of a large tree, and devoured a traveller alive.

A relation so strange as this could never have gained credit with me, but that I plainly saw before my eyes a creature from its size capable of doing more than was related.

"The monster, Sir, continued diverting itself till we assembled a body of twelve of us to go on horseback, well armed, to destroy him. We rode up toward the place in a body; but, not to expose ourselves to unnecessary dangers, we surrounded the ground, and rode behind a close thicket, from whence we might unseen level our fire-arms at him.

"It was by this time the heat of the day, and when we arrived there, we found him so much larger than we had conceived, that we all wished ourselves safe at home again; and it was a long time before any body dared fire a gun. We had now time to observe the creature; and, believe me, Sir, all the descriptions of monsters of this kind hitherto given are trifles to the truth of what we saw in him.

"The Ceylonese all agreed he was much larger than any they had ever seen; and such a mixture of horror and beauty together no eye but that which saw it can conceive. The creature, Sir, was more than as thick as a slender man's waist, yet seemed far from fat, and very long in proportion to his thickness, often hanging himself by the tail from the highest boughs of the tree. He was most surprisingly agile and nimble, and was now diverting himself in the heat of the day, with a thousand gambols round the branches of the tree, and sometimes would come down, and twist his tail round the bottom of the trunk, throwing himself to his whole length all round it.

"In the midst of one of these gambols, we were surprised to see him get up in haste to the tree; but the cause soon appeared; a small animal of the fox kind, but not like our English foxes, coming immediately after; the serpent had seen him coming, and took this way to be prepared for him. He darted down upon the unwary creature from the tree, and sucked him in a few minutes, then licked his chaps with a broad double tongue of a blackish colour, and laid himself at his ease at length upon the ground, but with his tail still twisted round the tree.

"In this posture I had leisure, with horror, yet with admiration, to behold him. He was covered all over with scales like those of a crocodile, all ridged up in the middle; his head was green, with a vast black spot in the middle; and yellow streaks around the jaws; he had a yellow circle like a golden collar round his neck, and behind that another great spot of black.

His sides were of a dusky olive colour, and his back more beautiful than can be well-imagined: there ran down the middle of it, Sir, a broad chain of black, curled and waved at the edge; round this there ran all the way a narrow one of flesh colour, and on the outside of that a very broad one of a bright yellow, but not strait like a ribband, but waved and curled in various inflections, and spotted all over at small distances with great round and long blotches of a perfect blood colour; his head was very flat, but extremely broad; and his eyes monstrously large, and very bright and terrible.

"These, Sir, were his colours, as he lay still; but when he moved about in the sun, he was a thousand times more beautiful, the colours, according to the several shades of light, presenting the eye with a vast variety of mixtures, and in many places looking like our changeable colours in silks.

"We now aimed our pieces at him as he lay, and fired at his head all at the same instant; but whether he accidentally moved just at that time, or our fears made us take bad sight, or whatever else might be the cause, we either missed him, or never hurt him. In short, Sir, he took no notice of it; and, after a council of war, we all agreed to make no farther attempt upon it at that time, but to go home, and return with a stronger party the next day.

"The Ceylonese seemed to know the creature well; they call it ANACONDA, and talked of eating its flesh when they caught it, as they had no small hopes of this; for, they say, when one of these creatures chooses a tree for his dwelling, he seldom quits it in a long time. I detained my company of Ceylonese to dine with me, and the afternoon was spent in relating the amazing things which one or other of the company had seen of this sort of monsters; in short, they told a thousand things that far outwent my credulity; but I am to inform you, that what we saw the following day, as much exceeded all they had told me, as what they told seemed to exceed truth and probability.

"It seems, the constant custom of this creature is, to lay wait for its prey, by hiding in the boughs of large trees, whence it unsuspected drops upon the wretched creature, which is seized before it sees its enemy. But the instance we saw of this, I must relate to you at large."

To be continued next week

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