The Rime of the Ancient Mariner remains one of my favourite poems in English.

French illustrator Gustave Dore brought Coleridge's powerful imagery so vividly alive with his woodcuts.

Here's one. If you like them, I'll post more.

 

Soldier of Love – a short story by Gamini Akmeemana

 

Samanalee can't remember if it was raining just as hard when the kitchen wall collapsed. It was during the last monsoon. The walls were wattle and daub, she had helped her father and younger brother to make the clay balls. It felt solid once the walls were dry, and smelled good, too, like the warm earth after a sudden shower. But the rain was too much. It fell like a cascade of nails. The skin hurt wherever the drops fell. The walls were repaired now, this time with ugly cement blocks, and she heard the rain knocking against them along with the hissing wind.

How odd that rain came slashing down on them as Janaka hugged her for the last time. That was five years ago, when she was still a schoolgirl. He had three days leave and was catching the Anuradhapura bus early the next day to reach his camp in Vavuniya on time. "Our corporal's a bastard," she remembered him saying. "He's worse than the Tigers."

“Don’t go,” she told him, her words melting in the rain. They were both soaked to the skin and her breasts looked sculpted in the cloth. He kissed her and pulled away gently, saying:”Go now before they start looking for you.”

He mounted his bicycle and rode away. It was raining hard and he was riding into a dark wall. But the sun behind   clouds lit the distant horizon like a god’s frowning smile, and lit him like an apparition before he disappeared into the dark ness like a magician. That’s the last she saw him. A month later, he wrote from Vavunia. “It’s raining hard. Every night, we expect the Tigers to attack. I’m in one of the forward bunkers. Don’t worry, we can face it.”

Samanalee wrote back to him immediately. She had no idea if he got her reply. The next week, she learnt that his camp and its company of soldiers were overrun by the Tigers. It was at night, when it was raining hard, and there were no survivors. But Janaka and twenty seven others were listed as missing in action because their bodies were never found.

Janaka and Samanalee were in the same class. He stopped schooling after the Ordinary Level exam because his father was ailing, and his elder brother needed help with the paddy.

“I don’t want to be a farmer,” he told her. “But what else can I do?”

“It’s all right,” She consoled him. “I will become a school teacher. We can get a housing loan and have our own house. You do what you like.”

But he joined the army two years later, saying the paddy would go to his brother. It wasn’t big enough for both of them. Quite a few young men from the village had joined the army, and only one had died. She did her best to dissuade him, but he assured her he was going to survive the war.

Janaka’s parents didn’t arrange a funeral. His mother believed her son was a captive of the Tigers.

“I hope they are not maltreating him,” she said again and again. “The government says the Tigers are keeping hundreds of our soldiers as prisoners.”

She looked at her ailing husband, lying on a bed in the verandah. He closed his eyes and said nothing. Both his kidneys were ailing and they knew he didn’t have much longer to live.

Samanalee believed Janaka’s mother. At night, the trees turned into black clumps and owls hooted. When a dog howled far away, she got nervous. She had passed her Advance Level exam well, but fell short of three marks for the university. She could still apply for teaching. But she remained dreaming about Janaka. He had a slim frame, high cheekbones and a wide grin that melted her heart. She looked at his  photograph. It was in colour, taken soon after he joined the army. He was in uniform, wearing  camouflage trousers, polished black boots and a green cap. He tried to look stern in the photo, but she could still see the schoolboy who gave her toffees and scribbled notes.

Would he be able to withstand torture? What were they feeding him? Whenever she woke up at night, she believed he was thinking about her. They were connecting mentally. She turned on her side so that she could see the night sky out of the window. It was clear now and the stars shone like the eyes of those in love. She murmured sweet nothings till she fell asleep.

While sleeping, he would come to her now and then. It was hard to say when, because they lived in separate worlds. But he floated through the darkness at times, and the banyan grove behind the paddies was bathed in a soft light, like it always was after a heavy rain. In the morning, she remembered what he said. But he was no longer there, and she longed for the night so that she might see him again. A night without a dream could so lonely.

“If you don’t want to study further, you should get married,” Samanalee’s mother told her one day. “It’s three years since Janaka died. You can’t mope for ever.”

“I’m not moping,” she said stubbornly. “Why should I? I know he’ll be back.”

“He’s dead and gone, you should make your peace with that.”

“The Tigers are keeping him.”

“What for? The Tigers say they have only five soldiers. That’s all the prisoners they have. Stop dreaming and grow up.”

