Day 2

I have decided to focus my flow of thoughts today on one of the renowned and one of my favourite childhood authors in Sri Lanka, namely Mr. Martin Wickramasinghe.

First of all, there is a special reason for me to pick him as my preference to be put on my blog post. Of all the books I have read so far, he has been the only Sri Lankan author to clearly grasp the mindset of the people living through the society of the early 19th century. However, most of his thoughts still can be applied to the modern society as well. I am not hoping to review his books here, but only on the fact of how he has superbly observed the social life around him. Even in a historic tale such as 'Rohini', where he focuses on the 'Battle between King Dutugemunu and Elara', he had made sure to depict the thoughts of the people living in that era, so it wouldn't become just another war tale. For example, the story relates how the upper class Sinhala society of Anuradhapura helped King Elara during the war and that the ordinary Sinhala citizens didn't see him as a cruel leader for he respected our traditions as much as possible.

'Viragaya' is one spectacular book, where it narrates the flow of mind of a guy named 'Aravinda'. Aravinda is just another portrait of the men in this society whose battle inside the mind is not visible to the world. Aravinda did not have enough courage to express his feelings and marry 'Sarojini', the girl he loved, although she expected him to do so. Finally she married another good man, while Aravinda stayed single all his life. However, he couldn't forget her and the women in his life gets compared to Sarojini by and by, especially the daughter of his servant woman, 'Bathi'. Bathi is an uneducated, yet attractive free, young woman whom Aravinda wishes to be as innocent and virtuous as Sarojini. It is said that this story has a relation to Martin Wickramasinghe's own life, where he liked a friend of his wife while he was living as a clerk. She also liked him and wished to marry him, but he only desired the mental satisfaction he got by speaking to her.

The most famous 'Gam Peraliya' shows how an upper class family(Mahagedara) in a village gets poorer by time, yet how they manage to hide it from the outside world by their pride. The rapidly changing life styles of the society that time brought forth the people who had money as the new holders of power disregarding the cast or class. Thus, even the Mahagedara people has to finally accept that dreaded fact where the most proud daughter of the family,Nanda, agrees to marry Piyal, who came to teach her. The most fascinating thing I found when reading this book was the fact that the mother at Mahagedara(Matara Hamine) had a similar mindset to mine. Martin Wickramasinghe describes how she was a woman with her mind turned inside her in order to inspect her ownself. She was a woman who didn't see much faults in others, except her own faults. How this author came to observe such characteristics of a woman so correctly, is a mystery to me.

Most of the short stories of Mr. Wickramasinghe had a touch of sarcasm towards the foolishness of the people, so they were actually funny to read. However, they always depicted the bitter truth about the society. For example, one story narrates how a veddah sells 'peacock oil' to a woman. To prove himself he puts a drop of that oil into water and shows her the vivid colors that forms oon the water saying that they were the colors of the feathers of the peacock. When the foolish woman shows it to her son he laughs at her saying that it was only engine oil and the salesman was not actually a veddah at all. How much is this story relevant to the contemporary society? I guess these kinds of salesmen would appear in every era of the society.

Although his stories seems to be a bit influenced by the Russian Literature, it doesn't harm Mr. Martin Wickramasinghe's unique style of writing. To me, he's the greatest writer among Sri Lankan and perhaps if properly translated his work would be among some of the best in the world too.