Eastern Waves, Western Shores

By Chathuri Nugawela

Eastern Waves, Western Shores is a novel based on the life of a Sri Lankan woman who comes to study in England and then moves back to Sri Lanka and struggles fitting back in. The expectation of the elders, of society in general, cultural norms and the demands on a modern day career woman overwhelm her. She is torn between her loyalty to her family and the dreams she has for herself. It is a book about a looming arranged marriage, the yearning of young woman to fall in love hopefully with someone that is acceptable to her and her family, to live away from the family feuds and land disputes, away from the "dictatorship" of elders vs her duties towards them. Even after following her heart and her dreams she feels tormented sometimes and seeks an equilibrium in America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465374578

Chathuri Nugawela

Chathuri Nugawela is originally from Sri Lanka. She holds a LL.B with honors from the University of NewCastle Upon Tyne, U.K. and lives in Maryland, United States. She is a Wife and Mother and likes to write in her spare time drawing on her experiences from the countries she has travelled to and lived in and people she has met.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Chathuri Nugawela.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011917553

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-7456-1

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-7455-4

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-7457-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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Contents

Acknowledgements:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Glossary

Acknowledgements:

My apologies to my children for deserting them each night as I locked my self in a room writing this albeit in lapses. Sorry!

This book would not have been published if not for Jeeva, my husband, who has read it, given ideas and basically initiated the printing of it many years after completion. Thank you for being my rock. I know it was no menial task and I DO appreciate it!

Last but not least, This book would not have been written if not for Cam and Angela Blackhall who encouraged me to embark on this many moons ago and spent so much time helping me with it. All I can say is Thank you and that is not just for the help with the book, but for everything before, duing and after the book!

Dedication:

To Godwin and Chitra Nugawela, my

parents, for showing me the way; Even though

I may not have followed the path-

To Lois and P.B. Wijekoon for believing

that we are each others’ responsibility.

Chapter 1

We must become the change we want to see in the world.

—Mahatma Gandhi

I think I have in ways attained my midlife crisis. Living away from the country I was born in, following a totally different path to which was planned for me, I am kind of at odds. I feel happy and calm within most of the time, but there are the bouts of loneliness, teething problems, settling into a totally alien culture and a way of life, I feel numb. In my adopted country, as I try to assimilate the best I can, uncertain of the norms, there are times I am no longer sure who I should be and what I should do. It is during those moments that this book came to life. I hope my children will someday understand why I do what I do. That which comes naturally to them is a learning process for me. Hopefully, they will forgive me for the overprotective parent that I am perhaps stifling their growth out of fear and uncertainty than through reason, as I compare my childhood to theirs without necessarily realizing I am comparing apples to oranges, squares to circles, for it is a different time and a very different place.

Against this ever-evolving lifestyle, I wanted to leave my story behind for my children and their children too to see where we came from, who we were, and where our roots spread and what we thought and why we thought the way we did, before everything will be melted in time in the melting pot of the new world. For I don’t know where, or on which continent on this planet my children’s lives will unfold. But at least, let there be a point of reference. Afterall, everyone on this planet has a story to tell; this is mine. This is my story.

So on an autumn day thirty-something years ago, I was born in the City of Kandy, in a little island off the Indian Ocean called Sri Lanka. I came to this world kicking and screaming. Amma told me that the doctors and nurses said they had never heard a baby wail so much at birth. Apparently, it was almost as if I was expressing my objection to being born into this world.

Although my parents have never categorically stated it, I am deeply convinced that I was an unplanned arrival. Amma was nearly forty-three years old when I was born, and Appachchi was already half a century. Akka was already fourteen years old. This is when I happened. Given my parents’ peace-loving, quiet life, it is very unlikely that at that age, they were eager for me to arrive! In my mind, I am undoubtedly an accident of nature.

