by Anne L. Clark
Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont (USA)
temporarily on leave and living in Sri Lanka
The re-issuing of Chitra Fernando's Three Women, is a welcome event. The book is a collection of three short stories, each focused on the life of a different woman. In her elegant, understated prose, the author captures many subtle nuances of contemporary life, particularly the dynamics of women's role. The first story, "Missilin" creates a scenario in which a young village girl, diagnosed by the astrologer as entering a dangerous period, is sent by her mother to be a servant in a middle-class Colombo household. There is genuine pathos in this story, but not of a conventional sort in which rural innocence is corrupted by urban williness.

Rather, Missilin's seemingly callous, pragmatic views about the dangers of falling in love with men who exploit women, are countered by her devotion to her loyal cat and here eventual fantasy of romance with a chilli vendor. But both of these emotional attachments betray her with their transience, and the only bond she is left with is the self-serving protection of her employer as she faces her death.

The two different titles under which the second story has been published, "Action and Reaction," and "The Perfection of Giving," announce the author's mediation on fundamental aspects of Buddhist belief and practice.

"The karmic law is my constant guide," declares Loku Naenda, although what exactly this means to her nephew, the story's narrator, and to us the readers, only slowly emerges. Loku Naenda not only lives by karmic law, but strives to embody the perfection of giving, although this aspect of Buddhist piety is also subject to her own somewhat peculiar interpretation. Her most conspicuous act of generosity is the adoption of a little girl from an impoverished family, "not of course, as a daughter...

Loku Naenda had too much consideration, too much common sense for that. She was a very practical woman. Kusuma was to come to her house as a servant."

The story unfolds over the course of many years, in which young Kusuma is disciplined according to Loku Naenda's application of karmic law, and taught to value greatly the Buddhist practice of dana, giving or generosity. But the cosmic principle of karma works out an end to the story somewhat different than Loku Naenda's self-righteous application of it would have predicted.

As in "Missilin," where the author deftly sketches the superficialities of self-serving religious practices, here too she shows how profound religious insights and values are sometimes enacted to serve less than profound goals. But even so, Fernando is not without compassion for her less than wise characters, and Loku Naenda's story becomes itself a gentle tale of insight and sorrow.

The final story, "Of Bread and Power," takes a different turn as the protagonist Seela struggles between the traditional values of duty and obedience and a vision of herself that doesn't easily fit within her family's desires. Although this story ends with a young woman forging a path that is innovative and even threatening to her family, it is this story that offers the most positive portrayal of virtue and Buddhist piety. Seela rejects the roles her family tries to thrust upon her, but she nonetheless remains loyal and generous to them. And as she strikes out on a new course of life, it is her old grandmother, "a serene, self-contained woman," who stayed in her room, chanting suttas, extending loving kindness to all beings, that is her inspiration.

These three stories can be read and enjoyed separately, but together they form an integral whole, with themes introduced in one story elaborated in another. In her beautifully crafted stories, Chitra Fernando offers us the pleasure of good tales that move us with their depth of wisdom. But this wisdom avoids dogmatism and preachiness. Character is never sacrificed to message. Instead, the art of character development is the vehicle through which the message derives its power. Three Women is thereby an artistic as well as a philosophic achievement.