Manuka Wijesinghe’s ‘Like Moths to a Flame’ debuts at Vijitha Yapa Bookshop

Saturday, 12 March 2022 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Author Manuka Wijesinghe launched her new book ‘Like Moths to a Flame’, at the Flower Road outlet of Vijitha Yapa Bookshop recently.

The evening started with the author and a group of theatre actors, including the renowned dramatist Indu Dharmasena, Sanvada Dharmasena and Shanil Wijesinghe performing a dramatised reading of the book.

The four actors performed the roles of the diverse characters in the novel. The various parts of the book were bridged by music and sounds, invoking the terrains and the gods inhabiting the vast tapestry of ‘Like Moths to a flame.’ The evening, in the beautifully artistic Vijitha Yapa Bookshop with its artwork, exposed brick walls and golden lanterns was filled with the sounds of Islamic, Sufi, Hindu, Tamil, Gospel and Irish music and one of the event’s highlights was a song written and sung by Thilan, Manuka’s brother, evoking memories of Ceylon’s East, which was made barren and laid waste by conflict.

To end the evening was another surprise, a performance by professional storyteller Radhieka Al Hakawati. She wove a folk tale with a personal narrative on the lines of the theme of the evening – a tradition known amongst storytellers as interwoven tales.

Like Moths to a Flame is the result of several years of walking in war weary terrains understanding the nature of man, his faith, his speech, his desire, his diversity and his cultural priorities. It is the story of men and women who have been slighted, insulted, disregarded and cornered into a dead-end street with no exit. They were forced to find the means of escape. Terrorism was one such means.

The book tells the story of one family. Of a diligent father, a beautiful mother, a mystic grandfather and an angered grandmother. Where did they come from? Why did they bond? How did they live in the present, bound to prisons of past experience? In Like Moths to a Flame, one sees how a seemingly normal compound unit; a family, gives birth to a child who is their antithesis. One touches the seeds of Lanka’s tragic history. It need not have been sewn, but it was. And, as the novel’s only voice of reason says, ‘Life is a journey to the grave, not a journey into a Homeland.’

Manuka Wijesinghe is the author of the Lankan trilogy, Monsoons and Potholes, Theravada Man and Sinhala only. Having completed the last book in her trilogy she solemnly swore to leave the long journeys of mind and begin her journey of life. But the will to understand overpowered her. She needed to understand how the world’s only country which claimed to have inherited the Buddha’s dharma of compassion produced generations of violent children, boys and girls who would kill and be killed, unafraid of the consequences of traditional faith.

Pix by Kushan Pathiraja