Besides, after the trauma of the death of Sanjaya—my brother whom I never got to see—a few days after his birth some ten years before I arrived, I am sure my parents were not eagerly looking forward to any more childbirth episodes. It was as if he had come to this world, took a quick look, and decided this is not where he wanted to be. There were no photos of him, but Amma and Appachchi had him deeply embedded in their memory. The pain of him leaving them was evident, and every year near the anniversary of his death, they both went very quiet. The best possible charitable events were held in memory of the fragile life that could not survive. Although he lived only for a few hours, it is this brief time that had the most impact on all our lives as a family. It was this that perhaps molded my parents to be what they were.

My parents taught us, Akka and me, that all that is must cease to be, to make the most of what is, and to be prepared to let go any minute of everyone and everything. They embedded in us a feeling that we are essentially alone, no matter how many family or friends or things we own or how much money we have—at the end of the day, none of it mattered. These tangible assets could assist us through life, but we had to have something more than that, a set of values, a sense of accountability, respect for people, and so on and so forth, to make our lives worthwhile. Also, I was told that although these qualities were essentials, no one could gift these to you but that we ourselves must cultivate these within us. We were told that we had to have a good thought process. According to Amma, the most important possession we had was primarily our mind; we had to build and nurture this treasure inside of us, unseen and sometimes unknown to the rest, and guard it from wrongful influences—our mind after all is the core of our being and, as such, had to be treated carefully.

Having told us to reform our thoughts and ourselves, Amma was not happy letting it be. I was often told in no uncertain terms, I am not going to let society teach you what is right and wrong, it is my job as a parent. This became a pet peeve of hers and mine in years to come, as I had my own view of what was right and wrong, and oftentimes, it differed drastically from Amma’s.

Anyway, for Amma, her pregnancy with me had been a long and an arduous one, with many sleepless nights and many days of discomfort. Appachchi happened to work outstation those days, and as a safety precaution, he had admitted my mother to the nursing home a month and a half ahead of the scheduled date of my arrival. Getting to hospitals was not easy then; a twenty-minute drive in the west would be at least an hour’s drive back then in Sri Lanka. They did not want a repetition of the events that followed my brother’s birth. Eventually, when the date arrived, I had not arrived! So a cesarean section operation was performed.

As is the norm in Sri Lanka, the future life path of the newborn is predicted and letters for names identified by an astrologer based on the time of birth of the baby. An uncle lived close to an astrologer, and my parents asked him to collect the horoscope and the auspicious letters for my name. Uncle came and said that Vaishya, or a name beginning with the letter V was recommended. The name apparently had its roots in Pali or Sanskrit and was supposed to mean something akin to universal knowledge. Amma and Appachchi liked the sound of the name, and so I became Vaishya.

Some months later, the high priest of the village Buddhist temple was visiting us. He was versed in ancient Indian languages as well as astrology, and upon hearing that my name was Vaishya, he intervened. My parents were asked to come to the temple. The priest asked for the time of my birth and confirmed that my name should begin with V, but the chosen name, Vaishya, meant sensuous—to put it mildly. Actually, it meant prostitute! In our culture, most names have meanings, and this astounded my parents for obvious reasons! Amma was Ramani, meaning beauty, Appachchi was Maithree, meaning loving kindness, Akka was Piyum, meaning flower, and I was Vaishya, meaning prostitute!

My parents hurriedly decided to change the name. Coming from an extremely conservative background, this was the last thing they needed. Amma and Appachchi were done with V by this stage, so they moved on to P, another recommended letter, and I was renamed Parami. So at the age of six months, I became Parami which was much more acceptable to my parents as it means in search of the true meaning of life.

Later, my parents found out the initial astrologer had suggested that I be named Vishwa, meaning the universe, the learned, and the knowledgeable. My uncle was educated in a missionary school run by the British. When he went to school, speaking the native language was a punishable deed. This was before Sri Lanka became an independent country, and as a result, his native language skills left much to be desired. My parents were better in their language skills, but the meanings of hard-core Pali and Sanskrit words eluded them too, and they were unable to distinguish the subtle difference between Vaishya and Vishwa which uncle had gotten mixed up!

