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Portuguese invasion - approximating reality via 'faction'
Sons of the Rebel by C. Gaston Perera. Vijitha Yapa Publications. Reviewed by Rajpal Abeynayake
Jaffnapatnam has fallen to Constantine de Saa, despite the King's attempt to bribe him not to erect a fortress in Trincomalee. "Yalapanam is somewhat far away,'' the King tells prince Wijeypala, in a 17th century courtroom scene that seems in a surreal kind of way to mimic, albeit in caricature, today's newspaper headlines.

Alarmed by the audacity on the part of the Portuguese Captain-General, Kandy seeks an alliance with Tanjore. Foreign incursions and expedient alliances with the alien to stop a rampaging enemy?

The similarities with our own times are not to be missed, even though Gaston Perera is the reigning Prince of Sri Lankan historical fiction.

The author writes on a scale that is almost epic, and he does know the period of the Portuguese invasions like the back of his hand. But this apotheosis of the detail is not the central attraction of Perera's account. He creates the historical ambience of the 17th century Portuguese yen for rampaging across alien territories, altering entire historical landscapes of nations that came under the diktat of Lisbon's marauding pack of brutes.

In a chapter titled the "Flowering of the Second Conspiracy'', for instance, Gaston writes of the Portuguese crew of warriors, "the veterans, of the orient.'' He writes: "They were there -- Gomes da Silva, the Captain Major, Diogo Machado, the captain of Colombo, Barros de Seixas, Loius de Texeira and many others. These captains were in fact in a mood of nervous agitation as they waited de Saa's final summons for the War Council.''

The fulcrum of Gaston's literary ability is the dexterity in re-creating the military campaigns with some allowable historical spin, which apart from confirming the fact that Perera has done his homework, arouses a fondness -- a nostalgia even - - for Portuguese trivia and memorabilia from an era now all but forgotten.

Lisbon's campaigns were fought with guns that were equivalent to long-range missiles in today's theaters of conflict. Therefore, these were, in their time, defining paradigms of armed engagement. The Portuguese armouries were at the cutting edge, and the Sinhalese were ingenious in finding ways to meet their toxic power of attack, but even so, its not the ingenuity of the Sinhalese but their relative pacifism that comes across in page after page of Gaston's recreation of Kandyan resistance.

The author's language is not complex; his metaphors and his idiom, though standard, are rather in-keeping with what's expected of a book that's a straight rendition of historical fact -- albeit buttressed heavily by fiction. This reviewer will not divulge any of the storyline, but suffice to say that palace intrigue and battleground angst figures with some urgency.

To some extent the resistance of the past is romanticized, even though the events described were harrowing to the psyche of the nation. It's a romanticism that supplies an antidote to the negative-energy of those people who wanted some time ago, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Portuguese invasion of Sri Lanka. Gaston's idea in writing the novel maybe, among other things at least, to expose the insanity of those who want to glorify this era of subjugation.

This reviewer learns that Gaston Perera is part of a group of Sri Lankan social elite who have banded together to form a group called the "Portuguese Encounter', which seeks to make rubbish of the designs of those who want to be so servile as to celebrate the Portuguese invasion. The Encounter group supports the idea of reparations, and an apology from the Portuguese for the depredations they carried out five centuries go.

The Portuguese in the prevailing cultural lore are depicted as the ultimate hedonists; they are lecherous, they drink a liquid that looks like blood and they are best when they sing bawdy songs about the women they left behind in Goa.

That's the stuff of an on-screen romanticism, contributed to by the lyrics of Arisen Ahubudhu, which were lyrics for songs meant to be sung with a certain distanced admiration for the ''adventurousness'' of these seafaring bandits.

But Gaston Perera takes the sheen off that sort of altered history - - and for the first time perhaps in Sri Lankan fiction, provides a picture of these conquerors as scheming utterly rapacious men who nevertheless are deft at strategy, and know how to obey orders from Lisbon. Its a portrayal that often contrasts with the depiction of Sinhala Kings as a insecure species, that manage their affairs rather ham-handedly, even though sometimes they make interesting forays into innovative statecraft, as when the succession to the Sinhala kingdom is decided by lottery -- that eventually turns out to be rigged.

Nothing, it appears has changed in the Sinhala ethos when compared to those distant declining days which signified for most purposes the beginning of the end for a proud line of Sinhala royals.

Not much has been written about the Portuguese by way of historical fiction, or by way of history which therefore means that Perera fills a lacuna -- a space that needed to be occupied by someone such as he, who has done the homework on the norms and devices of the first charge of globalization -- the direct armed invasion.

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