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from a fantasy island In recent years the literary spotlight has fallen on the growing number of contemporary, indigenous writers (Romesh Gunesekera, Carl Muller, Karen Roberts, Yasmine Gooneratne, Shyam Selvadurai) who have received acclaim for their more intimate portrayals of the island. Their fiction is set mostly during the post-Independence period and the underlying themes often concern the issues faced by a nation liberated from colonial rule. Outside authors, on the other hand, especially those of an earlier era, had other distractions that had mostly to do with plundering their exotic location to its fullest extent. There are some authors, however, who have been able to see through, or past, the ravishing vistas and veils of jungle to behold the island within. They are often the ones who had the advantage of living on the island for a period of years. Whatever their motives in choosing the island as a setting for their fiction, outside authors write from a different perspective and are therefore able to observe their location with objectivity. Some of these authors have reacted to the exotic ambience by penning inspired descriptions of the outstanding physical beauty of the island. Appealing social and cultural aspects have beguiled others. Although disparate in style and content, all these writings contribute to the rich fabric of fictional versions of the island, which in many instances are not so far removed from the real thing. It was Daniel Defoe, fresh from his success with Robinson Crusoe (1719), who first made literary use in English of the island then called Zeilan. In his novel The Adventures of Captain Singleton (1720), there is an episode in which the eponymous hero is cast ashore on the island. However, a mid-19th century coffee planter called William Knighton has the distinction of writing the first work of fiction to be set wholly in the British colony of Ceylon. His Forest Life in Ceylon (1854) demonstrated his appreciation of the history and culture of the island, as well as his understanding of the Ceylonese character. The next few decades saw the publication in London of the first examples of children's fiction set on the island. Such titles include Lost in Ceylon: The Story of a Boy and a Girl's Adventures in the Woods and the Wilds of the Lion King of Kandy (1861), by William Dalton, and Through Peril to Fortune: A Story of Sport and Adventure by Land and Sea (1880), by Louis F. Liesching. This period was notable for the references to Ceylon made by two celebrated late 19th century novelists representing opposite ends of the fiction spectrum. First, the appearance of the English translation of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869) revealed the episode in which Captain Nemo of the submarine Nautilus rescues a pearl diver from a shark attack off the coast of Ceylon. Then there was Charles Dickens' last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), which has as characters the enigmatic twins Neville and Helena Landless, who were born and brought up in Ceylon. The first real adventure story with a Ceylon setting was Dead Man's Rock (1887) by "Q", otherwise known as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Set during the first half of the 19th century, the story concerns the quest for the legendary Great Ruby of Ceylon, which has been stolen by an English adventurer from its protector, a Buddhist monk at Sri Pada. There is an instance of a brother and sister both writing novels set on the island. Leonard Woolf, who would later marry the ill-fated novelist Virginia Stephen, served in Ceylon as a colonial administrator during the opening decade of the 20th century. His sister, Bella, travelled from England to visit him and ended up by staying on and writing not only a fine guidebook to the island but also a brace of children's novels, The Twins in Ceylon (1909) and More About the Twins in Ceylon (1911). Many other novels with plots and often titles firmly located in Ceylon were published during the first quarter or so of the 20th Century. They include F.A. Symons' Cecily in Ceylon (1914), I. C. Clarke's Viola Hudson (1923), Isabel Smith's A Marriage in Ceylon (1925), Charles Reith's An Ensign of the 19th Foot: A Novel of Empire (1925) and Maurice L.W. Wiltshire's Billy in Ceylon (1929). I have come across a number of passing references to the island in fiction. For example, in Herge's Cigars of the Pharoahs (1958), the popular comic-strip hero Tin Tin had Colombo on his itinerary but never arrived because he was diverted by an adventure in Egypt. Probably the most obscure and certainly the shortest reference is contained in Finnegan's Wake (1939), by the controversial Irish writer, James Joyce. Bending the word serendipity - which is, of course, derived from Serendib - to suit his own purpose and inimitable style, Joyce writes: "You serendipitist you (thanks I think that describes you)." In contrast, Robert Standish's Elephant Walk (1948) is probably the best known of all the novels set on the island, perhaps because so far it is the only one to have been turned into a Hollywood movie. This is a powerful tale about a bride newly arrived from England who has to contend with her tea planter husband's father complex, the fact that she is the only white woman in the district, and the rampages of a herd of elephants, incensed because her bungalow has been built across the jungle trail. Other novels published during what turned out to be a productive period coinciding with the early post-Independence years include Sir John Edward Heygate's Kurumba: A Novel (1949), journalist Carl Fallas' intriguingly titled Eve with her Basket (1951), tea planter Harry Williams' Idiot's Vision (1951) and G.R. Fazakerley's Shadow in Saffron: A Novel (1953). The aforementioned Harry Williams found time among his planter's duties to write a second novel called The Twins in Ceylon (1957). The theme of twins in or from Ceylon is recurrent. (Remember that Bella Woolf had written a novel of the same name, together with a sequel, and Charles Dickens' had twins from Ceylon as characters.) This was not the end of Williams' literary output, either, for he also wrote the children's novel, With Robert Knox in Ceylon (1964). The 1960s saw the publication of several works of fiction. There was Simon Harvester's Moonstone Jungle (1961), for example. But Aldous Huxley's Island (1962), about the fate of the Utopian island of Pala is more important even though there are only a handful of relevant references. More important still was the publication of Serendipity and the Three Princes (1964), edited by Theodore E. Remer. This contains the first direct English translation of The Three Princes of Serendip, a collection of tales. This