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Refuge The narrative is deceptively peaceful in the beginning. Set in
the "vast undulating billiard top" tea estates of Sri Lanka,
the story unfolds, paradoxically, with a deaf conch-blower rousing the
workers in their lines (dwellings) in the morning. Tales of the lives
of the tea estate workers seem to suddenly find resonance in the
reader’s mind. One begins to wear out with Valli, a Tamil plantation
worker and the only character with some semblance of a heroine,
because of her monotonous and laborious routine. One searches for her
eyes, very much like Soma, the Sinhala fish-vendor’s son, who falls
in love with her across racial barriers. One burns with revenge with
Kandan, Valli’s father, who loses his pregnant wife because of
apathetic employers. Dr and Mrs Baptist, the Italian missionary and
the Buddhist monk are the rare characters who constitute islands of
sanity in a place run like a conveyor belt by supervisors such as
Nimal Rupasinghe. The poignancy is heightened in the end when rioting
forces Valli to emigrate leaving behind her love child. No one escapes
unscathed — Nimal too suffers a breakdown and commits suicide. The
"refuge" one seeks — inside and out—is denied,
ironically, to one and all. Moments of epiphany are scattered along
the pages like the proverbial gems on Lankan shores. Velu the deaf
conch-blower’s condition is poetically described thus: "After
years of sounding silence from silence, a tranquillity had settled on
Velu." Words seem to be hitched, each one to the other, in a
display of rare craftsmanship, causing the metaphors and similes to
acquire lives of their own. For example, "the workers returned to
the lines in the evening `85 not unlike the return of limp figures to
their allotted boxes after the puppet show is over". The
phrases, like, "Kandan brought his banana-comb palms together in
salutation" and the three supervisors of the estate in a club
referred to as "`85bats that congregate in a tree, crevasse or
similar retreat. Like bats again, they wrangled for places in the
perch and snapped at each other", make for a delightful reading
experience. The novel concerns the forced mass repatriation of
Indian-origin Tamil labourers many of whom had known no other home
since the time their forefathers had been indentured in Sri Lanka. The
large-scale exodus of populations due to man-made reasons (such as
Partition) or natural ones has always aroused writers’ imaginations.
Is it possible that this writer’s impulse was even stronger to take
up this social issue since he happens to be Mahatma Gandhi’s
grandson (from the paternal side) or the Tamil issue as he is P.
Rajagopalachari’s grandson (from the maternal side)? Or, was it
during heading the country’s diplomatic mission in Sri Lanka at the
time of the exodus and interaction with those affected made him delve
deeper into the issue? Gopal Gandhi, the scholar, shines through the
meticulous research into the backdrop. The urge to etymologically
explore words comes from Gopal Gandhi, the civil servant, as do the
"insider’s view" parallels drawn with supervisors and
clerks of the estates. But it is Gopal Gandhi, the man and writer, who
makes the words palpitate by deftly painting the violence — both
inside and out.
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ANYONE who begins to write a story has a choice—to
depict the violence inside his mind or that which exists outside of
it. Gopal Gandhi, with exquisite art, caricatures the agents and the
systems which perpetrate the violence outside, and with great finesse,
sketches the upheavals taking place within the characters as
well.