Lost in Floral Rain – a short novel which, in spite of her reluctance to call it an autobiography, its author Pushpa Suriyaarachchi claims to have been inspired by her own childhood experiences and encounters as a youth – has to it a strong and unabashed aura of nostalgia. The book is subtitled as a ‘Journey of a medical student’. However, the greater part of the narrative – a good three quarters of it – concern with the pre-university block of protagonist Kusum’s life. This section is weaved as a sequence of stand alone memories that maps her coming of age from being a clever, eager and enthusiastic village child to an accomplished young student who later tops the class to gain entry to the country’s most elite university.
The novel covers a crucial time frame from the mid-60s to the early-80s where Sri Lankan society underwent dramatic social and economic transitions. The Swabasha Act (Sinhala Only Act) of 1956 – a decade before Pushpa’s protagonist Kusum’s time – set in motion a nationalistic force at play which, in the next thirty years or so, radically determined the shape of the young nation. The failed attempts in 1957 and 1965 at bridging the deteriorating linguistic divide, and the resultant emergence of friction along ethno-linguistic lines, are at the distant backdrop of Lost in Floral Rain. As such, the site to which Kusum and her younger sister Nelum are born as well as the closed community in which they grow up represent a politically-charged outskirts society; except, for reasons that best interest her, Pushpa makes no attempt to factor in these crucial era-defining rudiments. Instead, at the end of the book, the overall political climate of the 1970s is covered by a postscript of sorts.
However, two key historical and political passages of play are built into the main narrative. In 1970, on the eve of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party-led coalition’s election victory, pro-coalition supporters pelt Kusum’s house with stones. Kusum’s father was known in the hometown as a United National Party partisan, and if not for the father’s shooting into the air using his shot gun the SLFP-mob – it is implied – would have torched the house. Glasses of the windows are smashed and a streak of fear and insecurity take over the young ones. The traumatic shock waves of the incident are prevalent in the family’s being discouraged from going out for about a week. Further reprisal is anticipated at any time. By the time the fear gradually subsides, the mother has already received a “punishment transfer” to a faraway school.
As such, the politics of a semi-feudal power play in which opportunities and resources are plundered and prioritized according to party affinity and loyalty – a system which encourages the oppression of the ‘party other’ in a game of monopoly for partisan welfare – is given colour. However, as hinted earlier, the writer’s shyness in localizing such instances within a larger political and historical framework – an arrangement that is sensitive to the structural shifts in Sri Lanka through the 60s and the 70s – undermines the overall power of that criticism. For instance, the Uprising of 1971, the anti-Tamil violence of 1977, 1979 and 1981, or the post-election violence by the UNP in 1977 are bypassed or consciously left out.
However, the reference to the post-election violence of 1970, as a point of emphasis, is significant. This is partly because among the many local, global and extra-terrestrial themes that interest them Sri Lankan writers composing in English have rarely attempted characterizations of nuanced passages of violence outside the national-level scope. Writers who ambitiously espouse the interest of trans-national publishers in order to ‘make the cut’ often prefer to build into their stories the July riots of 1983, the Civil War (1983-2009), and post-war complications – but, rarely focus on ‘local’ and ‘small scale’ disruptions such as election violence. This is true to all writers of whom a representational delegate includes
Michael Ondaatje,
Romesh Gunasekera and
Shyam Selvadurai. In fact, Ondaatje, whose Anil’s Ghost (2000) is popularly believed to be set against the 1987-90 backdrop of the JVP’s second insurrection is one of the most pathetic attempts at representing a historical moment rife with deep and sensitive political implications to a community’s grassroots.
