Hikkaduwa Chronicles

Boys fishing@ Dodanduwa

© Chulie de Silva

Now, this story “Yesterday is another country” has many sides. And I suspect there are many other stories attached to all those sides. And those stories also have many sides.  Are you with me still? That’s a lot of sides to muse about and lots of tracks to wander off as you read the stories. Plus, of course this is a story about a story of the man who wrote it.  Confused?  You won’t be if you read it.

Yesterday is certainly another country that some of us yearn for with a gnawing ulcerating pain at the pit of our stomachs. It’s a life left behind that we try to hang on to through the slender threads of our writings.  Our writings are more a justification to ourselves, of what we are, what we did or didn’t do, what moved us and who left indelible marks in our lives.  In doing so do we bridge that generation gap?  Devendra here, is really a master craftsmen throwing words together like a chef does with condiments  to present to us a mixed platter delicately flavoured at times, strong and spicy at another time.  

To me this at first glance was a disjointed set of stories culled from a life lived with exemplary values.  Not the usual biography.  Certainly not at all a problem as I could read it not from front to back but as I pleased. The journey in the sequence he had arranged begins with the “hat,”  followed by “he is a good boy.”  I am riveted to the book by the time I get to the ”Family pot of gold”.   My heart is heavy as I meander around the paths at Pera campus in a poignant stillborn love affair so typical of that era.– I suspect won’t make any sense to teenagers or undergrads now.   We meet his relatives, friends and the unexpected Raven in Hawai — all the time touching raw spots in our conscience.  I wander around the ancient Kandyan kingdom learning about myths that I didn’t know existed. Suffer with Wimal through the pain of being not loved and abandoned and unexpectedly  enjoy a an interesting Internet encounter.

 As side stories go,  I put the book down to recall  the last conversation I had with the Venerable Dodanduwe Dharmasena who called me one day to ask for  help to safeguard the Kumarakande library - “be a true daughter of Hikkaduwa and the South” he said.  Alas! never achieved that status as  I never got around to doing anything for the library — not because I didn’t want to but because I let other family issues dominate my life .  Mingled with this guilt are memories of  happier times at Dodanduwa — how we as kids held our noses as an aunt  who loved the smelly preserved “jadi” fish  rummaged around  giant jars in Dodanduwa.

 There are more side stories to unearth. I call another aunt to check whether she knew the whereabouts of a teacher Miss Dantanarayana who taught me at  “Sri Sumangala Girls’ School” in Panadura.  Here I draw a blank.

The mind wanders off without any help remembering something I read about living today in an instant, just-add-water, push-a-button, microwaveable-in-under-three-minutes, zap-the-remote-control kind of a world now. Not everything about it is good. Realisation also dawns that the journey of life through the ethical conundrums and moral mazes is never an easy one.  Sadly we’ve lost our appreciation for essential natural processes that need to happen slowly. We look for ways to hurry them as farmers do ripening fruits with carbide and  we look for ways to depersonalise the injustices that we can see yet seemingly cannot influence.

But here is Devendra pushing us to look at these issues not forcefully but quietly stating in the typical non assuming, non boastful style of living that was extolled in years past  “Do not expect too much of this collection … you will find no words of wisdom, no messages, no moral…”  

 That I must dispute, although I wished many a times  there were some illustrations or the author had shared the photographs he spoke of. 

Thank you Sir, for this rich tapestry of stories.

Yesterday is Another Country

By Somasiri Devendra

ISBN 978-955-9419-28-0

Author Contact: somasiri@edisrilanka.com

“Please can you have a boring life this year,” said Mohini my friend, after she heard about the private bus that slammed into my car two days before Christmas. 

The question I often ask myself is: Where would I be if every action of mine was impeccable, that I had been right about absolutely everything and had never made a dubious choice in my life and lived a life as “Visakha” practising norms learned from childhood, religion etc…   Would I be happy now?  I doubt it. I would be bored and, worse, I would be boring!

