A Review: Under a Lovi Tree - by K. K. S. Perera

 

The first time I read the 13 stories of Under the Lovi Tree by K. K. S. Perera in their unedited form I knew that there was something special about them. The stories featured prominently not only people but also felines and canines as well. Thematically, the author is clearly interested in memory, aging, human ethics, and sexuality. Spatiotemporally, the collection touches almost all strata of the human world and extends to embrace parallel realities as well. The author’s refreshing use of the visual image, almost Keatsean at times, makes reading his book a memorable experience.      

“Under the Lovi Tree,” the story the collection is named after, is one of the many stories in which dogs feature prominently. The main theme of the story is the love that most of us feel for our pets and the pain of parting from them. The story begins and ends under a lovi tree. Memory also features conspicuously as a theme in the story. Throughout the story the narrator moves back and forth condensing an experience worth of “ten plus” years. Also, in the background is the narrator’s own fear of his own death. During his conversation with the vet who is treating his ten plus dog who is refusing to eat, the vet says that in human terms Blacky/Kalu-Ura would be in his mid-seventies indicating that it was his time only to realize that it was an insensitive thing to say as the narrator too was in his mid-seventies. The author also gives a critical glimpse of the preoccupation some owners have with the pedigree of their pets which they sometimes use as a way to outshine others who own the so-called pariah dogs. In addition, the author offers ample examples of his mastery over visual imaging and gentle irony in this short story:

The sun shine, greenery and the breeze conspired with each other to create an enchanting environment. Flowers on the tree were teeming with minute bee-like insects gathering honey. Their light humming played second fiddle to the sweet melodies of the magpie-robins that were singing hosannas to the dawn of another day. The tiny yellowish petals of Lovi flowers competed with the withered yellow-brown leaves to reach the ground as they came floating down in rusty golden showers.

The 10^th story of the collection “Kitten and the Old man” features cats and dogs. The narrator, awaiting anti-rabies injection for a cat bite, is having a philosophical conversation with the kitten that bit him about the ethicality of demanding indemnity, identity, life, death, etc. He sees the kitten whom he has named Rosy despite her objections to being branded bounding up onto his hospital bed. He experiences being snuggled up to and being licked by the kitten. Then he sees a girl struggling for life and sends the kitten to check on her. Throughout, the old man drifts in and out of an alternate reality. In the end he arrives at the conclusion that “[k]ittens are angels with whiskers.” Fortunately for the old man, the procedure is successfully concluded and he is discharged. On his way out he peeks into the curtained off bed where the girl was and finds her lying still covered with a white cloth deserted by the medical staff. Then, he raises a question that is thematically central to the collection: “what is LIFE?”         

The narrator of “The Perrero '' features a philosophical female dog ready to fight for her ovaries. In a dream the owner sees himself taking his female dog Lenny to the vet for ovaiohysterctomy. Lenny shoots out of the clinic and protests against the invasive procedure. The owner tries to justify his actions by pointing out he had rescued her from the streets and given her a home and a comfortable life. The lookers-on watch the interaction but do not hear what the dog says. They feel the good natured owner is being taken advantage of by the ungrateful dog and advise him to put the “haughty canine” “in her rightful place.” The dog, on the other hand, accuses the owner and the vet of humiliating her and violating her rights “by giving her painful injections to block her reproductive hormones under the pretext of administering the rabies vaccine.” She accuses the owner of ruining her body as well as …[her] future with injections and surgeries.” She asks whether “[i]t is fair to remove … [her] organs without … [her] consent.” In return the owner gives the dog an ultimatum: either comply or be ready to return to where he had rescued her from. The dog in return rejects “sympathy from humans” and says all she wants is “love and affection in return for … [her] loyalty.” In the end, the dog manages to convince the man to change his mind about the procedure. In this story too the author engages the reader in a philosophical discussion on the “artificiality” of human relations as opposed to the “naturalness” of animal relations.

