Sri Lankan writer Mohan Raj Madawala is at loggerheads with history. He believes that Sri Lankan history has distorted and caricatured many characters who failed to live up to the ideology, whims and fancies of its authors.
A greater part of the 5000-year-old history of the island had been recorded by Buddhist monks and it was natural that these monastic characters who scratched history into dried palm leaves with styluses gave a larger than life personas to characters whom they favoured, while some had been distorted or deleted altogether. He writes his fiction to prove this point, he says in a media interview.
The young Sinhala writer’s four recent works of fiction are based on historical characters. His debut “Magam Soli”, a best seller which went into 16 reprints in just three years, portrays the character of a lay Buddhist monk who marries, have children and lives in the temple with his family. The novel has earned the ire of some Buddhists and the writer would have been issued with a ‘fatwa’ if we had such a thing in Buddhism! Adding salt to injury, the book discusses sexual taboos and even dabbles in incestuous relationships.
Madawala says, according to history such lay monks existed in ancient Sri Lanka which believes in Theravada Buddhism, which believes that monks have to observe celibacy. The nature of his themes, characterization and the use of magical realism hints that the writer draws his inspiration mainly from Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Going against the penchant for the Sinhala novel to embrace the genre of realism, he has explored new frontiers where the traditional writers have feared to tread. 
His second work of fiction, Dear Victoria, is a rags-to-riches tale of an arrack brewer kowtowing to the British rulers in the 18th and 19th centuries and engaged in distilling and selling arrack. Arrack, incidentally, is the potent national drink of Sri Lanka brewed from palm wine tapped from coconut palm.
The protagonist of the novel, Andiris, as a child, had seen how his own father who was addicted to alcohol destroyed his family. Consumption of alcohol is a major sin in Buddhism and it’s the fifth precept: ‘refrain from self-intoxication through alcohol or drugs’. All other four precepts can be a by-product of this last one. Other precepts are do not kill, do not steal, do not lie and refrain from misuse of the senses, which vaguely means adultery. On a closer look, all the preceding four sins can be committed by an inebriated person who breaks the last of the precepts that Buddhists recite at least two times a day.
People who live hybrid lives got rich by producing liquor and inebriating the whole country while pandering to the British for favours. While the toddy tappers who climbed coconut palms to collect palm wine led miserable lives, the tenderers who were favoured by the British rulers led lives in abundant luxury in 100-room mansions. One such palatial house has now been converted into a maternity hospital in the southern coastal town of Panadura proving that Madawala’s works are not mere figments of his imagination. The only work I know in Sinhala fiction based on arrack tenderers in the same era is Jayasena Jayakody’s Raigam Puththu.
‘Dear Victoria’ begins with the construction of the railway track in the 1870s under the British government to transport tea, and ends with the birth of an animal crossbred with a horse and a dog, probably symbolizing the ‘Kalu Suddas’ or ‘black-whites’ who took over the reins of power after the British left the country. The final paragraph also mentions the birth of a famous politician in Ceylon who was a key figure in the 50 and 60s Sri Lankan political upheavals.
Interesting facts I uncover in this book is the famous Buddhist debate against Christianity in the early part of the last century was financed by liquor producers while Puran Appu, a revered national hero who joined the Wellassa rebellion to oust the British, had gone to upcountry Matale in his young days to work for a relative who was an arrack tenderer.
British governor who fell in love with a local dancer
Madawala’s third book, Lovena, is also a historical novel about an English governor who fell in love with a low-caste Sinhala girl. The governor was head over heels with the girl, born to Portuguese and Sinhala parents, who danced at his welcoming party. The residence was later turned into an internationally-famous hotel, Mount Lavinia Hotel, a few kilometres from Colombo on the beach front, with a statue of the beautiful woman built near a fountain still seen today. A hotel tour includes a visit to the tunnel which the governor built for his secret trysts with the strikingly beautiful Eurasian dancer.
Madawala’s extensive research has suggested that there had been a settlement where that community lived on the beach at a stone’s throw from the hotel. After the scandal of the 18th century rocked the British government, the governor was transferred to Malta where he died a bachelor.
‘Queen’ was last of his four novels dealing with Queen Anula who reigned Sri Lanka from 47 BC to 42 BC, and the first female head of state in Asia. History portrays her as a nymphomaniac who famously killed lovers and her many husbands. In a media interview Madawala has said he is reluctant to accept her character as portrayed in historical chronicles. She was a contemporary of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, a lover for both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.
Madawala says Cleopatra’s love affairs were mainly devised by her to prevent Roman empire destroying her country and Queen Anula had her own reasons for her strange behaviour as well. He also sees many similarities between Queen Anula and Cleopatra and believes they had close contacts. The writer spent few weeks in Egypt researching Cleopatra and found out that the belief systems in the two countries at that time had lot of similarities, proving the possibility of closer ties between the two queens.
Madawala, though his controversial subjects have angered some conservative Sri Lankans, is crossing new frontiers in the island’ indigenous literature which has been accused of dabbling in monotonous and banal themes. He does not fear to risk controversy and his books have received favourable reviews from many scholars. He is going to remain as controversial as young film makers Asoka Handagama and Vimukthi Jayasundera who lay bare cultural and religious hypocrisies and banalities of our lives. (Facebook Picture: Madawala near the wax statue of Picasso at Madame Tussauds in Amsterdam in August)
– Somasiri Munasinghe
