Sunday, November 19, 2017

Sunday Times 2
Captured by a cloud

Reviewed by Dr. Nandasiri Jasentuliyana

State Literary Award and Gratiaen Prize-winning author, Aditha Dissanayake, has brought us yet another compelling novel that compliments her fascinating debut work, ‘Somewhere in the Green Hills.’

Her new novel ‘When a Cloud Left the Sky’ will captivate readers and hold them hostage until the last page with its awesome storytelling, captivating prose, vivid settings, and closely guarded secrets. A story that begins with desperation will take readers on an emotional, romantic ride with well-sculpted characters, and a plot filled with great intricacies.

The story begins when Orinth, a young Sri Lankan student in New York meets Samantha under very unusual circumstances. While Orinth, depressed that his Master’s thesis was summarily dismissed by his professor at New York University as being unsuited for consideration stands on the Brooklyn bridge with suicidal thoughts – wanting to drown his sorrows by dumping the story into the river, Samantha quite accidentally happens to derail the plan.

On the other side of the ‘Cloud’ in Colombo, Saumya at the feature’s desk of the Ceylon Guardian is wondering whether her traveling colleague on the opposite desk to whom she had not revealed her tender feelings will be returning soon and why her emails to him receive late and increasingly curt replies. However, she has precious little time to think of him in the wake of her chance encounter with Kanishke, a learned professor on a mission to promote ethnic harmony. Meanwhile, Orinth’s sister Oria, who works in an advertising agency meets Sanith, who has completed his degree and is awaiting a university appointment to launch an academic career. The few facebook chat messages they exchange soon morph into a complex web of love and uncertainty.

They each hope they could take things beyond the dark clouds that hover on their horizons. Things work to plan months later when they all happen to congregate at the Sapumal Bungalow on top of the Rumassala Hill, overlooking the historic Dutch Fort in the picturesque town of Galle. While on the Hill, things change very quickly, with secrets laid bare and romance coming to the fore.

The romantic and intense journey that culminates on the Hill is eventful and staged in the midst of the brutal ethnic war, and central to the plot is a chance meeting of Abhaya, a navy officer, and Malathi, a suicide bomber. The first part of the story brings to life the six characters with graphic portrayals. The readers will find them intriguing as their lives intermingle with the other characters in the story, including a young man and woman in love, who, as the reader later learns, were cruelly parted. The woman makes a casual appearance at the end of the story, to unknowingly, unravel a secret pertinent to the plot in an artfully created set of circumstances.

The well thought out plot is strong, and it reserves many surprises. It is filled with unexpected twists and turns. The visual images that are conjured up as the reader is taken back and forth to New York, Colombo, and Galle, is bound to pull him or her in for an exciting ride. The language is always precise, charming and at times poetic. Consider for instance the expression “His heart thumped like gunshots in an old western movie…he wanted so much to take one more look at her.” Elsewhere, in the text Saumya wonders whose painting it is on Kanishke’s wall while… “The rain continued to fall outside the window. Raindrops fell on the windowpanes and slid down the glass, creating paintings of their own on the glass surface, far superior to the one the mysterious Belle had drawn.” Among the gems that the reader is treated to, one that drew my attention is the following. “Now, she (Oria) watched the water rise slightly towards the sky. A wave was born. It grew as it reached the beach and fell on the sand with a fierce thud. Within seconds, the white foam receded into the water. How many times would this have happened ever since the sea and the beach came into existence? How many waves had embraced the beach, over and over? The beach waited like a woman waiting for her lover, each wave as it reached the beach was a man placing his whole weight on her. For the slightest of seconds, they blended into each other, became one, but then the wave left, heartlessly leaving the beach on her own…till another wave did the same…”

The text is also peppered with graphic portrayals of mannerisms in the dialogues making the characters come alive to the reader, along with citations from classics of English literature, that enhance the narrative. However, if a weakness is to be noted in the text, perhaps, less of such would have been preferred particularly in the first half of the story.

The reader will not be disappointed with the ending. As the principals vacationing in Rumassala Hills breathe the salty air of Galle, the dark cloud dissipates bathing them in the sunshine heralding the future they each yearned for in the company of their soul mates. As for the thoughtful professor yearning for ethnic harmony, he would have been happy if only he knew he had a striking example for his next article in Uncle Wije, a harsh critic of integration, who is spared the pain of knowing that he too is equal to others as it is human blood that travels through his veins and through the veins of all those he despises.

Aditha is a master of the art of storytelling, weaving mystery, and suspense into a romance, constructed to leave the reader clueless of what could happen next whilst empathizing with the characters. The masterful use of back story, plenty of compelling and natural-sounding dialogues, and the author’s ability to create powerful imagery with descriptive language make The Cloud a wonderful read.