Features

Manuka Wijesinghe’s Like Moths to a Flame

Published

4 years ago

2022/03/6

by Nanda Pethiyagoda

Here is a new kind of novel launched at the Colombo 7 Vijita Yapa Bookshop on Saturday March 5 with Manuka here from her home in Germany to present her novel to Sri Lankans.

I prefer to refer to Manuka’s most recent book published March 2022 by Vijitha Yapa Publications as a tome or preferably opus as it is more than a mere novel: it is an artistic work on a large scale running through 461 pages. Also opus, as it is not a mere straight lineared novel but has a main plot, actually two in my reckoning, and many sub-plots and a host of characters that walk its pages clutching the reader’s interest and engaging his/her mental faculties.

The title itself is longer than that quoted in the heading of this article. The title page carries this: In the name of parents I accuse the State for sending our children LIKE MOTHS TO A FLAME to die. Manuka dedicates her book to the Sangam poets and then to others including her father and son. “It is not life I owe to you, it is my FREEDOM.” She quotes a Sangam poem as she does many in the narrative itself and gives two pages on who the Sangam poets were and about their poetry.

Plot, Characters, Style

The main story is the one that starts the book with the lines: “It is a girl,” said Parvatiamma, disappointed. “Therefore the more beautiful. We shall call her Mariamma. The Prophet Jesus’s mother for her son died for men.” prophetically replies the husband, The Bawa.

Mariam, daughter of bad luck carrying, high caste Parvati and the Muslim part time cleric The Bawa, is a central figure. Through Mariam two major characters are brought in: the straight standing Vellalar Thamil government servant Velupillai and their son, who dominates the final half of the novel from page 250 onwards and chapter titled Marutham.

The running connective thread through the entire narrative is the journeying and various ‘homes’ and jobs of Saraswati, the Indian Tamil tea estate coolie who never plucked tea but worked in a white planter’s bungalow and turned helper/ confidant to Prudence, the lady of the home – humanist and promoter of human rights for the coolies. Saraswati then moves to a Muslim home with a very humane trader master and a Sinhala home. She ends up in Jaffna having travelled on a donkey with her spiritually inclined husband Velan who is bade by the goddess Amman to build her a temple across the Thondaman Aru. He falls off a tree and dies, and she pregnant had “Her belly which had pointed the way to Yalpanam burst and its contents sickered to the ground.” Saraswati stays on in Jaffna making garlands for the gods as a means of living.

A friend of Manuka’s, seeing the many strands of her story, had suggested Saraswati be deleted. I was vehement about her being in the story which was what Manuka did. Saraswati is vital to the tome as a central figure from whose conversations come alive the many characters and subplots. She is also vitally important as all these and threads of the narrative coalesce easily with not the slightest bump or incongruity.

Saraswati meets The Boys and pleads with the gods to save them. Then is born the much yearned for son to tradition bound Velupillai who is goaded by his mother-in-law to ‘ride her rough’ and impregnate his wife. He needs a son to succeed him as the trustee of their family kovil and Parvati, his mother-in-law, wants to restore her status as a high caste Tamil, though she eloped with the Bawa, through her Vellalar son-in-law and grandson. Mariam has produced many daughters and was never much for sex. The very dignified, decent Velupillai almost rapes her, having imbibed to drunkenness, and then swears he will not inviolate her ever again. He is a very good husband and while Parvati takes over the child, Mariam goes back into her innocently soft ways. The boy shows signs of manic wickedness. Manuka traces the beginnings of Eelam; the Tigers, the son’s killing of the Mayor of Jaffna, his recruitments in Batticaloa and successes of the Tigers in his dream of Eelam.

Characters abound – of all Sri Lankan races, even the Batti Burgers; Muslims and their prayers and customs, Thamilars from the highest Vellalar caste to coolies; estate labour from bloodsucker Kanganis to mixed blood children; the European tea planter fraternity; the Jesuit priests and their school in Batticaloa; government servants of all types; and Jaffna dwellers.

