Vivid vignettes of everyday life

Short and Verse by M. T. L. Ebell. Published by Vijitha Yapa. Rs.199. Reviewed by Anne Abayasekara.

Facets of daily life often receive no particular attention, occupied as most of us are with the hurry and scurry and general `busyness’ of juggling with careers and coping with the cost of living. However, every now and then a perceptive writer who reflects on ordinary happenings of the kind with which we are familiar, takes a fresh look and uses them to create stories that make us stop and think again. This is what M. T. L. Ebell has done through the short stories which she has put together along with a few poems, in a slim volume entitled “Short and Verse”.

Publisher and author: Vijitha Yapa presenting the first copies of Short and Verse to Lilamani Ebell at the book launch on July 16 at the National Library Services Board auditorium.

Although this is her first book, Ms. Ebell has been a regular contributor to national newspapers and magazines and one of the stories included here, “Shadows”, won the first prize in a competition organised a few years ago by the English Writers Cooperative of Sri Lanka. This particular story paints, with an admirable economy of words, a vignette of the reversed status that a relationship between a mother and her child undergoes when a parent ages and it’s the once-upon-a-time child who now acts as guardian of his former primary caregiver. In the story called “Interviews”, the tensions, frustrations and anxiety experienced by parents trying to get their 5-year-old mite into a “good” school, are depicted with an insight to which many parents will spontaneously respond.

“Mine- sweeper” brings the war close in the convincing picture Ebell draws of two friends who, from boyhood when they would spend hours playing a computer game which dealt with clicking the mouse to uncover hidden minesweepers, have, as young adults, inevitably joined the army and became expert minesweepers.

A story I particularly liked is called “The Sword” and tells of a girl and her much-loved grandmother, for both of whom the English language comes naturally to their lips. The young one finds it a struggle to study in the Sinhala medium in school because of her English-speaking home background. The old lady is taken by surprise when the girl tells her one day that “The people, the real people of this country, don’t like people who speak English the way we do.” No, Nanna had been quite unaware of it, remembering vividly the day her own mother had her admitted to a convent school where she, Gracie Ratnayake, would be taught good English which would give her an edge over those less privileged. “But an edge can cut and now it was hurting her grand-daughter.” Her mother had spoken of an English education as “a sword of liberation.” The girl looked back at her Nanna as she prepared to leave the room and said: “You know, Nanna, they say `kaduva danava’ whenever we speak in English. They say we use it to dominate them.” The last line of the story is that “Gracie (Nanna) pondered on the two words ‘they’ and ‘we’.”

Ms. Ebell has a sense of humour, too, for she takes the reader for a ride in stories like “First Love” and “Threesome” in which she seems deliberately to mislead us as to the real identity of her characters, so that she can make us laugh with her at the unexpected revelation at the very end of each story. Although she again takes us by surprise in “Peeping Tom”, this is a serious story well told and we should not really be astonished by its unexpected conclusion, for it is very true to life.

The poems have an arresting quality of their own and two of them relate to the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York in the 9/11 attack. Here again, the angle from which she views the downfall of the towers, described in short, terse words, is most unusual. “Child Soldier” fully evokes the pathos of a boy’s brief and bloody spell as a conscripted soldier.

Ms. Ebell’s creative touch changes the way we regard matters to which we might not normally attach much significance. That is the gift of a sensitive and imaginative writer who sees things from a different perspective to that of the heedless humans who hurry by. It is to be hoped that she will continue to pen more stories to entertain and inform us.

Photo Credit M.A. Pushpa Kumara.

Drawn by people and emotions

By Ayesha Inoon

The ending usually comes to her mind first. Then, the rest of the story follows. As a result, many of Lilamani Ebell’s short stories take the reader on a fascinating journey that builds up to an often delightfully unexpected end. In her first book, ‘Short and Verse’ – a collection of short stories and poetry that have been written by her over the past 20 years – the writings focus on a variety of themes drawn from her own personal experience, the world around her, and mostly, from the world in her imagination.

“It is people and their emotions that draw me,” says the soft-spoken author, commenting on the fact that many of her stories are universal and could be set anywhere. “Feelings are universal – the place is not important, unless it is important to the story in some way.” And, from the hopes and fears of the unborn child in the womb, to the frantic worries of the parents whose child has to face several interviews to enter school, it is the range of human emotion that is explored in these tales.

A past pupil of Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya, she was a voracious reader and took to writing even as a child. “It was mostly poetry back then,” Lilamani recalls. Taking up accountancy after her A/L’s, she studied for her CIMA examinations and worked both as an audit trainee as well as an accounts clerk for a short period until she married. “I did my finals when I was expecting my first child,” she says, adding that she was unable to complete two subjects. With three children following in the next seven years, it wasn’t until 2006 that she was able to think of doing her exams again.

“Last year was a year for finishing unfinished business – especially since a half century of life had passed,” she muses. However she discovered that she did not need to retake her accountancy exams, since she was already considered a ‘past finalist’ due to the changes in the syllabus. Putting together this book was another of the things she wanted to achieve.

Almost all her writing has been published under the pen name ‘Marie’ or M. T. L Ebell – as a result, not many people knew that she was the actual writer of these pieces, she explains. As a full-time mother of four and homemaker, writing has always taken a backseat in Lilamani’s life. Although she had occasional thoughts of returning to work, there was always plenty to occupy her at her home.

Still, she found that the richness of motherhood provided much material for writing, and thus wrote a series of columns for The Sunday Times entitled ‘Motherhood - With a Pinch of Salt’. “I stopped these columns when the children entered their teens because I felt it would be unfair to write about them then,” she smiles, adding that it was only later that she realised how much they had enjoyed being featured in a newspaper column.

Her husband too has been a source of great inspiration and support to her, she says, remembering how she used to work with a battered old typewriter until he bought her a modern electronic one (“with a magic eraser button too!”), even though they couldn’t really afford it at the time.

With a range of pets, from dogs and cats to tortoises, and a garden teeming with birds and squirrels, her love of animals has also entered into her writing. The story ‘Threesome’ in the book reflects this, with the usual quirky twist at the end of the tale.

The book also contains several poems, again looking inwards, and reflecting a gamut of thoughts and emotions. Some of the poems were inspired by the 9/11 tragedy, and one –‘Holiday’ – by a cherished visit abroad.

‘Shadows’, the story that won the short story competition held by the English Writers Cooperative of Sri Lanka in 1996, presents the much-written theme of aging and the reversal of roles between parent and child, from a fresh perspective. The idea for the story came to her, she says, when she was once shielding her young son from the glare of the afternoon sun. Reflecting that some day she may have to stand in her son’s shadow, she decided to write a story based on it, which she did, four years later. “It’s usually like that – I let an idea grow in my mind for some time before putting it to paper.”

Being a member of the Wadiya Writers’ group has helped her as a writer in many ways, Lilamani says, especially in being able to discuss her work with other writers and draw inspiration from their suggestions. It was they who saw the potential of, what was initially a very bare story, now a beautifully written account found at the end of her book, ‘Trouble in Jerusalem’.

An active member of the English Writers’ Cooperative of Sri Lanka, she was Editor of CHANNELS, their bi-annual journal, in 2006. Now that she has published her short stories, she definitely wants to write a book someday. And, as usual – “I already know what the ending is going to be,” she smiles.

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