The book cover and author Freeda Villavarayan
Guru Senehasa (Sevvandiyakage Kathawak)
by Freeda Villavarayan. 2021
REVIEWED BY SUNIL TANTIRIGE
GURU SENEHASA – Sevvandiyakagee Kathaawak – “සෙව්වන්දියකගේ කතාවක්” is a book written in Sinhala by a dear friend of mine, Freeda Villavarayan.
At 655 pages, it is a long story. It was published in Sri Lanka recently and I thought I will write my impressions of the book. However, before I get to Sevvandi, I need to talk a bit about Freeda and how I came to read and review it.
Freeda is an accomplished Toronto writer who has written in both Sinhala and English. She has several books to her credit, mostly stories for children and she also writes poems. We have known Freeda and Tony, her dear husband, for a long time and when we meet, we always talk about books and writing.
I knew that she was writing a story about a young teacher in Sri Lanka and had heard how she wrote parts of it while seated by her dear Tony’s bedside as he recovered from a serious sickness. At the same time, I was working on my book, and naturally, we would exchange ideas about writing, publishing, and related issues.
Then one day, when we were at their house, she told us that the book is finally complete. Naturally, I was pleased for her and offered to read it and give my impressions. She was delighted and gave me this massive book in a thick binder, 550 pages of Sinhala text printed on both sides of letter-size paper. I was nervous. Typically, a document from a word-processing program doubles in size when typeset and printed, so I knew that I was looking at a printed book of over a thousand pages.
I wondered how I would get through this massive story, but I had told my friend that I would read it, so I was determined that I will read it. If I do not help a fellow writer, how can I expect help in return when I need it? It took some time but managed to read it from end to end and give my impressions of the book to her. Now, following several editorial revisions, the book is down to 655 pages and was published in Colombo recently.
It is a story about a young female teacher, Sevvandi. She has recently finished her training and after a short stint at a city school, decides to move back to her village, and serve as a teacher in the village school that she attended as a girl. It is the village that she grew up in, and her mother and her little brother still live there. It is a story of how one individual, through her small actions and gentle interactions with the people around her, impacts positively on the lives and the immediate society.
It has the charm and calmness of a gently flowing river. It is a story without lots of dramatic action, it is a place where people are friendly and helpful, and the river of life flows on steadily. As I immersed myself in the story, I realized that this is how the majority of people live in Sri Lanka, leading simple lives with simple goals, doing their duties by their families and society to the best of their abilities. Freeda is clearly writing about an ideal society that functions as well as it could, free of conflicts and forces that usually upends an idyllic life of a small village.
One could say that it is not a realistic portrayal of a typical Sri Lankan rural village these days, but this is fiction, and the author has every right to create the story as she sees fit.As I read on, I tried to pin it down against the Sri Lankan historical timeline. When did the story take place? In which political era and under what political conditions? I could not do that easily and gradually came to the realization that Freeda has done a masterful job of decoupling Sevvandi’s story from Sri Lanka’s story in the last half of the 20th century.
This is a refreshing change from most fiction that has been published in Sri Lanka in the last few decades. There is very little in this book about Independence, language issues, open economy, 83 riots, the war, and other the main socio-economic events that shaped our lives and our country’s story. It is also striking to see how ethnically diverse the cast of main characters you meet are and how well the author handles the interactions across the ethnic divides.
Rev. Ahangama Rathanasiri, Nayake Thero of Toronto Buddhist Vihara, proofread the manuscripts and also wrote the foreword to the book.
Then again that mirrors the author’s personal life. As I read the story, it came to my mind that, here is a simulation of what an ideal Sri Lanka should look like. Over the years, we have heard so much about how a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, and multi-religious country Sri Lanka is. But never had I come across a tale or a story to show me how such an ideal society will work and look. Here, at last, someone had thought about it and written a story based on such a situation. That alone should make this story a compelling read for most of us.
Along the way, Sevvandi, through her interactions and conversations with her brother, her friends, and her mother, shows us clearly what kind of person she is and how she sees the world. The reader is charmed by the ways she interacts with everything around her, even talking with the mother nature that surrounds her. She talks to the flowers in her garden, to the butterflies and birds that hang out there. When she looks at cloud patterns in the sky, she sees stories written there. She has compassion for everyone and approaches all situations with kindness, and by doing so, makes an immediate impact.
I thought that unconsciously Freeda is mirroring herself in Sevvandi. It is a long read that you will not finish in one sitting, but you will also not stop reading because you want to know what happens next to these characters. In one way, it reminded me of those very long classical Russian novels that I read in my teenage years. As I said before, it is a story that is very different from what we know of present-day Sri Lanka. It is almost as if Freeda is holding the book at us and saying that “Here, this is what we could be and what we should be.”
In the end, I really enjoyed the story of Sevvandi and her friends. It flows like a gentle river, with no sudden turbulent white water that the readers have to navigate while holding the breath. The author spent a lot of time developing characters who are compelling and real to life.
Having brought up in the middle-class Colombo society, I found the society that the Freeda describes a bit outside my experience, hence very interesting. Finally, I must say that the end left me a bit dissatisfied. I wanted to know where this story goes. What happens to Sevvandi, Viraj, Merrill, and the little brother.
Do they go on to have happy and harmonious lives? Do they achieve their dreams? Does the village school that Sevvandi loves so much prospers? Questions, questions, and more questions. The sequel, dear Freeda?
(Sunil Tantirige works in the nuclear energy sector in Toronto. His debut, ‘House of a Thousand Memories’, was published in 2019 and now available in Sri Lanka)