But she continued to believe he was alive. Another year passed. The thoughts began confusing her. Even if he was dead, she still loved him. That’s why she couldn’t marry anyone else. She remembered the one gift she gave him the day he left to join the army – a collage of dessicated flowers and leaves pasted on white Bristol board. She had no money to buy him anything, and he told her it didn’t matter. Her love was the only gift he wanted.

He had given her an expensive gift – a Chinese DVD player, and brought her music CDs and DVDs each time he came home. The DVD player stopped working last year, but she kept it by her bed, with the CDs packed on top, and the photograph on top of everything, and dusted everything every day. But now here parents were insisting that she should get married. She had no job, she was getting older, and they felt old. There was a  relative, the son of an aunt. The family now lived in the south, and the young man, called Ruwan, had a steady job.

“They have land and he’s building a house. What more can you ask for? We are falling ill, and you waste your life moping about a dead man. At least meet this boy and tell us what you think.”

She refused at first. But even Janaka’s mother, whenever she mentioned him now, would say: “Who knows if the Tigers killed him after some time?”

One day, Samanalee consented to meet Ruwan. He came with his parents and two sisters two weeks later. He was tall and might have been handsome but for that upper lip, which curved up towards the nose at the centre, leaving a small gap which revealed the whiteness of his teeth. That didn’t make him bad looking, though. Ruwan was better looking, but it was his kindness which had drawn her to him at school. He was quick to pick up her pencil or eraser if she dropped anything. Sometimes she dropped them on purpose and he always stopped whatever he was doing to pick them up for her. Such kind men, she reasoned, were not likely to get drunk and beat their wives.

Samanalee had no idea if Ruwan was just as kind. He seemed to be all right, sitting between his parents and eyeing her shyly, which prompted her mother to say: “This bridegroom looks very shy.” It made everyone laugh.

“What do you think?” Samanalee’s mother asked her anxiously when the visitors were gone.

“I don’t know, I think he’s all right,” Samanalee said.

“You mean, you are willing to marry him?”

“As you wish, amma.”

“But what do you think?”

Samanalee went in without replying.  She still kept the CD player by her bed, with the photo on top. Her mother saw it, and said: “Why don’t you throw it away now? You don’t enter a new world with two minds.”

Samanalee couldn’t bring herself to throw away the photo. She gave it to Janaka’s mother, who said: “It’s all right, girl. You can’t wait forever.”

It was a very hot day when they got married. The small reception hall was crowded and she  was soaked with sweat and tired when they finally left for the honeymoon. She had cried before getting into the car. But, the way Janaka kept smiling at her on the way, she began to feel at ease and excited.

That night, as they were making love, Janaka suddenly sat up and looked at her.

“What did you say?” he asked her. Sensing the change in his mood, she felt frightened.

“What did I say?”

“Who’s Janaka?”

“You know about him. We told you. Why do you ask now?”

“You spoke his name just now.”

“Did I?” she asked in wonder. She could not remember anything like that. She touched his shoulder nervously, but he turned away.

She  slipped into her night frock  and stepped into the verandah. There were two chairs and she sat down. The sky dazzled with thousands of stars. It may be that people who died lived over there, beyond the Milky Way.

After a while, Janaka came and sat next to her.

“Why do you still think of him?”

“Thinking is not a crime, is it?” she shot back, her own voice startling her.

“But why now? It’s our wedding night.”

He sounded sad and she felt sorry for him.

“I wasn’t thinking of him now, I swear, and I don’t remember calling his name.”

“Do you still love him?”

“No,” said Samanalee.

“Do you think he’s still alive?”

“Yes.”

“So what if he comes back?”

“But I am your wife now,” she said, smiling. The smile took her by surprise.

“Yes, but….” The way he said, she felt sorry for him.

“Why don’t you stop worrying?” Samanalee soothed him. She laid her head on his shoulder and heard him ask: “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” she murmured. She really didn’t know what – if Janaka was still alive, or if he was watching her from the stars, and if she loved them both and not even what love was. But her heart was beating fast and she wasn’t unhappy.

“Let’s go back to bed,” he urged, taking her by the band. She kissed his cheek and got up. After they made love, she cried. He hugged her, saying it was all right, till she fell asleep.

That night, she saw Janaka in a dream. She was waiting by the paddies, and he was standing there, in his uniform. But he looked disheveled and thin. At first, she had mistaken him for a scarecrow because he had his arms spread out. The light was falling and her hair kept getting into the eyes, blurring her vision. She shouted back, but he couldn’t hear her. There were fires in the distance. She couldn’t understand why as the grass was still green and the paddy not yet harvested.