In “Pets and Humans,” too, the author explores pet-human and animal-animal relations. The two pets of two neighbouring families get into a fight because of the carelessness of one of the children. The owners fight over the incident. Ultimately, the police have to get involved. While the investigation is going on the children find the two dogs attending to each other’s wounds and point that out to their parents shaming them into backing down.           

Out of the few stories that feature humans in the foreground, the first story of the collection “A Pair of Bongos” is about a pair of aged star-crossed husband and a wife. The author maintains their relationship undisclosed in this almost surreal story until the end. Major Gerald Stamboe, an ex-soldier trapped in his painful memories, lives in a dusty rundown house which he has turned into a living mausoleum. He relives his past while his wife creates things of beauty in the form of roses in order to convey her enduring love for her husband. The two boys who stumble upon the pair on their way to find their friend Brindly do not make the connection.

In “One Night’s ‘Cell’-ter”, the protagonist Don Elaris, a 62-year-old nattami of a tea factory is a gambler and drunkard like many male characters in the collection. The story takes place in a remand cell in a police station in Colombo somewhere in the 1970s.  The story offers the kind of mixed communities found in the fringes of any big city that scavenged off its castoffs. The Malay boy from whom Don Elaris used to barter tea dust for salvaged vegetables, the drunken ill-dressed tramp Elaris shared the cell with, Milly the very young woman Elaris is involved with and his first woman Thangamma who was much older than he, all fall into this category. Elaris’ mind is burdened by a petty act of theft he had committed in order to support his habit. So, in the course of the story Elaris is trying to find someone to confess his crime to but no one wants to listen to him. “I can’t hold it anymore. Help me, my dear. Please listen. It’s a matter of minutes. You must! I’m burning inside. I’m in real agony,” he says to a young man called Piyasena. Piyasena, a big onion seller by profession, who shared Elaris’ cell, was clearly unwilling to listen to him. Elaris starts relating his story to the young man despite his initial disinterest and manages to interest him despite himself. He gives a brief history of his life, especially of the women in his life in the course of which he criticises male hypocrisy in demanding virgin wives. He advises Piyasena not to try to “know, comprehend or criticise” women but to “just love them.”  Throughout Elaris suffers from debilitating chest pain and a cough which ultimately claims his life. He leaves his entire worldly wealth - twenty rupees and a gold ring - which he bequeaths to the two women he had been close to, Thangamma and Mili Nona.

The central theme of “The Sound of Light” is memory. The first person narrator Santiago metaphorically goes back in time to his childhood during the witching hour. Back in the past he joins his elder brother on an outing. The two brothers are interested in different things. The elder brother wanted to go to his university and thereafter to the races. The narrator is only interested in buying a torch bulb presumably in order to impress Mary, his sister. Like in many other stories in the collection a dog features prominently. However, unlike in others it has no apparent task to perform in order to drive the plot. The narrator exaggerates his adventures to Mary and then repents lying. He breaks the bulb while trying to show it to Mary. Heart sore, he picks the broken bulb up and hurts himself using the jagged edges. His disappointment is heartbreakingly illustrated by the writer thus:

An occasional scream would echo from the deep mid-sea cliffs. The wind wiped it up into stormy waves smashing into the beach with unchecked fury.”

The old man back in present says that his “affection for the ocean remains unaffected. While observing the ocean he notes the paradoxical “musical stillness” of the dawn. The last paragraph involves all senses of the reader. He finds that “[t]he blowing [ocean wind] carries the fragrance of the dead, the spirit of my childhood days.”          