Themes in the novel are as numerous as the characters. There is the genuine goodness of the Bawa and his lasting influence on his daughter Mariam who continues to address her husband Velupillai as ‘Bawa’s Friend’ until at the very end she addresses him as Kanavan – husband – bringing tears of joy to his eyes. Prudence brings in humanity along with her friend Bertie in England. Velupillai stands for integrity, honesty, dedicated work and though a national minded Tamil, fair to the Sinhalese and Muslims as a officer apportioning land in Batticaloa. Jaffna traditions are detailed and intrude the story very often, so also coolie culture and the drunkenness of the men and the travails of women. Manuka seems to be sympathetic to The Boys dream of being descendents of Chola kings and wanting a Tamil State in the North of Sri Lanka but she does not condone violence whatsoever, nor separatism.

Further themes are historical, political and a strong comment on the Sinhala Only policy of governments and discrimination of Tamils. Many outstanding characters are drawn in, but described not in straight prose by the author but delineated through conversations – theirs and others, actions, and what Saraswatiamma tells Mariam as the young woman eagerly demands stories and Saraswati delights in retailing her remembered past. Much of the narration is in flashbacks as reminiscences of Saraswati.

Politicians stride across the pages in their pomposity, thinly disguised by Manuka. There’s ‘Master’s friend – Banda’ who clearly states his bringing in the hoi poloi is for his benefit and not theirs. Along with Banda who stays over in the estate bungalow of Hubert and Prudence is the Tamil advocate Ponnambalam who wants estate labourers of Indian descent disenfranchised. The political visitor of her Muslim employer is Deen whose idea is that since the Muslims “had no national language but united in a community of faith …” Muslim schools should adopt English as the medium of instruction, thus gaining the Muslims a huge jump forward in education and jobs in Ceylon.

Manuka’s writing style is unique: as mentioned, she relies heavily on conversations and dialogue. She prefers the narration to proceed more in conversations than in description of places, events and people. It definitely enhances the immediacy of events. You get a speaker describe the fear of the approach of Sinhala soldiers in Jaffna. What better method than a neighbour telling Parvati living alone with her husband and daughter away at a Muslim festival to rear a dog trained to bark at the approach of Sinhala men. Also a woman, returning raped while expecting her groom to take her away, describes she got the smell of coconut oil. No description of invasion or rape or whatever could be more effective than a first person narrative.

Manuka’s language turns very earthy in appropriate contexts. For example, writing about Tamil labour on tea estates she is very down to earth and writes as things are. Prudes might shudder at Manuka’s frankness and use of language, but I admire her and commend her for her accuracy and pinning down in prose stark realities with no euphemisms. “Saraswati knew that the bulge was the root of the problem. All the tea pluckers had to deal with bulges. Her amma and little sister too. But instead of aborting the bulge with the eekle broom, like she did, they offered themselves as bulge spittoons.” (! So accurate!) “She should have understood them. They were all worshippers of the Lingam; the Lord’s bulge.” Inadvertently, Manuka brings on reader chuckles too.

Early on, I told Manuka she had to prune her book severely. Why, she asked. The Sri Lankan reader is used to the most 300 pages, I replied (like their short memories?). Manuka said that in Germany, the longer the book, the better. She did delete some philosophy she included which was overheard by Saraswati as conversed in the estate bungalow, and remembered. Manuka could have pruned a little more, but let it be as the book is her literary child born of deep love of writing, dedication, much research, hard work and a dream realized. Its fictionalized history to us; and human stories.

Much more can be written critiquing Manuka’s Like Moths to a Flame. This itself is a unique title and so very apt because many of the principal characters do get burnt: the Bawa in love of Parvati and Mariam and his goodness; Velupillai in his loyalty to Tamil traditions and disappointment in his only son; the Son and his band of Boys in the flames of gunfire. Gentle, childlike Mariam goes to her long dead father as she smells roses and sees him coming for her. Only the clever coolie Saraswati watches it all and remains unscorched.

