Keerthihan's Kite - story by Sandi Titus, illustrations by Anura Srinath

My neice who is around five, got what I thought was a fabulous present for a book. I am still not sure where it's available or how much it cost, but I am sure bookshops like Odel and Barefoot will have it.

One of the problems I have about Sri Lankan books for children is that either they are boring or they are badly done. The writing is bad, the illustrations are bad and there are so many mediocre books around, you wonder how parents can buy any of it for their kids. There are exceptions of course, I have seen a few nicely done children's books, one of my earlier reviews was on MilkRice that still remains my favourite present for kids. But the general rule is that children's books need to improve here in Sri Lanka.

Now this book looks expensive and I presume it is expensive. This makes me wonder how many people would pick it up for their kids. But as the saying goes: Good things no cheap; cheap things no good. But the book looks good that much is obvious.

This book is primarily for little children and an older child of 5-6 might like to look at it on his own. But best of all, it seems to be a good introduction to the English, Sinhala and Tamil languages. Yes, you read that right. Keerthihan's Kite is a trilingual book for children.

I have not heard of the author or illustrator: Sandi Titus and Anura Srinath respectively, but one name I recognized in the credits is Michael Meyler (who brought out that most entertaining book, Dictionary of Sri Lankan English).

The story is rather simple. Keerthihan, a little boy who lives in Jaffna, wants to fly his own kite, like the big boys around. He decides to make his own kite and after a series of disasters, he eventually makes a kite that can fly.

Each page has only one sentence written out in all three languages. Sometimes the first sentence is written in English but not always. Sinhala and Tamil, also have their turn at being on top. The rest of the page is devoted to brightly coloured illustrations that make the page very attractive.

Towards the back of the page, you have an interesting feature. There is a transliteration of Sinhala and Tamil in English. This is of course not going to help you to learn the Sinhala and Tamil script but it is certainly a first step to start learning any of the other two languages. It is excellent for Sinhala and Tamil readers to learn English as well.

Right at the very end of the book is a DVD that has the narration of the book in all three languages, with basic animation of the illustrations found in the book. I thought it was very very nicely done.

To my mind, perhaps a few parents will see the value of this book and pick it up for their children but more importantly it is a book that schools and libraries should be forced to buy, if they don't happen to see its worth straight away.

In this day and age when we know it is so important to learn all three languages of Sri Lanka, it is a good start to see a book like this in the market. I hope more trilingual books will be produced in the future.

That Deep Silence by Punyakante Wijenaike

My grandmother says that one of her favorite books of all time is Giraya by Punyakante Wijenaike. To be honest, I am not one for these old time stories, so I haven’t read it and somehow don’t feel like reading it yet. Perhaps one day.
Wijenaike is a prolific writer. This is her sixteenth publication in her writing life. She has won many prestigious awards, among them the State Literary award; she has been a Commonwealth Prize winner and a Gratiaen Prize winner. When ones hears this about an author, there is a certain expectation that needs to be met. And it was with this expectation that I took That Deep Silence to read.
To be frank Wijenaike is not my kind of author. Her themes can be seen as hack and overdone to the hilt. But when reading this book, I felt it was seeped in sadness, nostalgia and mourning and it is that which I will talk about. There is pathos in Wijenaike’s writing. It is a remembrance of times past – when all was good and well. However, instead of Wijenaike conveying that by retelling the stories of the good old days, she dwells on the horror stories of today. It is her focusing on the negative of modern life that forces you to realize that the past was glorious. Perhaps that is her technique. For instance, there is very little to be happy about in this book. All is doom and gloom. Is this what the conflict has done to at least one literary creator? Possibly.
Most of Wijenaike’s characters are middle or lower class members of society – some of them used to belong to the landed gentry but have now been reduced to virtual poverty. There is a lack of feeling between children and parents, there is a lack of communication and camaraderie between husbands and wives, there is plenty of conflict, abandonment, abuse, and murder.
Her war stories are trite – a soldiers widow, a child soldier. They have all been done before, in much the same manner. There is nothing different or exceptional in these stories. There are stories of sexual repression, that may have been apt in another era, and a story that deals with homosexuality in an uncomfortable manner. I am not sure of it being that relevant in today’s world with that impact. The story of cancer is stereotypical. Some of the stories like Living for the Day, seem to be inspired from newspaper reports and most of her stories remind me of those you find in the papers, in the creative writing section.
Wijenaike’s poetry is more from the heart, than being well crafted. They seem to be semi ramblings again on the themes of loss, sadness, displacement, conflict, death. The poetry comes out as being a genuine concern for what is happening to the country as well as the society. And yet, in her poetry, she is able to break out of her depression and write about a butterfly, an ominous rain cloud, which is a welcome respite from the heavy atmosphere she has created.
The whole book is like one big cry for help. It is in a sense as if Wijenaike, who is more at home writing fiction like Giraya, has through her desperation on the state of the country written this straight from her heart. How good it is, depends on how the reader takes it. If it is taken in the spirit that I think it is written in – an inability to stand by and watch as the world of the writer collapses, then that’s fine. However, if the reader expects writing of an excellent quality and is thus disappointed and unable to see the message of the writer, then more’s the pity.
Wijenaike’s nicest story is No grass for my feet. An account of growing up in the 1930s and onwards. Perhaps it is based on her life. If that is so, I hope her next book is her autobiography. It will be a book worth reading but I hope she can drop her ‘all is misery’ style and write the account as it is – sadness, happiness, hope and despair. After all a life is not just one emotion, it has its fair share of all. What we must remember is that after sadness, joy does come. I hope Wijenaike remembers that too.

