This story
began in early August 2011 and is still alive and I wrote about it in middle of
that month. It is a story of grit and determination of a simple villager, who
had a dream. A dream, that is very different to that most other villagers of
his age have. A story I love to tell again and again in celebration of this man’s
effort. I m sure you will enjoy meeting our hero, farmer Somapala.
Two weeks
ago on a Sunday morning, I had a surprise visitor. I may have seen him before
on the road, at the village temple, at the pola (fair) or at various other events,
but never had the opportunity to meet, greet or talk with him. Patabendi Maddumage
Somapala told me that he lived close to my house on the road to the Kalametiya
Bird Sanctuary and that his children were members of the ‘Kiula Kiyawana
Gunaya’ mobile library, a free book sharing service we operate every Saturday
afternoon, on a three wheeler.
He had a
child like excitement in his voice and that got me equally excited to find out
why he had come to see me. He was carrying a pile of papers with him and told
me “I want you to please look at these”. It was 53 foolscap pages of an essay
that was written in large ‘bola’ (well-rounded) Sinhala letters. The papers
were carefully numbered at the top of each page and he held it together in his
hand placed in a brown paper bag. I sat with him and had a cursory first glance
at it. It got me curious and interested and I wanted him to leave it with me
and come back again the next morning to talk more about it.
His was a
dream he said, before he left. He yearned to write a novel, like the one’s his
sons and daughters were reading. He thought he owed it to others to share his
life’s experiences with them. He was seventy two and certainly had a lot to
share.
I read in
full what he had written. There were no full-stops, commas or separation of
ideas in paragraphs. The tenses were mixed up and some sentences were not in
its rightful place. Yet, his story held me spell bound. It was a story of a
simple village family in the immediate aftermath of Independent Ceylon spilling
over to the time of the rule of the Bandaranaike clan.
He had
little political or social commentary but more accounts of incidents that he
had witnessed or heard from others. He had juxtaposed the story of the family
to that of the times quite well. There were references to the human-elephant
conflict as was at the time, how the independent day celebrations were held in
the nearby town of Hungama, in the early 1950s with the participation of the
then prime minister and how the left movement mobilised support in villages, through
the introduction of alcoholic beverages. His characters had been named in an
interesting way to depict the mood of the times. He had Challi Nona, Pilli
Mahatthaya and Caesar for the ‘bad’ and Sangasena, Dhammi, Maggie and Dingi
Mahatthaya for the ‘good’. The incidents of drunkenness, the might of the
powerful, political corruption and good doses of hypocrisy, were all there but
in cursory references. In the main, his characters were either ‘black’ or ‘white’.
And he later told me also with a smile that, that was how life was at the time
with only little ‘grey’ in these characters he could talk about.
Accomplished
farmer
Please do
not get me wrong, I am not for a minute reviewing a novel or a creative work
that needs to meet the attention of critics of literature, but am only
describing the simple expressions of a villager who had a dream of telling a
story he had stored in his head for sometime.
The next
morning Somapala went on to tell me of how he had to drop out of school at the
‘hodiaya panthiya’ (1st standard) after engaging the son of the
Vidane Mahatthya (village chieftain) in a naughty fisticuff. The School
principal, a close friend of the chieftain saw to it that school was hell for
Somapala, and he in his childlike arrogance decided to drop out. Thereafter, he
has helped his father look after the heard of buffalos (they were a key supplier
of curd for the village) and cultivate the paddy fields. That later made him an
accomplished farmer himself.
During times
of leisure he had written each letter of the alphabet and numbers on the sand,
like he had seen his friends do in school on their slates. That, in later life
he said helped him keep up with educating his children. He said that he had learned
some lessons from them too.
Style
and form
Others in
the village told me that he is a good flutist. When I asked him about this he
smiled and said “I need to go to Matara to get new flute, I broke the one I
had”. That was the same smile he had on
his face when I first told him that the characters in his novel, were either
black or white. And to me, the innocence of that smile said it all.
His ‘novel’
did not have a title or name. We spoke about it and decided to call it ‘Ea Kale
Kathawak’ (a story of that time). I worked with him to place the full stops,
commas, make the paragraphs and adjust some of the tenses, but did not dare to tinker
at all with his original text when it came to style and form. I took it upon
myself to have Somapala’s work lithographed and we will have fifty copies of it
to circulate within the village readership audience. The same is done with
others in this village who are encouraged to write poetry and prose by publishing
them monthly in a few lithographed pages (Kiula Wimansa Athwela) for circulation
when the mobile library operates on Saturday.
Business
of dreams
When I hear
of the mad scramble among youth to migrate to Korea or to other lands looking
for jobs or those sixty odd thousands who gather each year at stadiums or
hotels, to become super stars on television or to become fashion designers or
beauty queens, all I see are dreams. Then there are others more privileged
whose dreams are made for them by their parents; the tuition classes, cricket
coaching schools, drama classes, elocution classes, dancing classes, the little
stars etc.
Some dreams
are made, packaged and sold by yet others. That is done so effectively making
it a ‘business’ all of its own. These ‘dream sellers’ venture to make hoards of
money, for themselves, using a myriad of ways and means to do it. We see this
in the likes of the media, advertising industry, fashion industry, entertainment
industry, wellness industry etc.
For those
in governance too, dream selling becomes an important endeavour. When youth
dream of becoming stars in hordes of hundreds of thousands that allows those
charged with providing them other productive opportunities to postpone dealing
with the issues on hand. What we forget is that these are prototype models of attempts
at social engineering, we have duplicated from failed economies and systems
that now seem to be getting into a struggling mode. Given the ethos we profess to
inculcate and the need we have to be focussing on more productive occupations
such as reconciliation of our nation, growing more food, conserving our
environment, meeting other key social needs and nurturing our exports, it may
serve us well to take a re-look at them in the context of their contribution
and productivity in serving our society and its development.
Lessons
to learn
I wondered
why I was so taken by Somapala’s dream of being a writer at the age of seventy
two. I realise that it was because he taught me a lesson. He made a success of
his life, meeting all odds and lived through to a ripe age to realise his
dream. He did not venture to hurry things up but fulfilled his obligations,
before he took on to realise his dream.
The lesson
I guess is that while dreams and dreaming is good, making a business of
packaging and selling any which one of them, may not augur well for us. Dreams
shared by the likes of our Somapala Govi Mahathaya need be personal and not be
rushed or forced upon. Such dreams are for sure not for packaging or for sale.
Packaging
and selling ‘unreal’ dreams in attractive forms and formats may do us all more
harm than good and it may serve well for those in policy making to take a
re-look at this social phenomenon.
His
two novelettes can be read in Sinhala at the following links:
No comments:
Post a Comment