Adding to the complications I brought along, I did not walk until I was almost two and half years old, which caused more anxiety to my parents. They were wondering if this was all due to my being a late arrival. Nor did I display any signs of talking at the correct age. Eventually, when around three years I began to speak, I did so with a monumental stutter.

I recall the numerous religious and other ceremonies held at home to chase away evil spirits and all the offerings they made to deities to make me lose my stutter. I remember one old man who came to our house and stayed the night chanting, and he chanted so noisily that Appachchi nicknamed him Noisy. He stayed for three days, and everyday around 10:00 p.m., he would start the chanting. There was a room allocated to him, and I had to stay awake well past midnight for this ritual. He shut his eyes and shook his head in a circular motion for what seemed like eons. The electric light was switched off, and he glowed in the light of the many lamps lit with coconut oil. There was an aura of suspense all round as I sat on a rush mat in front of him while he chanted mantras. Amma and Appachchi were close by, and the domestic helps watched from a distance. Between this man and me, there was a mat covered with fruits: bananas, mangoes, watermelons, papaya, guava, mangosteens, rambutan, jambu, passion fruits, wood apple, and avocadoes. These were all offerings to the deities and definitely not for human consumption. After hours of chanting, he would cut limes and would hold them over my head, shoulders, stomach, knees, and feet and chant more, now shaking more vigorously in the dark. These were acts of sheer desperation by my parents.

Another time, my parents took me to a woman who also did a lot of shaking after going into a trance and gave me some king coconut water to drink. I started giggling halfway through, as I thought her vigorous movements were funny. Others were scared that laughing would offend the deities, so Amma squeezed my ear in annoyance. Speech therapy was not common in our secluded world in the village. All were surprised but happy when I finally started to lose my stutter at just about nine years of age.

When my sister was a baby, Granny was there to keep an eye on her as well as the nannies. No such luck for me. When it came to me, my maternal Granny had passed away a couple of years before I was born, and my parents had to rely on domestic help. In an attempt to salvage the situation, they thought the best option would be to have a professional nurse. They advertised in the newspaper and hired an English-speaking retired nurse to look after me. However, I also started to cause my parents many sleepless nights by simply refusing to sleep. Both parents were working, and they took turns to keep me company in the wee hours of the morning. I started to howl at night, and in desperation, my parents brought me to many doctors in Kandy and the mystery was eventually solved. Apparently, my parents realized that this nurse had been giving me a sedative during the day so that she wouldn’t be troubled by me. Also, I had by this time developed a peculiar rash on my bottom. It was discovered that nanny had not been washing my nappies either. The ones I urinated on had just been sun dried and put back on me again. Disposable diapers were not in use in my part of the world then obviously. Nanny was sent home.

My parents belonged to the Kandyan landed gentry. But my parents taught my sister and me to be hardworking individuals. The importance of being able to stand on our own feet and be capable of earning our own living was drilled into us. They constantly reminded us that the world did not owe us anything! Being two girls, we were encouraged to study, and no inheritance was ever promised. Just as well, considering the situations that evolved later, most of it was lost anyway!

Besides, the so-called landed gentry had most of their land confiscated by the British for tea plantations, by the land reform commission, some lost theirs in family land disputes mainly owing to co-ownership of land. So the landed gentry by this time and era were not all that landed after all! It was the beginning of the end of the landed gentry, and families like mine were struggling to come to terms with the changes this brought. Landlord and tenant laws, which unfairly favored the tenant, made property a hindrance. Many of my relatives had tenants who would not vacate nor pay rent. Some tenants were well-to-do families who overstayed their leases and didn’t pay any money for years. We knew they could afford the rent—these were professionals just opting to play the system and take undue advantage. Some people I knew fought court cases for years to oust tenants who refused to pay a mere $1.50 a month for a four-bedroom house in the heart of the city. The legal fees were exorbitant. The length it took for courts to hear cases, which seemed to be eternally getting postponed due to numerous reasons, ate into the finances of the landed gentry. A few of the landed gentry who were business savvy rode the tide, the majority was washed away.

