A Refreshing Sunday Read

Twas a relaxed hot sunday afternoon. Perfect for hiding indoors and for curling up with a book. I finally get round to reading the lot of 'sri-lankan' books I bought during Christmas.

Sam's Story by Elmo Jaywardene is a first person narrative. He is put across as a simpleton and one who has no bearing of the world we live in. Everything is new to him and foreign. I could even snidely say that his ignorance was largely annoying and his naivety even more so. Unlike this review, I found it tremendously difficult to cope with his state of mind - something I'd probably tie down with my impatience. In a nutshell I suppose, one could say that Jayawardene does manage to capture a number of issues - that of the war, poverty, etc. However, its something about the language - that of a common fool that somehow annoys me. This probably does not justify my reasons for not liking it, nor does it make me label this book as 'a bad piece of writing'. The storyline is good, the subject matter as well. Tis just the language...I mustn't forget to mention that this won the Gratien Prize in 2001.

On the other hand, Sujatha Mallika's story in the 2003 Gratien prizewinning author - Nihal De Silva's The Giniralla Conspiracy [picture courtesy of Vijitha Yapa] catches one completely off guard. The story deals with a lot of prevalent issues in our country. For instance, ragging at state universities is just the top layer, while there are more deeper and darker issues to be dealt with. All issues that bring frighteningly true-to-life images or even stir up wild-nightmarish imaginations. It talks of the political elements that exist in our state universities and how these are just the feeding grounds of its leaders who have visions of purging the country of its impurities [the rich] and thus helping the poor stand out and obtain what is rightly theirs. The storyline weaves around Sujatha's 5 journals that chronicle her life from the time she enters university, gets brutally ragged, believes in the 'JSP', joins them, discovers the 'Giniralla Conspiracy', tries to uncover it and so on and so forth.

This isn't one of those books you could easily put down. Heck, I read it in one go. Interestingly, De Silva incorporates quite a bit of Sinhalese dialogue, but always with a translation - it somehow adds to the...er...shall we say ambience? His writing and choice of subject engages such realism and timeliness, that it makes one stop to wonder, if Colombo was ever under such a threat, or if we still are? Will we ever have to undergo the likes of the Pol Pot regime or did we escape it? I honestly wouldn't put it past the JVP to have such murderous and radical communist reforms on the boards for Sri Lanka.

Either ways, de Silva somehow eerily enough brings the story to a more personal level, making one almost draw parallels with what we see going on in today's goverment. Sigh!

I must say - Sunday was one of those refreshingly lazy days...I like!