Suddenly, she was hugging him. He brought his lips closer and closer, but the face wasn’t clear. It looked like a hollow in an old, gnarled tree. She woke up with a scream. It was almost dawn and she was hugging Ruwan. If she had screamed, he hadn’t heard because he was sound asleep.

Samanalee took her hand, wedged between his ribs and forearm, and curled it over him, touching his back. She felt strangely comforted as she stroked his skin. At home, she would be up by now to boil some water. But there was no need for that today. Still stroking his skin, she went back to sleep.

Hi there!

Years ago, I created two more blogs -- the Junk Lover and Retroheliographers. The first was about old technology -- analog, or early digital. I was an avid collector of old typewriters, computers, cameras, radios and electronic equipment from junk shops. I wanted to create a home museuem.

All that has changed. Covid 19 made me sell what I could. I feel saner, actually. My interest in old stuff is there, just to appreciate, not to own. If you want to read about old cameras, look at old catalogues and magazine articles, go to this blog. Here's the link: 

The Junklover

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7969578506844695049/9188720845548528563

Retroheliographers was about analog photography. Now I'm into digital and the blog will change. If you want stuff about the film era, visit the Junklover. For contemporary photography, visit Retroheliographers. I need to change the name, I know, but let it be till I can think of a better one.

Here's the link:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/4370823715382961356

If you want to look at my creative writing and journalism, it's the Booklover. Here's the link:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/2283453592580174547?hl=en

This time, I mean to keep it up. Enjoy!

 Photography is fun but it's also a lot of hard work. I'm giving you here a selection of my recent work, taken after March 2020 during lockdowns.

 Following my recent English Writers' Collective award for best short story,  I decided to publish my short stories. Here's the first. 

Love Never Dies

 

He was always scraggy, this man, and age had not improved anything. Everything was the same -- the unkempt beard, unruly hair, the gruff voice, those piercing eyes with their ever present traces of melancholy, the stubby fingers with their dirty,  chewed fingernails, the clothes which looked slept in and the smell of alcohol whenever he opened his mouth. Few people liked him, and he seemed to like few in return. In fact, he hardly seemed to like anybody. But he liked me very much. It's hard to explain why, but with him it was all chemistry. You either liked someone, or you didn't. Actually, it was love and hate with him rather than likes and dislikes. That's how I understood the regard he had for me because, under normal circumstances,  he had every reason for disliking me.

There was a class difference. I was much better off than him, I spoke English which is again a matter of class snobbery, and he  didn't have a future whereas I had one  -- or it seemed so those days, anyway. When I look back at my own failed goals, disappointments and gradual impoverishment, there hardly seems to be any difference between him and me now. But there is. Despite my increasingly straightened circumstances, I try to keep up appearances. I get my clothes dry cleaned, I polish my old shoes. He doesn' t do anything of the sort. I don' t know if he ever owned a pair of shoes. Those worn imitation leather sandals were as much part of him as his mealancholic eyes, smell of alcohol and the sweat-stained shirt. Life wears everyone down, but he looked worn down even twenty years ago. A lot can happen to a man in twenty years. He looked as if a lot happened to him twenty years ago and he was now a relic of those happenings, indistinguishable from the debris.

 

I invited him for a cup of tea. He had always fascinated me because I saw in him an ideal, something which I'd have liked to possess. He was someone who would go to places I couldn't even dream of. It was a feeling I always had, and what he told me during that twenty minutes or so I spent in that fly-ridden cafe eating a fish bun and sipping a glass of scalding hot tea confirmed it beyond my wildest expectations. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I lack physical courage. Heaven knows it has failed me at crucial times. But I managed to find it and  hang on to it at other times, equally crucial, preventing myself from self-destruction and loss of face. But moral courage is a different matter altogether. It's hardly noticeable since it isn't a question of muscles or hard stares or a strident voice. It's a grey area since it is purely mental and the mind is an unseen thing, not comparable to anything else, not even love. That's because love has clear manifestations; it shows in the eyes, in the tone of voice, in the minutest gesture. But moral courage isn' t anything so obvious. You may not even know it is there until the need comes and you dredge it up from the depths. It has nothing to do with muscles, being tough or with being manly.