The 6^th story of the collection, “A Stroll down the Memory Lane,” too, is about memory, aging, death and change. The story unfolds incrementally maintaining suspense on issues of the identity of the characters and their relationship to one another until the very end. At the beginning we find the narrator back in his old neighbourhood after “30-40 years” observing the changes the place has undergone. People have died and houses have been demolished. People have left and new people have moved in. The mighty have fallen to be replaced by new money – all these a lesson on the transience of everything related to human life. The narrator wants more information and looking around notes a man who looked slightly familiar. Later he finds out that Jiney, his source, was the son of Ranja, the neighbourhood thug, who had been murdered by one of his would-be-victims. Ultimately, the narrator manages to direct their conversation to the topic he is really interested in – his friend Kunarasiri whose funeral he has come to attend. He learns that his friend had become an alcoholic, lost everything and spent the last part of his life after being evicted from his house in the village temple. Even his funeral was funded by the community, according to Jiney. Later, Jiney blames Kumare’s wife for his change of fortune. She, according to him, had run away with another man and that had been the cause of the good man’s descent into alcoholism and poverty. Though it is not directly stated, the narrator seems to be the man with whom the wife had eloped with. Walking behind the hearse, he imagines the body of his friend being covered by soil by the mourners which triggers a flashback. The memory triggers a bizarre moment in which he imagines being caught naked with a woman by Jiney’s father Ranja who was wielding a sword. The story ends with the narrator appealing to Jiney for help.           

The love and compassion a brother feels for his blind sister is the theme of “Seeing, as they are”. Nuwan is an artist. His sensitive artistic soul embraces his handicapped sister and attempts to lighten her burden in the warmest possible way. He is never impatient with the many questions she asks him; one may say that he has become her eyes. Through this story the author seems to ask the reader to act compassionately towards those with special needs.     

The last story of the collection, “Petrified in Affection and Love” also deals with love. The author uses Isurumuniya, a well-known archaeological site, as the spatial setting of his story. The temporal setting moves back and forth in time. The story is about the “morality” of human relations and the beauty of setting people one loves free to be happy. The tree-god that curses Weerantha, Harideva, Suni and Harideva’s horse Pavan for the crime of the humans giving into their natural instincts 1600 years ago on the day of the Annual Water Festival stands for the voice of culture that inhibits natural desires in the name of morality and ethics. The sense of pathos generated by the tragic circumstances of the three lovers makes the reader question his/her own sense of morality.   

While “Petrified in Affection and Love” explored love and the physical expression of it in a purer form in a more refined courtly setting, “Mail Train and a Murderer” deals with the same in a more prosaic background. Perasivalam Velu Sinnathambi is a CGR man, who like several other male characters in this selection is addicted to gambling and alcohol. He is attracted to Susilawathi, a married woman who ran the café he bought his food from. Having to vacate his railway quarters, Velu visits the house of the local Madam with the hope of renting a room. Janet Carmen de Cruse, the former cabaret dancer cum courtesan is still in business for the right customer and she clearly finds Velu attractive. During the course of the visit he is introduced to Victorine, another resident whose husband had died just after their marriage under mysterious circumstances. We also learn that Victorine as a young girl had stumbled upon her mother’s extramarital affair. At present, we are told, she is sharing a room with one of the girls who disappears prompting Victorine to ask Janet to undertake a search for her. All this seems redundant information at the point of narration. This is a kind of trademark of K. K. S. Perera’s style of narration. Next we find Velu being accused of killing Janet over some money he had borrowed at a high interest rate to support his addiction. He is sent to prison for fifteen years but is pardoned after nine. Upon getting his freedom he returns to Susilawathi’s café only to find that her husband had died and she had remarried a much younger man. It is in the course of their conversation that Velu learns about the real murderer. It is interesting that Sisilawathi has not come forward on behalf of someone whom she considered special; the writer hints at the intrinsic selfishness of most human beings and the fact that we are motivated basically by self-interest. Still, they spend the night together. Throughout the course of unfolding human drama the noise of the mail train is heard as an ominous background noise.

All in all, K. K. S. Perera offers his readers a fresh look at some of the most fundamental issues human beings have been grappling with in our brief but tumultuous history. His views on love are of a wise older man who has seen much of what the world has to offer but has retained a sense of the ideal despite all that. He is compassionate towards the non-human world and open to the possibility of other realities. Most of all he has the rare ability to see the world and turn what he has seen into vivid word pictures for others to read.