is the first instance of the island occurring in the title of a work of fiction. It was an episode concerning a camel in The Three Princes of Serendip that inspired Horace Walpole to coin the word serendipity. Occult grandmaster Dennis Wheatley's Dangerous Inheritance (1965), was a best seller of its day. This story, which has more to do with skulduggery than sorcery, surrounds a hazardous quest to reclaim the ownership of a gem mine in Ceylon that has fallen into the wrong hands. The novel is memorable because Wheatley has given it a sense of conviction by neatly interweaving the plot with the social and political events of the time. The 1970s witnessed the publication of a handful of widely different novels concerning the island. There was, for instance, Indian writer Maggi Lidchi's novel with a spiritual theme, Earthman (1971), American writer Edward S. Aron's action-packed thriller, Assignment Ceylon (1973) and English writer Angus Wilson's As If By Magic (1973), which is set against the backdrop of rice research. There was a dose of romantic fiction from Barbara Cartland titled Moon over Eden (1976). And there was a dose of fantasy from Piers Anthony, whose novel Hasan (1977), is based on an Arabian Nights tale and set in the Serendib of antiquity. However, the novel of the decade was without doubt Sir Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise (1978). This science fiction masterpiece, which is set in a future 'Taprobane' of the 22nd century, concerns the construction of a space elevator between the summit of Sri Pada and a point in synchronous orbit some 36,000 kilometres above the equator. The 1980s produced Christopher Hudson's Colombo Heat (1986), a novel with a factual background that takes place during World War II. A major theme of the novel is the decline of colonialism. Colombo Heat, like Wheatley's Dangerous Inheritance before it, intersects with reality on a number of levels. American post-modernist John Barth's The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991), is a retelling of the adventures of the Arabian Nights hero, Sindbad the Sailor. (Sindbad's sixth and seventh voyages were to Serendib, making them one of the earliest examples of oral storytelling concerning the island.) Barth's tale is about a journalist who is lost overboard off the coast of Sri Lanka in 1980 while trying to retrace Sindbad's voyages. He enters the mythic realm, meets Sindbad and engages him in a bout of storytelling in order to return to the modern world. Rosamunde Pilcher has set her sweeping international bestseller, Coming Home (1995), partly at Colombo and the British naval base at Trincomalee in the period immediately after World War Two. Pilcher spent her early years on the island, a fact that is evident from her descriptions. Peter Adamson's Facing out to Sea (1997), on the other hand, is an intimate novel strong on characterisation that tells the contemporary story of the doomed friendship between a waiter at Colombo's celebrated Galle Face Hotel and an English businesswoman on holiday. Each innocently misconstrues the intentions of the other, with various and mostly unfortunate repercussions. The creative process I have been documenting has been ongoing for centuries, and has continued into the new millennium with Charlotte Cory's Imperial Quadrille (2002). This was inspired by the writer's discovery at a second-hand bookshop in England of the 1860 diary of the daughter of a British Army officer living in Colombo. Revealing
depths of womanhood Sita has that quality to be devastating, yet make special substance out of the most ordinary things. Another thing, she is writing as a woman of things men cannot possibly write. The verses are exploratory and she seems to light a life-fuse with each. Rather than quote her, shall we extract some themes? Globalization - While Shuttleworth flats in space on a two million dollar-a-day journey, breathing "borrowed breath", an earth-bound Gunapala of the barren paddy plot and chena, gasping with a papuwe mahansiya, cannot afford a six-hundred rupee inhaler. Take your pick: Be a gloating, global Shuttleworth or a worthless sick-and-shuffle shuttle. A love poem - Such doom-thoughts of killer squads, tyre pyres, dogs feeding richly on human entrails - a land parched and bloodied. A baby! Why bring a baby into so God-forsaken a world? But the psychosis melts like sun-shredded mist when the baby comes with its heaven-smile and wrapped in its own new paradise. Yes, a world can turn within a world one hard-carapaced, but within it a new turning orb exudes the sweetness of life as we wish it to be. A gode person - The podihamine strain that puts to naught the modern society of Western-apers with their mobiles and senseless jabber. The Gode person will learn of the facts and fallacies of life, of the worst of hells, even the fear of not belonging to that casual social life that primps and preens and turns nothing into nothingness. To
a young friend - Pitu padam namamaham - The mother breaks free for years of ill-treatment to go, earn the dirhams, even risk another sort of ill-treatment in Dubai. But will they kick her there, will they come in red-eyed drunk as her husband does and beat her? Bend down at his feet, my daughter, pay obeisance, be always the dutiful daughter, but beware his kicking feet and all other parts of his drunken body he could assail you with. This is a random picking, and what is exhilarating is the way something so seemingly commonplace is put into a mind-machine and eureka! we have verses that blast off from the depth of soul to an aurora that curtains the sky. What we have is "illumination." It must have taken strength and determination to make this leap. Sita made her mark with her previous books, the novel Dari the Third Wife and her short stories High Chair and Cancer Days." It is good to know that together with many other women poets Sita is exploring new ways of expressing herself. We are now able to face and examine a woman's consciousness. We now know that we can no longer read their works and dismiss them as mere "token" women. Our women poets are not those who stand up only to proclaim how the heart melts and the tears run. Rather, they now reveal the depths of womanhood, for their poetry is deeply personal. There is goodness believed in and goodness felt. Also, a veritable basket of impressions. The
May Day screeched, This is a collection of random thoughts from here and abroad that have been given a festive dressing. A slim book, but its very slimness belies the idea of that Gode Person who cannot pose or be poised like those aimless, shameless social gadflies. Sita has achieved once again, and when all is said and done, that is most important to us, her readers. |
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