As a family, we were proud of our name and our family history, but my parents made sure that we enjoyed a middle-class lifestyle. Follow the middle path in everything was my parents’ motto. While we associated with our wealthier relatives, we were never encouraged to imitate anyone. If I wanted an expensive dress after seeing someone else in one, Amma simply said, We cannot afford it. Learn to live within your means, never be in debt. There’s enough for you not to have to beg, but not enough to waste and be extravagant. Always learn to cut your coat according to your cloth. If you don’t have, do without unless you absolutely need it for your survival. There is enough for your needs but not enough for your greed. This was her mantra!

My birth was probably a disappointment to my parents, as there was a legacy to be inherited and a name to be taken down the generations albeit sans the land and the pomp and the glory of a bygone era. To fulfill all these requirements or expectations, I was the wrong gender. My parents never discriminated against me on grounds of gender, but I recall visitors, seeing the tomboy I was, often muse, If only she were a boy. I recollect my parents, probably fearing that I might get upset, saying, It really doesn’t matter as long as she turns out to be a decent human being.

The house in which we lived was the ancestral home of Amma. It was given to my maternal grandmother by her parents when she married. My grandfather was thirty years of age while my grandmother had been only fifteen when they married. The house was built in the early 1900s and had not seen many alterations in its lifetime, apart from the facilities being upgraded to fit the modern lifestyle. My mother’s brother, Uncle Kalu Banda, who inherited the house from my grandparents let us live there, as he and his wife, aunty Louise, lived in Colombo. Besides, being the last to marry, it was more or less Amma’s duty to live with Granny and take care of her without moving out and leaving her alone in her old age.

The house faced the main road, and the garden was filled with fruit trees of many kinds. I still recall watching the parrots that used to come and perch on our rambutan tree. We used to hang wind chimes on the tree to stop these birds attacking all the fruits. Then whenever the elephants that were pets of families we knew or of the village Buddhist temple went to their bath past our house, the caretakers of the elephants plucked the fruit while sitting on the back of the elephant! Frequently, during the rambutan season, we had to be on the vigil, as schoolboys walking home from school would also pelt stones at the tree to get at the fruits. Invariably, these stones would land on our roof, damaging the terra cotta tiles or the glass of the windows that lined the front verandah. Amma told me that it was an open verandah when she was a kid, but later as the village began to grow with newcomers, for security, the verandah became an enclosed space with a long line of windows running all around it to let in the sunlight. The roof was very high with a wood-paneled ceiling that was added later. The rest of the house had asbestos ceilings. These were the days when asbestos was yet to be considered hazardous. All the doors of the rooms opened into the sitting area, and there was always a lovely breeze that blew through the house. A flowering hedge of hibiscus flowers interrupted with Frangipani trees of varying shades, white, yellow, pink, magenta, and red, ran around the compound; and an imposing nine-foot-high wrought iron gate marked the boundary.

My room, which I shared with Akka (or perhaps it was Akka’s room which she shared with me), overlooked a rubber tree and in the background was a hill covered with tropical trees which included a coconut plantation which was my uncle’s. I have never been there, but every few months, coconuts for consumption were brought from there and the excess sold. We cooked most of our curries in coconut milk. I remember the old couple that looked after it. They were eternally squabbling, and the wife would come running to our house every so often battered and bruised by her drunken spouse and seek refuge. She would stay a couple of days, then the husband would come to get her. He would be given a talking to by my parents for ill-treating the wife. This intermittent marriage had lasted thirty-one years by then. Three months or so later, she would be back, and the whole saga would repeat itself. But the wife would never agree to go to the police station. She somehow seemed to think that this was her moral obligation to stick with this drunken man and get beaten up occasionally. This then was my very first indirect exposure to domestic violence. My mother told us, The day you get married and leave this house, if your husband ever lays a hand on you violently, you pack your bags and come home. As a young kid, I really did not understand what Amma meant.