Among the names of those who succeed in formulating a relatively productive discussion of ‘minor’ and ‘local’ friction/conflict – situations that are unfashionable, yet crucial to our reading of Sri Lanka’s historical transmission – are those of Ediriweera Sarachchandra (Curfew and a Full Moon, 1978), M. Chandrasoma (Out Out Brief Candle, 1981), A. Sivanandan (When Memory Dies, 1998), Somachandre Wijesuriya (First Rising, 2001) and Ayathurai Santhan (The Whirlwind 2010; Rails Run Parallel, 2015). For instance, Somachandre Wijesuriya’s novel attempts a micro-reading of the 1956-1971 period – a timeline that overlaps by six years Pushpa Suriyaarachchi’s operational domain – and culminates on the eve of the 1971 uprising. Wijesuriya investigates the erosion of the socialist and internationalist values of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and the post-56 rise of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. The novel, too, records several instances of election violence – including attacks targeting the small Tamil communities in the majority Sinhala areas – and punishment transfers given to public servents with alternative political views.
A second key political moment Pushpa draws on is the students’ struggle against the privatization of medical education in 1983. This mass struggle, popularly referred to as the resistance against the ‘North Colombo Private Medical School’, was in later times mythologized within the JVP-led student discourses as the ultimate struggle for the preservation of public education. By the way of indoctrination, generations of students to enter the university through the 80s, 90s and 2000s would be made to memorize and parrot the ‘great sacrifices’ of the 1980’s ‘student heroes’. Pushpa’s protagonist Kusuma takes part in a demonstration held in Kandy town under the close, monitoring eyes of the police. A public meeting is held in a nearby park. Kusum is coaxed to leave the premises by the fellow-student who, by then, has begun to show a non-academic interest in Kusum.
The concluding chapters of the novel are set in Peradeniya university: a space which Pushpa re-frames through palpable and rekindled nostalgia. Par with the literary sub-genre of the ‘University novel’ – an extensive body in both Sinhala and English – and complementary with its further denomination of the ‘Peradeniya novel’, Lost in Floral Rain seeks a place within a compendium for which the flowers, trees, meadows, socials, libraries, study sessions and flirtations had at the elite seat of learning had become a muse. This include several heavy and bantamweights of Sri Lanka’s scribal fraternity for whom Peradeniya was an idyll of romance and pastoral bliss.
Valentine Perera’s Mahaweli Meadow (2006) was
reviewed by Shelagh Goonewardene as a “celebration of student days and first love”. Writing of
Shavindra Fernando’s The Vague Poetess (1999),
Rajpal Abeynayake makes special note of the romanticization of the campus life and the writer’s immersion with the landscape as it ferments memory.
P.G Punchihewa’s Those Were the Days (2007) is another book that comes to mind which attempts a fuzz out of Peradeniya. Of these three randomly referenced writers, Perera and Punchihewa would (in student terms) be a good decade to two decades senior to Pushpa, while Fernando would have probably been one of her contemporaries.
The more recent literature to seek inspiration from Peradeniya, however, has not been entirely overwhelmed by romance and idealism. Its Arcadian filament is dissected and confounded by numerous other biographies, memoirs and works of fiction of which the prominent body is in Sinhala and are written from a critical, left of center position. Of the literature available in English,
Sarachchandra’s work and that of WI Siriweera attempt a critical and at times cynical view of Peradeniya as AV Suraweera does of Sri Jayewardenepura university through his
Tread Softly (1990). A much deeper zoom in along the same lines is attempted by
Rajiva Wijesinha who, by focusing on the English Department, drains some of the romance out of Peradeniya. His overall boring book An English Education (1996) is yet worth that suffering and tedium.
-Vihanga Perera
https://lankanassociate.wordpress.com/2019/08/17/politics-and-their-absences-in-pushpa-suriyaarachchis-lost-in-floral-rain/
Copies from the second print of the novel "Lost in Floral Rain" are available for sale in Australia. Those who are willing to purchase a copy are kindly requested to refer to information given in the following location:
https://lostinfloralrain.blogspot.com/2023/05/how-to-buy-copy-of-lost-in-floral-rain.html
All revenue raised from the sale of "Lost in Floral rain" will be used for the charity named "Project Home Owl". For details of "Project Home Owl" charity please visit:
https://lostinfloralrain.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-project-home-owl-charity.html
For details contact:
pushpa.suriyaarachchi@yahoo.com.au.
