Humane retelling of terrible times

Unavoidably for the authorities, Anil Tissera, a UN forensic expert, once a Sri Lankan, now truly detached in the West is sent to investigate mass "disappearances" in her former country. She is carefully paired off by the government with Sarath Diyasena, one of its own archaeologists who insists that the truth is more complex than Anil's attempts to pin down the government. She is unsure of his allegiances and when she meets his brother Gamini, an emotionally dislocated government surgeon in unresolved relationship with his sibling, in the thick of saving war- shattered lives, he again shrugs off foreign critics of his country's establishment. But on her journey of investigation with Sarath, through information from Palipana (Sarath's former guru), she meets a man far below the brothers Diyasena in the social scale, Ananda Udugama, a former temple painter of the eyes of Buddha statues whose wife is a victim of the death squads. 

His terrible state shatters Anil, sending her on an emotional journey back to attachment with the people of Sri Lanka, affecting even Sarath's upper middle class balancing act. And then the story rushes on to its stunning climax in which the relationship between the two brothers is "resolved' through the outside agency of terror, leaving Anil and Ananda with a ghost.

Many readers (I found) knowing beforehand that the book is to do with the terrible Sri Lankan civil wars (still really unresolved) feel strangely disappointed while journeying through much of the early, middle and some of the later parts of the work. The old "Koheda Yanne Malle Pol" (folksy Sinhalese way of referring to a non sequitur, Q - Where are you going? A - Coconuts in the Bag!) may even come to mind when we suddenly encounter the skull of a secret murder carefully placed in a "Kundanmals" bag for investigation, being as suddenly sidelined, to allow the substantial story of two brothers drawn from the upper middle class of Colombo; their easy colonial surroundings of a previous era, the fancy dress parties, failed marriages and unresolved relationships from childhood. There were moments when I had strong feelings that we were still "running in the family" of Ondaatje's society of his classic 1982 fictionalized autobiography, with the Thomian brothers Sarath and Gamini Diyasena and with the former Ladies' College Sri Lankan named Anil Tissera. 

Her own investigation too, for most of the book, becomes discursive as the author "digresses" to create her in long held flashes from her post Sri Lankan life in London, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Tulsa. Together with these marvellously written, seemingly self-contained digressions, are short pauses of greatly absorbing meditations.

This digressively conceived structure, however, is not only the telling as it really is, in that there is never a single track story in life but is also the benignly montaged work of a master of twentieth/twenty first century writing. A living subject as painful and harrowing as these multitudinous murders of Sri Lanka could not be offered for an experience, even in fiction, through a relentless storyline of social and political realism, not by Ondaatje anyway. His world is very different as we can trace it from "The Collected Works Of Billy The Kid" through to "The Sin Of A Lion" and "The English Patient". At the end, despite the terrible indictment of the authorities, as it rushes to its stunning climax "Anil's Ghost" comes to rest, for a long stay within us, for other reasons - the benignly montaged handling of the readers' thoughts and feelings long preceding the story's climax and the final distancing section that follows it, to end the book. Ondaatje had no need to write a political tract, however powerful invariably to be massed with so many others. He does it in a deeper, singular and more enduring way.

Readers may remember that on his first return to Sri Lanka after childhood departure, to compose his fictionalized autobiography (Running In The Family 1982), Ondaatje got an early passing scent of the part of the island that now occupies "Anil's Ghost". Ian Goonetileke shows him a book: "At the back of the book are ten photographs of characoal drawings done by an insurgent on the walls of one of the houses he hid in…… thousands were killed by police and army. While the Kelani and Mahaweli rivers moved to the sea, heavy with bodies, these drawings were destroyed so that the book is now the only record of them. The artist is anonymous. The works seem as great as the Sigiriya frescoes. They too need to be eternal."