Our house stood on a slope, and the kitchen and the domestic helps’ quarters were fifteen stairs below. Amma, in her childhood, apparently had rolled down this stairway quite a few times. As a result, the stairs had been demolished and rebuilt with a landing in the middle to contain her! Akka was known to roll plates down the stairs and watch them break. Many other kids have played many games on these stairs. At the far end of our backyard were green paddy fields. As I write this, the songs lonely farmers sang while keeping vigil over their fields at night still ring in my ears. At home, we ate homegrown rice. We grew it in our rice fields and kept what was sufficient for our consumption for the year and sold the rest. Nearer the New Year season, I recollect Amma distributed a bag full of rice each to the neighbors and the domestic helps. There was also a stream that ran through our back garden, separating it from the paddy fields, and a water well that was open to the public.

My letter-reading ceremony was held when I turned three. Like most other things, this too was done at an auspicious time after consulting the horoscope. For me, there was a Saraswathy yoga. Goddess Saraswathy, in the Hindu tradition, is the God of learning; and Amma said that people who learn their first letters at this time will go far in their studies. Although we were Buddhists, Hindu traditions, over the years, had crept in to our lives. On a rush mat, there were a few gold coins, food in the form of dry rations, and books. After I was taught to read a few letters, I was asked to choose from what was on the mat. Depending on what you chose, it would determine whether you have wealth—if you chose gold, knowledge and education if you chose books, etc.

In the afternoons, everyone would have a siesta. I would quietly escape from the room but would be caught by a domestic help and returned to my room. When my parents slept longer than usual, I would get very scared that they may have breathed their last. So I would hold a finger to their nostrils to feel their breath. Sometimes they knew I was doing this and would hold their breadth and make me panic. I guess what prompted this was my mother reminding us that we all die someday—that we are here for a limited period of time and urging us to live an honest, decent life.

Most of my childhood was spent with domestics and hired help because there were so many of them. Some stayed, some came for half a day to boil rice paddies, some came to weave mats, some came to make hair extensions for the older family members who tied their hair in a bun and didn’t have enough hair to have a proper-sized bun, some came to weave rattan chairs, some to polish the furniture, some to do the garden, some to polish the brass and the silver, some appeared at meal times just to have a free meal, and my parents were most of the time involved in sorting out some aspects of their lives, their property problems, matrimonial problems, or financial problems. When the family got together, the main topic of conversation was domestic help issues each one had. It was a bit like the British talking of their weather everywhere and anywhere.

Then there were two women, Palingu and Soma, who would have been at least eighty years, if not more, who used to come for lunch on all weekends and on most weekdays also. They had been my mother’s live-in Nanny cum domestic helps in years gone by. They had left our family to get married when Amma was a kid, and still they spent most of their time in our home, as their husbands had passed away and their kids were grown up. Despite the free food that was given, they would also steal. Amma would give them rations on a weekly basis, but if you were to peep into their bags, in addition to what was given, you would find garlic, onion, lime, etc., stolen! This upset me no end. Amma kept quiet, as they had served us once upon a time. I remember once when Palingu raised her hand to reach for something, a few limes she had been hiding in her bodice fell out! Amma pretended not to see. I asked, Where did the limes come from? There was no answer. Amma asked me to go and read a book! Another time, after Palingu left, I discovered that my teapot from my play tea set was missing. Thereafter, every time I saw her, I asked for my teapot. She had obviously stolen it for her granddaughter. Looking back, I feel bad. Although the concept of stealing is bad, she did so to provide her granddaughter a toy. If only she had asked, Amma would have surely done something about it. After all, periodically my toys—and I did not have much to begin with—were given away to children less fortunate than me. In my entire life, I was allowed to keep only three dolls. This is why toy rooms for kids these days make me ache. Because I had so few toys, I loved them dearly. I remember them fondly and treasured them fully. If something broke, we fixed it. We did not throw away. This is why the abundance of the toys kids have these days scare me, for they do not treasure it the way I did; they do not remember their old toys as they had too many. And this disposable attitude that this abundance of plastic creates I fear will permeate their adult lives and relationships. But still, a picture of the granddaughter of that woman, running around with a coconut shell as a toy, no proper clothes but just underwear, is still visible in my mind. I still feel guilt. Then there were the likes of Piyadasa, another handy man, honest to the core, deeply respected by us all and we felt indebted for his loyalty. He took care of us as if we were his own family and guarded our property as if it were his own.