Uprooted by Martin Wickremesinghe

Translated by Lakshmi de Silva and Ranga Wickramasinghe.

I didn’t know this book existed until I read that the Hi book club was featuring the book. So of course though I wouldn’t be caught dead at the book club, I trotted off to get the book. So my first complaint is that it should have had much more publicity than it got. My second complaint is what’s with the cover? Its godawful! Certainly not one to encourage a reader to pick up. Boring covers will turn off readers. So I wish they had taken the trouble to give me a nice bright cover.
Having studied in English, and my Sinhala being shaky and all, I had not read any of Martin Wick’s work. while I was growing up. It was only recently that I read Madol Duwa, in translation. I had heard about Martin Wicks, and they seem to make a big deal of him and all that, and the literati think that he is the greatest of any of our writers, so I was keen to read him. Therefore, a thank you is in order for those who made it possible for me to read this. And a message that I would like to see more translations of our Sinhala and Tamil writers out there.
Now onto the book. Firstly the translation cannot be faulted. It was wonderful to read such a beautifully translated book. I remember the awful translation of Madol Duwa, that ruined a good book for me. Translation is an art and the combination of Lakshmi de Silva and Ranga Wickramasinghe (a relative of the authors?) gave the novel an authentic feel. They obviously know their subject and author well and that is the key to good translations.
I really liked this novel. Is it a different story? Is it told in a unique manner? No and not quite are the answers. It is a sweet story, nicely told. But to me not gripping. Perhaps I am jaded by my twentyfirst century outlook. So I tried to put myself in the place of a reader of 1944. My grandmother was ten years old, my grandfather was twenty years old. Perhaps he would have read the book, but honestly my ten year old grandmother should have managed the book as well. It is simply written, the language is not innovative or beautiful, but it was written well. Was this a startling story of the time? Not really, I should think. If it was startling at all, I suppose it was the fact that children, young people and adults of that time were reading stories of Western heroes and heroines and here at last was a story for the Sinhala people. But wait a minute, this was written in Sinhala, so it was a different audience that Martin Wicks was writing for. He was writing for the Sinhala reading man and woman and child. This is a story that I feel they could have very well lived. A traditional family living through changing times, fallen fortunes, upwardly mobile young men and impoverished genteel women looking for security through marriage.
In the introduction, I am told that the novel is an imported art form. So perhaps that is why Martin Wick’s is so lauded, it is because he introduced to the Sinhala reader a mode of reading and therefore thinking through the form of written story telling.
For me some of the behaviour of the characters were not in keeping with their character, for instance, I was not sure why Nanda’s mother, who initially was so vehemently opposed to Piyal marrying Nanda would even encourage her second marriage to him. In my experience of the older generation, they are loathe to forgive and change and would carry grievances and tradition to the nth degree. Was Martin Wick’s like modern Hindi films trying to show the Sinhala society how they should behave, as opposed to how they actually behave. Who knows?
Today, when Sri Lankan literature especially in English is having a period of revival, it would have been lovely to have had the opportunity to meet Mr Martin Wicks, have him featured at the GLF, but alas! I believe he is no more.
While I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but make comparisons. Martin Wick’s published this book in 1944, Ulysess by James Joyce in 1922;The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald in 1925; Gone with the Wind by Margeret Mitchell in 1936; 1984 by George Orwell in 1949; Lolita was published in 1955. My critics (and there are so many, as we discovered when I reviewed Colombo Streets) may say these writers wrote in English, they had an advantage. So let’s take a look at some non-English writers of the same period and what they were writing. Maxim Gorky had already died by 1936, as had Lorca who was assassinated in August 1936 by Franco’s nationalists. Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Gitanjali in 1913; Herman Hesse published Sidhdhartha in 1922. In 1928 Ting Ling had published Miss Sophie’s diary about the sexual fantasies of a Chinese woman infatuated with a young man; In 1929, Rilke published Letter to a Young Poet; Astrid Lingren wrote Pippi Longstocking in 1945, Solzhenitsyn published One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962. I have heard of every single one of these writers and read their writing (with the exception of Ting Ling, but was intrigued when I read about her and her writing, so had to include it, to strengthen my case). So what is the point you may ask?
While I liked Martin Wick’s Uprooted a lot. I don’t think it comes close in quality of writing or subject matter to any of the works I have cited above. If these writers many of them Martin Wick’s contemporaries were writing such edgy, thought provoking, socially relevant commentaries, how is it that Uprooted in my opinion doesn’t compare.
This is just my opinion, I am sure that many out there, will jump to the defense of Martin Wick’s and quite justifiably so. But we have to be realistic. We are a small country that is yet to produce a world standard of anything from anyone who has lived in this country. I had to add the disclaimer or else I would be inundated by examples of Sri Lankan born writers living out of the country. That doesn’t cut it for me. Martin Wick’s is a good writer but is he a great writer? Is he Sri Lanka’s greatest writer from the twentieth century? If yes, then I am disappointed. But to end on a good note. I await the translations of the second and third books of the trilogy with eagerness. Truly, I can’t wait to read them.