Well, it has been dodgy living the past few years. If I took stock from 2004, there was the tsunami, followed by the  flash floods with my little suburban hut going under 2 feet of water in 2006.  Then there was the time that I nearly set my house on fire last year when a candle in a glass holder burst and set on fire my aromatherapy oils which was supposed to energize me!!

Life is certainly different after the divorce, not just having to cope with disasters on your own. … The really unexpected discovery was how close friends and to a lesser degree family reacted.  My father’s comment was extreme.  True to his nature he said,”You don’t need a divorce, you should get a knife and do a Bobbitt on him.”  .  My aunt was dumb struck and my sister-in-law, broke up into hysterical laughter. Didn’t earn Thatha much favour with my Amma too. She apparently moaned silently for the loss of her favourite son-in-law, but I think she secretly envies my independence. 

I soon discovered that invitations to dinners, lunches with friends were few and far between.  And when they did they made sure that I was seated among the old ladies - no loose  cannon among the men, no interesting conversations on the political goings on .  Conversation was often limited to backaches, cholestrol levels,  lack of good domestics to slave for you — and of course the inevitable gossip of the chattering classes. 

On one occasion, the portly society matron peered over the spectacles and asked “What’s your name again dearie?”  “Chulie.”   “Oh! Chulie who?”  Now I was in the midst of an upcountry Kandyan clan, and once I uttered “De Silva”  I am sure she began to wonder what caste I belonged to. We were interrupted by my hostess’s sister who summarized my life history by saying ” She was married to a nice man but is now divorced. ….” 

The dinner last week was slightly different but equally stigmatizing. In the company of ex-spouses’ school mates -the conversation commenced with how on the way to an important meeting before the dinner this couple were caught in a shower-all because the husband didn’t think the pair of shoes his wife was wearing matched her saree. He actually went in to a shop in the rain and brought her a pair to match as well as another pair she liked.

From such an orthodox Sri Lankan husband concerned about the image his wife projected, it was inevitable that the I would hear comments like “How could I go astray and divorce his friend?”  ”you couldn’t have found a better man,” “marriage is forever”  and the million dollar question ‘Would you like to get back together?”.   Ahhh… he had found a noble mission to accomplish among his Lion’s Club tasks.  So commenced the debate-”Why did you marry in the first place? - if he wanted the answer to be romantic love - he didn’t get it although yes that was so and there were all the ingredients - the sea, the beach, the swaying palms at Hikkaduwa.  

However, this straight-laced friend of my ex-spouse didn’t fall of the chair when I said the reason I married was for “Sex.”  I was no doubt trying to shock this man and stop him in his tracks.   If it did, he didn’t show it — except that he refilled his glass.  So we argued about  the pros and cons, weaving in and out between expected norms, unexpected and unaccepted behaviours like mine.

Reflecting on that memorable debate on the whys and wherefore’s of marriages, I hunted for this article on “metal fatigue” so neatly presented in the Wikipedia.  Replacing Metal with marriage and a few other words ( I have kept the original links which are interestingly refreshing) we now have:

In life marriage fatigue is the progressive and localised structural damage that occurs when a marriage is subjected to cyclic loading. The maximum stress values are less than the ultimate tensile stress limit, and may be below the yield stress limit of the material.

• The process starts with dislocation movements ( like wife becoming too assertive, moving up in her career, empty nest syndrome, working apart in different countries) eventually forming persistent slip bands that nucleate short cracks.
• Fatigue is a stochastic process, often showing considerable scatter even in controlled environments.
• The greater the applied stress, the shorter the life.
• Fatigue life scatter tends to increase for longer fatigue lives.
• Damage is cumulative. Marriages do not recover when rested.
• Fatigue life is influenced by a variety of factors, such as age, in-laws, presence of oxidizing or inert friends and relations, residual stresses, contacts, etc.
• Some marriages (e.g., some needing to maintain status quo) exhibit a theoretical fatigue limit below which continued loading does not lead to failure.

We are human beings. We thrive on complication - and we love the illusion that change is always for the good. Divorce is a school of hard knocks, there are lunch breaks and vacations. The reason we all get time out from the suffering is so that we have some memory of greater happiness to torment us when we return to a state of discomfort. Nothing is difficult forever!!!