I admit I was a difficult child to look after, but the child minders and domestic helps I got landed with weren’t easy to tolerate either. There was a woman called Magilin who came to look after me. She was divorced with one child whom she left with her mother when she came to live with us. Magilin was a virago of the first order and was prone to moods and would use the foulest of language when not in the vicinity of my parents. Other domestics resented her mere presence.

Pinto was a man who also lived in our house. He was somewhat mentally handicapped. He wasn’t family, but he wasn’t a domestic help either; he kind of just fitted in as one of the family. He was almost always at the receiving end of Magilin’s wrath. This intensified whenever my parents were away. There was a man who came to sell firewood for the boiling of paddy rice which we grew on our paddy lands, and the preparation of paddy into edible form of rice grain took place at home. First, the paddy was boiled in huge copper cauldrons and then was sun dried on rush mats. The firewood for this was bought in bulk, and this particular man was the one who sold it to us. He was in his early sixties, a tall, well-built man, his torso bare, clad in a cotton sarong, and would come in his bullock cart loaded with firewood. A couple of months after Magilin had joined us, she managed to catch the eye of this firewood vendor. He started visiting our house on most days when my parents were at work. Pinto and I were the only other people in the house in the mornings. The other domestics were occupied in the fields, and I was usually locked in a room with some paper and crayons. Pinto was ordered out of the house with some garden chore. There were squeals that came from the room next to mine where, undoubtedly, Magilin and the firewood vendor were engaging in some amorous activity, I now realize.

Food, which Amma had specifically asked to be given to me at meal times, were given to Magilin’s paramour. I was fed but not as Amma intended. Most days, he would come around 10:30 a.m. and leave in about an hour, thus avoiding Amma who taught at a school close by and all the others who came to have lunch. Magilin would show me a huge thick metal chain we had in the house and warn me that should I open my mouth and let her secret out, she would tie me with it to the jak tree and beat me till I was dead. It was a very thick chain that had been used to tie the elephant my mother had as a pet when she and her sibling were kids. I suppose Pinto too would have been given a similar warning that he never opened his mouth either.

Then one day, the whole story came out. By this time, I was attending a Montessori school. The driver brought me home, and we found Magilin crying. He also had a soft spot for Magilin. When we inquired further, we found that Pinto, of all souls, had hit her with the biggest pan in the kitchen. He had hit her so hard that the opposite ends of this pan now met in the center. He had taken a piece of metal and sat there crying in the backyard, the pan in one hand and the piece of metal in the other, trying to straighten out the saucepan. When Amma came home, it was revealed that Magilin had, as usual, given Pinto a verbal tirade. Magilin had told Pinto that she would make a soup out of him if he did not do her bidding! He had got annoyed and hit her. Furthermore, Pinto also came out with the story of Magilin’s lover and how he never got any meat or eggs at all, as these were fed to the firewood vendor. I was questioned by my parents, but as I was petrified of Magilin and her iron chain, I only divulged the bare minimum. She was sent home the next day despite her protests.

