Stories - Charulatha Abeysekara Thewarathanthri

"Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends"
                               ( Colors of the Wind - Vanessa Williams ; from the "Pocahontas" soundtrack )


 "Nature's cycle. Beginning, peace, coexistence, awakening intellect. Then comes development, always disorderly. Followed by greed and finally destruction... And Destruction... And begin again! Take humans out of the equation, and it would  always be peaceful coexistence.

So nature spirits have always been there? Since time began ?

Yes, always. But, time didn't begin, and it'll never end. It has no beginning or end... because it's just a concept in your mind. Do you understand?" ( Page 94)

            It will be interesting to ask the author, what made the paranormal, presented in such a way that it cannot be rejected by the most adhering rationalist character in her  Gratiaen Award winning novel, such a prime focus! The book, starting off similar to a string of modern day Sri Lankan English fiction ( girl and boy from mixed backgrounds, bumping to each other at a foreign university, going back to their Sri Lankan roots, the ethnic crisis, how one party or both parties are to be blamed depending on the author's own ethnicity and how much 'broad minded' he or she wants to appear etc.). Yet, there is one factor which makes this book different from others. It is the magic and the paranormal. It brings in the mystery, the beauty, the suspicion, a sense of age old unfathomable wisdom that totally changes the book on it's head - importantly, from another novel with an appeal to generation Y, to something more richer, murkier and complete by it's incompleteness of its explanations. It begs the question, "why should the paranormal behave in a manner, to be comprehensible by the rational, simply because the lattes wants the former, to?", within the grain of the novel integrated seamlessly into the novel.

Towards page 200, pieces in the jig saw fall into place in too rapid a rate that it discounts some of the richness in the narration the book had been building up until then. In my eyes, this sense of urgency is a drawback in this work, and should've been handled with more circumspection, to avoid a "Bollywood" feel to an otherwise good work.

This novel has strands of everything - ethnic politics, mystery, feudal mindset, ecology - and hence it's richness. For example, the naïvety of  a man or woman's convictions are  questioned,  in such a manner  that the reader would turn back on him or her self with the same question. 

"She was beginning to see the real reasons behind her actions, and she did not like what she saw. She had taken the child like reclaiming a lost asset. Simply because she had a right to, because she could. Not out of love for the child but to soothe the maddening grief she had felt then. True, she did love Poddi's child; she had grown more and more attached to the girl as the years went by. But she could not, would not, risk her own children's future for her niece's sake, simply because she loved them more." ( page 182) 
Even Muthu questions herself if her acts of selflessness were in fact efforts to rid herself of a burden. Did Muthu wish for a normal childhood deep down then ?

This is just her second novel, and am sure it would've made her famous father, proud. The strengths, the beauty and the wonder of her work, out measure instances of weaknesses. I enjoyed this book immensely, and wouldn't hesitate to read her future work. I wish Charulatha all the very best in her future work!