This man had courage of both kinds, moral as well as physical. I doubt if that occurred to anyone pasing him in the street -- or to people who knew him, for that matter. I doubt if anyone recognised that tender side to him, either. He wouldn't let anyone get that close. Or was it that people were afraid to come closer, repelled by his appearance? In Doestoevesky's novels, there are people like him haunting the streets of St. Petersburg. No one saw the nice guy in him because he looked like his own worst enemy. But, if you were sensitive enough to catch the moment, there were clues. Come to think of it, he had the voice of a singer who sang in his daily speech. There was a lilt to his voice when he talked. I can't remember him ever raising his voice. There were never any chuckles, none of that raucous laughter which comes out suddenly when two men are talking to each other. He smiled and frowned. There seemed to be few other expressions in between. When he smiled, his brows knit together. When he frowned, his brows squeezed together like dark clouds on a collision course. I didn't fancy being anywhere close if he  got angry. That would be a volcano. Even now, as he smiled with obvious pleasure at having met me after such a long time, he looked like a volcano at rest between historic eruptions.

 

He was telling me about his life now. It was an endless series of confrontations. I personally knew some of the people he mentioned. Some were public figures. Some, I'd only heard of. They were evil. Or they were monsters. Increasingly, as I sat there listening, I saw him as a man with black and white views. It was good vs. evil, and there was little good. It began to depress me. Didn't he see any redeeming factor in life?

 

Trying to change the subject, I asked him how his wife was. I remembered meeting them long ago, before they got married. I remembered a thin wisp of girl with short hair in a cheap frock. I remember wishing them luck and seeing her sad eyes light up with pleasure.

 

"Ruvini," he said wistfully, as if reading a name on something -- plaque, address card, or his own memory. I had forgotten the name -- if I knew it in the first place, that is, because I never met them together after that.

 

"How is she?" I asked him. I imagined the children to be grown up.

 

His brows got closer again, but this wasn't anger. This was something else.

 

"Ruvini died," he told me in that tone of endearment, bringing us even closer. I imagined that his woman could love him greatly -- if I felt drawn so much to him by that tone, I could imagine what it might do to a woman who loved him.

 

"Died?" I felt the sadness, like a permanent stain, weightless but stark -- his sadness was descending on me. I did not try to escape it. Whatever it might do to me -- contamination, infection, or permanent stain on my psyche -- I had to lean closer and accept it. I felt it becoming mine, and welcomed the feeling. He was that kind of man.

 

"She had a chronic heart problem," he said. "I knew that when we got married. I knew she could die, but I thought I could save her."

 

"Did you do an operation?"

 

He now looked at me as if I had asked a childish question.

 

"You don't understand. I thought love could cure her."

 

He smiled. It was a child's smile. I could imagine him in a school uniform, smiling when he saw her waiting for the school bus. I understood.

 

"Of course, she was operated on." He mentioned a reputed heart surgeon. "But he said there was nothing further anyone could do short of a heart transplant."

 

I didn't press for details. I thought of her heart as something else -- a reservoir of love. He was donor as well as recipient. But his love had evidently not saved her. I remembered him mentioning a daughter. So he still had something of her, after all.

 

"I married again," he said when I asked about the daughter. "My daughter's from the second marriage. Ruvini died three years after we married. We had no children."

 

We sat silently for a while. The faces in the cafe were familiar because of their routine expressions. Some were talking into their phones. A sales rep ate hurriedly, alone in his table. In the corner, a couple sat silently, their burdens clearly on their faces and  shoulders. I met his eyes again. So, she died without giving him a child. But she had given him a precious memory, a secret talisman. It was his privilege to display this hidden treasure when he desired. And now, he was showing it to me.

 

"I felt like a failure," he continued. But why? Because he couldn't heal her ailing heart with his love?

 

"Don't," I said. "I'm sure you did your best."

 

"Yes, but I had to see her again. All I had were photographs. What good is that? So I went back there to see her again."

 

I looked at him, uncomprehending. He smiled.

 

"I knew the cemetary keeper. I told him I wanted to see her again. That was three months after the funeral. He agreed. One night, he opened the grave for me. I removed the coffin lid and there she was, as fresh as ever. I can't explain that. Maybe it's the soil. But she looked blissful, like she was sleeping."

 

"Maybe it wasn't the soil," I said. "Maybe it was love."

 

He looked at me with gratitude, and smiled. That's what he had believed all along, though he didn't dare say it aloud. That's what I wanted to believe, too. We sat there for a few minutes more. But there was nothing more either of us could say. Then he walked out with his talisman, and I never saw him again.

 

 

 

 Here's my article in the Daily Mirror last week about how the latest lockdown is affecting people. 

All it takes is a little compassion

By Gamini Akmeemana

There is widespread hunger. I don’t need to read someone’s research data to know this – as I do my regular nocturnal rounds feeding stray dogs and cats, more and more people turn up asking me for food.