It reminded me that the history in "Anil's Ghost" is a craftsman's chosen late segment of a longer intractable and bloody relationship between the "shut out" and the inheritors of power in Sinhalese society. That the composite identity of the latter has been diffused, in the name of one government at one time and another government at another and so on. And that we can never be certain about which side to affix "terror" or "counter terror" to. The origin has been hidden, from nearly all but the expert, in the now complete, still turning circle. It also reminded me that in "Anil's Ghost" Ondaatje acknowledges that a work like his present one, has of necessity to be disconnected from the families of say, for example, Manamperi, the "queen" of Ruhunu in the Seventies and of her vanished companions - "those who were slammed and stained by violence lost the power of language and logic. It was.... a last protection for the self. They held on to just the coloured and patterned sarong a missing relative last slept in, which in normal times would have become a household rag but now was sacred."

The loss of language and logic of the slammed and stained may however be overcome in fiction, as one wonders about a created personality like Ananda Udugama who for me (together with Palipana) is the most enduring character in "Anil's Ghost". The descendants of the families in "Running In The Family", Sarath Diyasena, Gamini Diyasena (despite his being the connection with the terrible sadness of the war hospitals and Anil Tissera do in the end actually fade away, or in Ondaatje's own suggestion in the last section, "distance" away. 

He has done this long before the end, by his provision for creative reading through poetic brevity as he grows the dominance of the two characters outside Colombo's society class, the great archaeologist Palipana and the temple painter of the eyes of the Buddha, Ananda Udugama. Palipana also is in a sense a mature "insurgent" in that after a lifetime of diligent and carefully taken footsteps in unearthing the past he suddenly dances into a fantastic leap of the imagination which arrives at a "truth" of the island's history which the establishment will not allow. His response is to withdraw physically into the still present past in a "hall of leaves" in an ancient forest sanctuary together with his niece who has been traumatized by the death-dealing agents of the same "authority" that removed his name from the Sinhalese Dictionary. Ananda, who puts in the actual touch of divinity by painting the eyes to statues of the Buddha is our link with all the broken Buddhas of Sri Lanka. This link is made through the book's last working day, as Ananda reconstructs a huge Aukana- like shattered Buddha, "a statue that was no longer a god, that no longer had its graceful line but only the pure sad glance." This section describing the way Ananda reconstructs the shattered Buddha is in many ways similar to the way Ondaatje puts together the segments of his research material in a creatively "shattered" product.

It is mainly through Palipana and Ananda Udugama that the terrible present human action as it develops, is sometimes made to seem very small against the vast mystery of time. (Again, no comfort, as Ondaatje says, to the families of the slammed and the stained). Monumental history and the history of nature are placed in the totality of the author's large conception. Against these the terrible human action as it develops sometimes seems small, but this is at most times a paradox. The timeless view diminishes the human, yet the huge distance in nature and historic stone also concentrates attention on the human action, elevating it to the foreground of our vision. (It reminds me of the way Leonard Woolf juxtaposes the cruel fate of Babun in the courthouse of British Imperialism in Tangalle, with the huge picture of nature immediately outside, in the Ceylon of 1904 - "The court seemed very small now, suspended over this vast and soundless world of water and trees". 

The Village In The Jungle, 1913. And in turn to thoughts about the fates of "shut out" people before and after Sri Lankan Independence. Ondaatje takes huge risks with this technique and vision, with 'digressions' even into the immense universe and pulls it off as he has Anil's friend Leaf Niedecker dying in the shadow of those giant telescopes in New Mexico. .... "the Very Large Array of Telescopes, which minute by minute drew information out of the skies. Information about the state of things about ten billion years ago and as many miles out." At that moment in Mexico, Leaf was dying of an incurable disease, and she asks Anil, "Do you think they can hear us? That giant metal ear in the desert. Is it picking us up too? I'm just a detail from the subplot right." The timing of this passage in the process of the book will, for most readers, be an invitation to contextualize, not consolingly but mysteriously, even the "sub plot" of the terrible years of Sri Lanka covered in the book. And again, through Anil, that the consequences of the most extreme actions of nature and civilization may leave you pondering the difference: ".....a dog in Pompeii, a gardener's shadow in Hiroshima."