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Features

The challenge of keeping value-based politics alive

Published

2 hours ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Anti-migrant protests in Durban, South Africa. BBC

The current outbreak of anti-immigrant protests in Durban, South Africa is bound to have taken many a subscriber to value-based politics or political idealism quite by surprise. After all, this is evidence that despite the historic accomplishments of nation-builders of the stature of the late President Nelson Mandela it cannot be taken for granted that identity politics, including racism in its worst forms, is no more in South Africa.

At the time of this writing details are scarce on the substantive root causes of the protests but it could very well be that economic grievances, particularly on the part of the majority community in South Africa, are contributing considerably to the disaffection. Shrinking employment and material prospects are likely to figure majorly among the factors igniting the unrest.

Fortunately, the local authorities in Durban are losing no time in calling for peaceful co-existence among the relevant communities and are pointing to the vital importance of stepping-up national integration processes. Apparently, immigrants in sizable numbers from neighbouring countries are present in Durban. However, international TV footage of the protests quoted some local authorities as saying that the majority of the immigrants in some centres that housed them were not illegal migrants and had the documents that entitle them to be in Durban.

In the Durban protests the world has fresh proof of the socially divisive consequences of the gathering globe-wide economic disaffection, touched off particularly by the continuing crisis in West Asia. Going ahead, the world would need to brace for increasing identity-based unrest of the kind it is just witnessing in South Africa.

Considering that the material lot of ordinary people everywhere could only aggravate progressively, with the US and Iran showing no signs of negotiating an end to their confrontation any time soon, it will be left to the more democratic and progressive sections of the world community to initiate positive measures collectively to bring a measure of relief to the discontented.

The swiftness with which such relief will be provided would depend crucially on the importance those sections taking up these undertakings attach to value-based politics as opposed to Realpolitik of power politics.

Going by these yardsticks, Italy could be considered to be moving in the right direction. Recently Italy came to the fore in initiating the collective named, ‘Rome Coalition for Food Security and Access to Fertilizer’, which has as one of its aims the swift provision of fertilizer to economically weak African countries.

In a recent statement Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio Tajani, said that a principal aim of the project was to ensure that the farmers of Africa gained easy access to fertilizer, considering that food security is a growing concern among some of Africa’s economically vulnerable countries.

The statement went on to mention that some 30 countries hailing from the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, the Balkans as well as the FAO had been invited to join the coalition. The venture is far-seeing in that food security is main among the reasons for social discontent which in turn could degenerate into endemic political turmoil and bloodshed. Separatist violence and geographical fragmentation of countries wouldn’t be too far behind these developments, as Africa itself has often proved.

It is hoped that more G7 countries would take the cue from Italy and do what they could to ease the hardships of economically distressed countries, particularly of the global South. In these efforts they would need to break rank with the US, which is today brutally indifferent to the consequences of its policy of making ‘America First’, come what may.

Going by current developments, the Trump administration seems to be blithely oblivious to the wider, deleterious effects of its policy course in West Asia. Besides rendering Iran militarily and otherwise impotent nothing else seems to matter to Washington, as regards West Asia. This is policy short-sightedness of an extreme kind. After all, right now West Asia could be said to be sitting on the proverbial powder keg.

On the other hand, Iran is not giving the world the impression that it is doing anything constructive to get out of the policy straitjacket that it wove for itself decades ago. Rather than enter into a policy of ‘live and let live’ in relation to Israel in particular and initiate a process of reconciliation with the latter, it has chosen to operate within policy parameters that continue to damn Israel. This has put Israel always on the ‘defensive’ so to speak and prevented the opening up of space for meaningful dialogue.

That said, Israel is obliged to explore the possibilities of entering into a negotiatory process with the Arab-Islamic world that could lead to a de-escalation of tensions and bloodshed. It cannot continue to look at its neighbours through lenses that distort them as archetypal enemies who should be ‘wiped off completely from the face of the earth.’