It’s heartbreaking. I tell them it’s animal feed, rice boiled together with leftover from the butcher’s,  and not fit for human consumption (I was able to feed these animals continuously throughout the lockdown only because my butcher has been kind enough to deliver the meat to my home, and a friendly CMC security guard with a travel pass procures the rice for me from the Narahenpita market).

I now take some biscuits with me to give these people as it’s beyond my own meager resources to feed both – hungry humans as well as animals. In this context, some are bound to question the ethicality of feeding dogs and cats while people are starving. My answer is simple. I don’t have the resources to feed both. My choice is personal and deliberate, and based on the following logic. It’s up to the compassion of individuals to feed starving animals who do not have a voice or representation. As for people, that’s why the government is there. It has been elected to look after everyone – voters, non voters, the rich, the middle class, the poor, and the beggars. If anyone goes hungry during a time of national crisis, someone has failed them badly somewhere.

In the government’s defense, one could say that Sri Lanka simply doesn’t have the resources to look after the needy during a prolonged, unprecedented crisis such as the pandemic (suddenly, we are a poor country? I’ve been told repeatedly that we are now a middle income country. I remember a call from SOS Villages Sri Lanka. They were calling everyone and asking for help – after we got elevated to that middle income bracket, that charity lost its funding from abroad. These are the ironies of life, lost on those cruising around in their six cylinder or eight cylinder monsters).

If the government can’t do it, then it’s up to individuals. As for the four legged, those feeding them, then and now, have been a very mixed lot  -- a few rich people along with thousands of ‘ordinary’ (like myself) to the downright poor. Everyone is struggling now, but many are somehow meeting these self-imposed obligations, though I find it hard to believe that someone driving around in a multi-cylinder vehicle sporting a carbon footprint the size of Yeti’s is struggling as much as I – unless they have  borrowed so much they find it hard to pay it back. I suspect that if it comes to the crunch and they must make the hard choice between the multi-cylinder dream and the laughable budget for feeding the four legged, it’s the latter that will have to go. In my case, with no bank loans to pay on my bicycle, I can at least afford to feed the dogs.

But now the onus for giving a decent meal at least once a day to the two legged (and one-legged, too) who are going hungry must fall on the same ladies and gentlemen living with perpetual nightmares of their dream vehicles seized without warning by hard-nosed X men from the finance companies. Undoubtedly, I’m imagining or exaggerating things here. After all, such people have more than one vehicle in their garages, and losing one would not cripple them the way it would a three wheeler driver or ambitious young executives falling behind payments on their Marutis and Renaults.

Yes, it’s time to stop worrying about the X men and feel a little compassion towards the Les Miserables of this country – people who were always miserable before the pandemic but now sliding from the frying pan into the fire. This is just a thought – if a thousand businesspersons (I don’t mean people running shoe marts, tea shops or those selling rejected stock from garment factories. Let’s aim a little higher) joined together and formed a fund, each undertaking to give one meal per day to ten starving people, we would be having ten thousand people with happily churning stomachs and lovely burps.

Surely, we can find not just 1000 such philanthropists from our business community – in a middle income country with a population of 20 million plus, we could find ten thousand such people, twenty thousand, or more? Or have the economists lied to us all along?

And let’s not forget the doctors. I’m told by reliable sources that some of them earn several million rupees a month – some as much as thirty million. While such figures maybe exaggerated by those livid with jealousy, even someone as bad at figures such as myself can plainly see that many doctors are well off.  Even if we accept that  Covid 19 must have dented  their incomes, I think such channelling wizards can still afford to hand out a few food parcels to the needy if I can  afford to feed the dogs and cats down my street.

All it takes is a little compassion. Or is that asking for too much?

 

 

 

 

 Hi there, I'm back after a long time! And with some good news, too!

The good news is that I have won the prose writing competition organised by the English Writers' Collective of Sri Lanka (EWC).

It's a good thing to happen at a very difficult time. I've been hit by a number of pandemic related problems (not health issues, though). Though I continue to work as a journalist, my creative writing reached a low point. I was writing a graphic novel based on World War II for the Daily Mirror newspaper, but it was interrupted half way in March 2020

due to Covid 19.

Also, due to mistakes made by me, I remain unpublished though I'm the author of five novels, several plays and many short stories. I have won four literary prizes (including this one) but people have given me up. As such, winning the EWC competition is a great way to say 'I'm still there, and my writing powers are still good!'

I'm sorry I can't published this short story here yet, as I must wait till the EWC announce it in their journal. But I have attached another story. Hopefully, I can publish them in my blog on a weekly basis.

You can read my recent journalism, too, here, from now on.

I will also publish a few episodes from the graphic novel, illustrated by Namal Amarasinghe.

It feels great to be back again!