Pinto’s mother had died while giving birth to him, and his father remarried years later, rather late in his life, and had other children. Pinto was now a drain on the new family. Pinto’s father came and asked Appachchi to find a home for Pinto, and my father agreed that he could stay with us. He was about twenty-five years of age when he came, but he insisted that he was three-years-old and no more. For months, Amma used to send Pinto regularly to the clinic, hoping that there might be some medication that could perhaps help him develop some mental faculties and also remedy his constant indigestion problems. But this was all to no avail.

Pinto’s living quarters were at the bottom of the staircase. However, often in the middle of the night, we would hear Pinto knocking on the door at the top of the stairs when he had a bad dream and he was too scared to sleep in his room. At these times, he would put a rush mat near the bedroom of my parents and sleep there. I did not like this as I was sharing a room with my sister, while Pinto was sleeping almost in my parents’ bedroom.

When it was my seventh birthday, Amma baked a cake for me to take to my classmates. This particular cake was left on the dining table. When we came to the dining room later to get ready for dinner, we noticed that someone had eaten a huge hole right in the middle of my cake. Of course, Pinto was the culprit, we all knew it, but he denied being responsible. Mother baked another cake. Nobody asked Pinto any more questions. Somehow, I never forgave him for this. Looking back, I still remember having great bouts of insecurity, as I was convinced that my parents liked Pinto more than me, as every time I did wrong, I was pulled up, but Pinto never was. In my eyes, Pinto committed graver crimes than I ever did. Quietly, I resented him.

It was around this time that we got a telephone in our home, and it was fixed high on the wall so that I could not reach it. I was determined not to be left out from this novel experience, and every time the phone rang, I would push a chair, stand on it, grab the phone, and have a conversation with whoever was willing to talk to me before they spoke to my parents. After coming from school, I would call Appachchi at his office and ask him to buy me numerous kinds of stationery on his way home. These requests ranged from a single ruler to ruled books, fancy erasers, pens, pencils, and scrap paper. I had found an old letterhead in his drawer with his office phone number and his boss’s number, and if I could not reach him on his direct line, I would take the liberty of calling my father’s boss and telling him who I was. Then I would ask him to transfer the call to my dad or leave a message for him. Appachchi was very embarrassed and annoyed and would plead with me not to do this, but I could not resist.

Many years later, Pinto had a nervous breakdown, he had had a few before in his life too, we had been warned by his father. He kept trying to go for a walk, and to avoid him straying, we had to lock him up in a large room, until his father could come. His meals were taken to the room and someone always accompanied him to the toilet—if he was patient enough! Whenever he shouted saying that he needed to go to the toilet, one of us would run to find the gardener or the watcherman to accompany him. In the meantime, Pinto mastered the art of urinating on to the passage that led to the room he was in—through the keyhole. These were old wooden doors with huge key holes. Amma and another domestic spent hours cleaning this passage with detergent to quench the stench. Thank God for the cement floors! Pinto applied toothpaste all over his face, got into a blood red T-shirt, and wore a white overcoat belonging to my grand uncle who was a doctor. He also had collected some plastic bracelets I had thrown away and an old hand bag that once belonged to my mother. His original intention had been to save these for his stepsister, but in this moment of mad frenzy, he wore them all. I was too scared to look

Reviews for Eastern Waves, Western Shores

[nirmala2books · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An absorbing read that reveals the unique account of a young woman born and grew up in Sri Lanka in the country’s “Kandyan” and Buddhist background who finally ended up in the United States to make a home, bring up a family and live for the rest of her life. There can be thousands or millions of women whose stories began and developed in the East or in any other parts of the world and ended up traveling to the western shores to continue. What is unique to me about this story however, is that it lends an in depth feel to the particular Sri Lankan culture and traditions that influenced her life, that built and shaped the values and outlook on life within her that also- remarkably helped her to adjust to the West and what it offered to make the best of it. This story offers an opportunity for women who come from the same or similar cultures and traditions of the East and who adjusted to the West, to relate well to many instances of their own emotions and struggles.