In Michael's execution of the killing of Katugala, the President of Sri Lanka, the philosophies of the work remains integrate. He is first dealt with by poetic editorial justice in setting his death chapter immediately after the way in which the President's own machinery destroys the characters this author would dearly wish to have preserved. 

And then benignity in the final glance at this human. "When you looked at the real image of the man, the lean face below the thinning white hair, there was compassion for him no matter what he had done" followed by Katugala's soft, tiny blue end ".... as if some mechanism he had no control of had been put in motion (the man) approached Katugala having already switched on one of the batteries. One blue bulb lighting up deep in his clothing. When he was within five yards of Katugala he turned on the other switch." This work of "fiction" will endure as a history of these times showing us how we may face even the most extreme actions of our civilization through wise, compassionate re-creation. Stories of the human condition in the worst of times.

Ane, magenuth malak ganna!

Deepal's forte is his use of the language. He proves that understanding the subject is not enough - the writer should be able to convey it to the reader easily, particularly when it's a complex issue. He has a superb vocabulary and the knack of picking on folk idioms and terminology commonly used in our day-to-day activity.

Deepal selects simple examples to illustrate a point. Many a title he has used for chapters invite the reader to read on. The title of the opening chapter, for instance is 'Ane magenuth mal ganna' - a plea by a little girl who sells flowers: "Please buy flowers from me also". We hear this often on a Poya day when we visit the temple. Deepal uses the little girl's sales effort to discuss the Marketing Mix - the often talked about 'Four Ps' in marketing - Right Product, Right Place, Right Price and Right Promotion. 

The salesgirls have the Right Product. For those who want flowers to offer to The Buddha, they have the white flowers. For devotees of Kataragama Deviyo, they offer red flowers. Near the Vishnu Devale, they will sell blue flowers. 

They offer the consumer a choice - an essential ingredient in marketing.

Then they have the flowers at the Right Place. Pilgrims find it convenient to pick up the flowers closest to the place of worship. They have the flowers at the right time in the right quantities in convenient small baskets. The price is also right. It's because the pilgrims are prepared to pay that price for the flowers that the salesgirls succeed in exhausting their stocks. 

Then, of course, they promote their product cleverly. The pleading voices invite you to buy the flowers. And that's how a sales effort succeeds. They also offer you added value. "We will look after your slippers," one will offer. "Here are brand new lotus flowers," another will say. "No need to bring the basket back," a third will tell you. That's how Deepal 'teaches' us marketing. 

Judging from the title, many will conclude that 'Sinhalen Business' is meant for the average mudalali. The book will definitely help the mudalali to sharpen his skills and add a new dimension to his sales effort. But it will also benefit the professional who up to now has been studying marketing texts in English, even though he has been selling and promoting his products essentially to Sinhala speaking consumers. He will learn new approaches ideal for our setting and heaps of Sinhala marketing terms.

Deepal confesses it's not easy to find single words in Sinhala to convey the exact meaning for an English term. He cites the word 'brand' as an example. The Sinhala term for 'brand' is 'Sannamaya'. When it comes to other terms like brand value, brand equity, brand personality, brand extension and so on, it's not easy to find single words. Deepal hence, prefers to explain the terminology using a number of words.

To Deepal the consumer is not necessarily king or god, as the saying goes. He identifies the consumer as a cockroach! Why? The cockroach adapts to a situation quickly. It develops immunity to every new insecticide pretty fast. The consumer too quickly gets used to a new product or service and then begins to make demands. Starting from there Deepal discusses how the marketer should handle the consumer.

Deepal's effort is a worthwhile exercise to differentiate between selling and marketing. Quoting the Guttila Kavya where mention is made of cartloads of goods being transported by traders for selling, he shows the close relationship between selling and marketing and goes on to explain the vastness of the marketing concept. 
Ranat 

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