In other words, the need is urgent for Realpolitik to give way to value-based politicks. Italy is beginning to prove that the latter approach could be pursued with some success. May be the EU and the UK could throw their weight behind these initiatives as well and establish that international politics could be refashioned on the basis of humane, civilized norms. The UN would need to be fully supportive of these moves and prove an organizational nucleus of the operations that follow.

In fact the time is ripe for people of conscience to collectively stand up on the side of peace and say ‘No’ to war and violence. Organizations such as the ICRC, the WHO and Medicines Sans Frontiers have already taken up this call. Referring to the widespread destruction of health facilities and their dehumanizing results these organizations have said, among other things, that ‘This is not a failure of the law. It is a failure of political will.’

True, ‘failure of political will’ among those powers that matter accounts for the runaway, uncontrollable nature of war and destruction in contemporary times, but more fundamentally it is a failure of the human conscience. It could very well be that the phenomenal levels to which violence and war have been unleashed today have had the effect of deadening consciences. This is a matter for urgent study and wide discussion.

Features

Vesak celebrations … with Cuteefly

Published

2 hours ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions // Gift pack

I would describe Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka as innovative and creative, and she operates under the name of Cuteefly.

Indunil always comes up with something novel to celebrate special occasions, and she does it with candles … and that’s her profession.

She was in the spotlight when she created a happening scene, with candles, for Christmas, Sinhala and Tamil New Year, and Valentine’s Day.

As lanterns light up Sri Lanka for Vesak, the Colombo-based candle maker is quietly turning wax and wick into little pieces of the festival.

Candles reflecting Vesak themes

Her candles reflect Vesak themes – light, peace, remembrance, giving, etc., to enable you to fill your Vesak celebration with devotion and beauty.

Among her Vesak creations is a lotus-shaped soy candle, scented with sandalwood, lavender, etc., meant to burn during this Vesak Poya Day.

Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka: Customers
praise her for her creativity

These handcrafted Vesak candles are perfect for offering at the temple, she says.

What makes her creations so novel is that they come in different shapes, scents, themes, and all are handmade.

What’s more, her customers have heaped praise on her for her creativity.

According to Indunil, her creations are perfect as a thoughtful gift … to bring beauty, unity, and light into every moment.

Says Indunil: “Our beautifully handcrafted Unity candles are designed with premium detail and love, making them perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions.”

Cuteefly, says Indunil, is available online.

Readers could contact Indunil on 0778506066 for more details.

He Facebook Page is: Cuteefly.

Handmade with love

Features

Dark Spots …

Published

2 hours ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Yes, dark spots do crop up on the skin, especially with sun exposure and, of course, as the skin ages.

However, these tips should be of immense benefit to those who are faced with dark spots.

* Lemon and Honey Glow Mask:

You will need 01 teaspoon lemon juice and 01 teaspoon honey.

Mix the lemon juice and honey well and then apply this mixture, only on the dark spots.

Leave for 10–15 minutes and then rinse with cool water.

Benefits:

Lemon helps brighten pigmentation.

Honey moisturises and heals skin.

Gives a natural glow.

* Aloe Vera Gel Treatment:

All you need is fresh aloe vera gel.

Apply the gel apply on dark spots, before going to bed.

Leave overnight and wash in the morning.

Benefits:

Reduces acne marks and pigmentation.

Soothes irritated skin.

Helps skin repair naturally.

* Turmeric and Yoghurt Paste:

You will need 01 teaspoon yoghurt and a pinch of turmeric

Mix the yoghurt and turmeric into a smooth paste and apply on affected areas.

Leave for 15 minutes and then wash gently with lukewarm water.

Benefits:

Turmeric brightens skin naturally.

Yoghurt removes dead skin cells.

Helps fade dark spots gradually.

Use these packs 02-03 times a week as results are generally seen over time.

You can also try this out: Mix a ripe papaya into a smooth paste and apply to the face, or directly on to the dark spots. Leave for 15-20 minutes and then wash with lukewarm water.