Theravada Man by Manuka Wijesinghe

After having read Manuka Wijesinghe’s first book Monsoons and Potholes which I enjoyed very much even though it was repetitive and a bit of a difficult read, I approached her second book just released early this year, with some trepidation. The launch of the book at Barefoot in Galle at the wonderful Galle Literary Festival was well done, even though the attendance was poor. The skit performed by the extremely talented Indu Dharmasena, Sangvada, Michael Meyler (who knew the man could act as well) and Manuka was hilarious. In half an hour they had reduced this 359 page book into a complete story. Quite a feat!
To my utter surprise the book read well. The story flowed on and on and most important of all kept the reader’s interest. The central figure the Theravada schoolteacher who was referred throughout the whole book as iskolemahaththaya is looking for a wife. Hooked up with an astrologer, they engage in various philosophical discussions that cover all aspects of life until they reach the desired object – the wife. Once married, the schoolteacher’s wife referred to as iskolehamine, as she is also a teacher, produces a number of children, replaces the astrologer as the recepient of various philosophical discussions, and discovers close to the end that she has been nothing but merely a goal post in the iskolemaththaya’s life. There are various kavi’s that are interspersed in the text that even though I read them diligently were rather distractive. Other than for historical documentation, reproducing the kavis in whole did not add more to the novel. In addition the novel has two playlets that they call nadagamas, which while entertaining to read, again was not essential to the story. I fear that both were included because they could not be published anywhere else.
Not having met Manuka personally but heard her speak briefly, I suspect that the book is written the way Manuka speaks. The book is rather breathless as it speeds its way through from beginning to end. There are many interesting philosophical discussions on the way but it almost seems that the book is secondary, and that the writer is using it as a way of transmitting her critique on life and philosophy to the world at large. Sometimes the reader feels battered. Sometimes the reader feels lost. Sometimes the reader feels it could have been said in many more words less.
But the final word is that on the whole it was an entertaining book. Typical of her previous writing there is a cause, but it is less pressing, less intense. I preferred Monsoons and Potholes because it came from the soul. But Theravada Man is better written, more slick and it is only right at the very end, that you ask. And what was all that about?