MANEL RATNATUNGA A BOUQUET FOR A WRITER

by Lakshmi de Silva

Those who have valued Manel Ratnatunga’s writing for its acuity of vision and the extent of her understanding of those impelled to leave their homes in order to earn have often relished her wit and eye for comedy.C.A Gunawardena’s Encyclopedia of Sri Lanka records Manel Ratnatunga as “best known for her novel Saga Indonesia (1994) which won the Arts Council Award for Fiction in 1995 and was short listed for the Gratiaen award”. In her book Celebrating Sri Lankan Women’s English Writing: 1948-2000 Volume II (2002) issued by the Women’s Education and Research Centre headed by Dr Selvy Thiruchandran, Professor Yasmine Gooneratne comments on this book generated by the author’s long residence there while her husband worked with other FAO international experts.

“Pramoedya developed his portrait of struggle and modernization in Indonesia through a quartet of novels. Ratnatunga develops hers through a fictional framework of [several] generations in a single work covering the events of two hundred years that lead the reader from feudal times to the present day. She presents the complexities of Indonesian society through the character of Iyem, a peasant girl, who becomes successively a concubine of the Sultan and the wife of a scholarly aristocrat, finally marrying a Chinese shopkeeper. Throughout her presentation of conflicting personalities and points of view, Ratnatunga sustains an admirably balanced narrative stance.”

“the social analysis reveals a peasantry tied down to forced labour in the cultivation of cane, coffee and indigo, overtaxed and exploited by a colonial administration that finds willing collaboration in the local elite or bupati class (the Indonesian equivalent of Sri Lanka’s mudaliyars, muhandirams and dissaves).”

She analyses Manel Ratnatunga’s novel Ranweli Bay Mystery: Story of a Marriage (1998) as a tale set in Colonial Ceylon. “The author is evidently an extremely clear-eyed observer” of the social world about her. Sri Lankan codes of behavior especially among wealthy upper- class Sinhalese families, are rigorously questioned, as Usha, naïve and inexperienced is linked in an arranged marriage with a bridegroom who is a man of the world. Their wedding, which is conducted with all the splendor judged necessary to people of status, is a dismal failure, the author describing it with irony”.

Professor Gooneratne concludes

“It deserves to be read as fiction, the very different personalities of Saroja and Usha being especially well-conceived and executed, so that the conflicts between these two characters are entirely convincing. We might regard Usha as simple-minded, but Ratnatunga while permitting sympathy does not countenance idealization of this girl. In contrast Usha’s sister Saroja, self-controlled and decisive is not to be intimidated”

Manel Ratnatunga also has other valuable and effective skills as a writer, the ability to move readers towards perceptiveness and empathy regarding their countrymen, as the Sunday Island highlights on March 18th 2012 through reports of the introductory speech by the late Professor Manique Gunesekera and the review by Leelananda de Silva at the launch of her moving memoir, Stolen Sunset.

“When her husband Tissa Ratnatunga was felled by a stroke, Manel’s world was turned upside down. Instead of a gently fading sunset in the evening of their lives, there followed a traumatic three years looking after Tissa who was desperately ill. The family decided that Tissa would be cared for at home. This required organizational skills on the part of Manel and her family. Professional carers had to be found and they had to be managed. Manel developed her own techniques in managing these carers, and the first major part of the volume describes her new world of caring for Tissa. The carers had their own complex and complicated lives. In the hour of her own difficulties Manel set about trying to understand the lives of those who cared for Tissa, and established empathy between her and them, which is admirably described in this volume which is part memoir and part social commentary.”

Manel’s volume is set in the political context of Sri Lanka at the dawn of the millennium. The political turmoil of the time is skillfully woven into the story of her husband and his carers. These carers, came from distant villages and had their own social lives to contend with. They were affected by the insecurity of the time and by the more mundane concerns of dealing with the rising cost of living. The volume attests to the basic honesty and good nature of these village folk, who have an intense love for their families.

Manel has created an entertaining gallery of young and robust village characters with their own amusing and tragic stories…

There is plenty of politics and basic economics as far as they impinged on the life of the village folk. The violent conditions that prevailed in the country were an overriding concern … The villages were changing too …

Manel has combined the many strands of day to day life into a highly readable work of non-fiction.”

The text reveals the writer’s spirited and abundant sense of humour.

Professor Manique Gunesekera aptly identified what draws us to the writing:

“The technique of James Joyce’s stream of consciousness is used very effectively by Manel Ratnaturnga in her effortless moves from the domestic to the global, from the mundane to the philosophical, from the kitchen to politics”.