What happens to a nation when a war that has raged on for
thirty years comes to a full stop? What do people do with the sudden silence,
the blank peace? What happens to a place that has been wiped out by a tsunami?
What do people do with the ‘clean’ open spaces? Romesh Gunasekara takes you on
a ride aboard a van across the north and south of Sri Lanka, picking up tales,
dreams and heartache in the wake of events that make lives collapse.
Noon Tide Toll reads almost like a collection of short
stories, strung together by the voice of Vasantha, the van-driver who carries
people of all colours and shapes across the country to their respective
destinations. The book is divided into two sections—North and South—and begins
with ‘Full Tank’, ending with precision at ‘Running on Empty’. The chapters
have curious, beckoning titles that echo in your mind as you finish one after
another… ‘Deadhouse’, ‘Scrap’, ‘Roadkill’, ‘Ramparts’, ‘Turtle’, ‘Humbug’…
Every single story carries a wealth of meaning and an ocean
of emotion. More appropriately, a mutli-hued universe of emotion. The
characters are as varied as a Chinese delegation looking for ‘economic avenues’
and their young translator; a priest and an acolyte-who’s-really-a-reporter
hunting down a war-criminal, a soldier who has killed his sweetheart’s brother
in the war and his haunted by the act forever, a nightwatchman who is ‘lucky’ because
he survived the tsunami…even as all twenty-two members of his family perished.
You can’t really choose your favorite section from the book, because every one
of them will linger on in your mind like a distant, unforgettable aroma.
However, I’ll be a bit partial and point to ‘Scrap’ as the
one that astonishes the most, with descriptions that you’d scarcely ever read,
much less ever see. It is the ‘scrap’ that the Chinese executives are
interested in, which is really whole fields full of confiscated vehicles from
the LTTE. “If architecture is said to be frozen music, then what was before us
was frozen pandemonium. Cars, vans, lorries, cycles, scooters, every kind of
vehicle jumbled up and abandoned in creeks and ditches”…. “It seemed as though
the transport of a nation has been gathered here and turned to scrap.”
The chapter ends with a scene at the beach, at a wrecked
ship captured by the Tigers earlier; but the most astonishing image is that of
a pop-video being filmed in the foreground. That’s Gunasekara’s metaphor for
you; the future being created on the rubble of the past. How the scrap of the
past gets recycled into a shiny future. But,
and this is the little voice that runs through each of the chapters, asking the
nagging question: can the past really be erased? As Vasantha asks himself, can
there really be a clean slate? Can you really, like Dr Ponnampalam who returns
to his country—after almost half a century—with his son Mahen, reconcile
yourself and create life anew amid the ruins of the old?
These are questions that he leaves for you to answer.
Neither despondent nor overly hopeful, Vasantha is a man who reflects and
observes, and has a hundred questions he wants to ask…questions that Gunasekara
waves as reflection points for his reader. His pen moves in simple, serene
strokes. With a steady, silent rhythm like a van’s moving wheels, the story is
like an actual roadtrip for you, steadily swaying from side to side as you take
in what the road has to offer.
Gunasekara chooses to end with hope. Mr Van Man, bring me a dream….
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