Book review

There is anger, there is sympathy as she looks at this bloody mess

The Dhammapada (v. 20l) gives us these lines:

All tremble at violence,
All fear death;
Comparing oneself with others
One should neither kill nor cause others to kill.
Victory breeds hatred,
The defeated live in pain.
Happily the peaceful live,
Giving up victory and defeat.

When I took up Punyakante's book, I remembered another - a slim work by Elizabeth Harris. Ms Harris had delved into this problem of violence and tried to show, in the study of early Buddhist texts, the attitude of Buddhism to violence and disruption in society. Punyakante had to employ this very violence to carry through her message:

Anil's wife drags herself to consciousness in the wreckage of the Central Bank - a Bank that looks "as if somebody had punched it in the face."

Renuka is a nice, happy young woman. She pooh-poohs the way her mother grumbles at the daily help. "Amma, where is your Buddhist compassion?" And she goes to work despite her mother's fears. A woman's intuition can be such a deadly thing.....

Raghu, the Black Tiger, wanted revenge. He lay in the safe house in the city - "the very fortress of the enemy. But this enemy was faceless. He knew nothing of the men, women and children living in Colombo. Yet, in his mind, he had painted on each unknown face something ugly, so that wherever he looked he saw an enemy, not a person." Yes revenge, for the Army had killed his six-year-old son. And, "for a Black Tiger, there was no turning back...."

Anura watched the large Isuzu trying to ram the barrier of the Bank. "Why doesn't someone shoot the driver?" he shouted. After the blast, even with the shards of glass removed from his eyes, with the wreck of his right leg that would be cut away, all he could ask was "Why didn't someone stop the bastard from ramming that lorry against our Bank?" He was blind, a cripple, and where lay safety? All he could wish for was to return to the womb - "to curl up within the safety of the womb, and die."

The questions that the sufferers and victims have asked and keep on asking may never be truly answered. Anura asks them for us: "Why did we, as citizens of Colombo, on that fatal day, run to windows and waste time watching a lorry reverse and ram - reverse and ram - reverse and ram into a barrier until finally it exploded? Why had we been so neglectful, negative, content to watch and wait for disaster? Could not someone have taken a shot at the lorry before it reached the barrier? Where had been the security we were promised? Or are we, as a nation, content to shut our eyes to reality? Did we choose to be blind before we were blinded by an enemy living within us?"

The book tugs at the nation's conscience and that of society.

Punyakante deserves all credit for this stark and graphic piece of writing. What can we call it? Hardly fiction and certainly ill-deserving of the label faction. She has punched hard and allowed us to see the many hang-ups of our own social and political makeup. It also gives us that uneasy, rather worrisome knowledge that there will always be these blows and counter-blows as long as violence persists.

The intrinsic value of this book, is that it looks with both sympathy and anger at the mess this country is now in because of the havoc of war.

Switching to Elizabeth Harris, I would like to quote from her Chapter Three: "The Attadanda Sutta of the Sutta Nipata is the voice of someone overcome by despair because of the violence he sees:

"Fear results from resorting to violence - just look at how people quarrel and fight. But let me tell you now of the kind of dismay and terror I have felt.

"Seeing people struggling like fish, writhing in shallow water with enmity against one another, I became afraid

"At one time I had wanted to find some place where I could take shelter, but I never saw such a place. There is nothing in this world that is solid at base and not a part of it that is changeless

"I had seen them all trapped in mutual conflict and that is why I had felt so repelled. But then I noticed something buried deep in their hearts. It was - I could just make it out - a dart."

As Ms Harris comments, "Violence arises because the right nourishment is present." Men and women can be pushed to violence if the prevailing conditions do not enable them to preserve their own lives without it.

It seems that, despite all the pious platitudes, we are in the time of the Satthantarakappa - the sword-period, when men will lock on each other as wild beasts and will, with their swords, deprive each other of life. (Refer Digha Nikaya iii. 73)

But it is not of the wild beasts Punyakante tells. Her book is about the harmless, the peace-loving, the innocent. They are the victims. Why? Because -

(a) There was warning of a possible attack and the Central Bank had in fact held a conference about increasing security and taking further precautions. Ah, but the tragedy of it all. We read on Page 40 - "But we never got down to doing it."

(b) The ivory towers of that proud, getting prouder, Colombo skyline. Hundreds had no connection with the ground as the floors broke away, the mezzanines disappeared, the escapes jammed.

(c) The vultures who came to prey on the dead and dying. Anil's wife had her finger broken, her wedding band torn away. Other carrion came to seize handbags, purses, even shoes.

(d) The children, dazed, panicking, as they ran, seeking parents who may never come home again.

No, there is nothing morbid about this book. Rather, I would say that Punyakante has lived again the torment, the hell of that terrible Wednesday. Even as I read, I could not help thinking that here was a new kind of writing - a literary act of redemption, for the author also seems to die within its covers, becoming one with the horrors, the deaths, the sins of this country.

Perera hung in tatters of flesh on telephone wires. Proud old man. All he had wished to do was 'phone his wife.... Lionel, screaming at the way helpless people were so casually shot down....'

Buddhism has many answers. In the Anguttara Nikaya there is this direct principle that states that when a State is corrupt, the citizens become victims of the State and their own wish to survive, and they are then led to actions, they would never consider if they are free from want.

As to the other stories in this superb book, I feel that comment is hardly necessary for readers must also have the pleasure of discovery. The poems, "Niyadella" and "After the Glow," the stories "Duminda" and "Anutta" are veritable extensions of the horrors of violence, violence that envelopes the hearts and minds of the innocent, and where - even the bulldozer broke down when pushing earth over broken children.

No one has considered the blood of the innocent in this vicious blow-counter-blow. Thank God Punyakante has done so!

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