Village Life in the Forties
Memories of a Lankan Expatriate
by
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The stranger hailed from Bandarawela. He was a young, handsome man with a somewhat square face sporting a razor-thin mustache. Dressed in Western attire, he looked smart enough to engage the attention of any pretty damsel.
Because he was an affable and jovial man by nature, it did not take him much time to get used to the bucolic surroundings and make friends with the villagers. He made his daily journey to the town post office on a push bicycle and often bragged that he had made the right decision in coming to stay in the village rather than in the town. The village so enthralled him that, on one occasion, he threatened to settle down there forever.
The villagers used to call him Punchi Thepal Mahattaya (small postmaster) inasmuch as my father, also a postmaster, was known by the senior name of Thepal Mahattaya. I wonder why the villagers did not attach any significance to his place of origin, which was more than 198 kilometers away by road, when devising the mode of addressing him. Maybe because they recognized that the job of postmaster ranked high in the village hierarchy.
With the passage of time, the handsome stranger seemed to have made a too-intimate friendship with the members of a particular household, especially a female member of that household. This behavior was much against the overt moral code of the village, al-though many notable villagers violated the code to suit their pleasure. … And it looked as if Punchi Thepal Mahattaya were about ready to carry out his threat and settle down in Pathegama.
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About the Book
When author Shelton A. Gunaratne was born in January of 1940 in Pathegama, Sri Lanka, life was simple for the poor people in this sparsely populated village. But it was this village that raised him. Through twenty-six biographical sketches of some of the village’s most colorful characters, Gunaratne paints a portrait of what life was like in this rural setting.
This collection of sketches, first published in the Ceylon Daily NewsMyna, the new village head-man; Vel Vidane, an unctuous official and the irrigation headman; cowards Wala Semba and Naamba; Singappuru Basunnehe, the goldsmith; Kankanama, the cinnamon peeler; Kalu Appu, the fierce burglar; Redi Nenda, the humble washerwoman; Menike Nenda, a village beauty; and Kunu Nachchile, the witchlike animal lover.
Demonstrating the Buddhist/Daoist principle that unity and diversity are inextricably interconnected, Village Life in the Forties provides not only a social history, but also a greater global under-standing of the life and times of rural Ceylonese during and around World War II.
About the Author
Shelton A. Gunaratne, PhD, was a journalism professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He specialized in economics at the University of Ceylon and started his career as a journalist at the Ceylon Daily News. His publications include the Dao of the Press and the Handbook of the Media in Asia.