wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

 

Sonali Deraniyagala:

Born in Colombo, studied economics at Cambridge University. She is one of the important faculty of the Department of economics at SOAS University of London. She lives in New York City and London.

She married economist Stephen Lissenburgh, while on vacation in December 2004. She lost her husband, two sons, parents, best friend and her best friend’s mother in the Indian Ocean Tsunami. It carried Sonali two miles inland, she was able to survive by clinging to a tree branch..

Her 2013memoir “Wave” relates her terrible experience in the Tsunami. It was shortlisted for 2013 National Book critics Circle Award and won PEN Ackerley prize 2013. She then married to the actress Fiona Shaw.

Summary

One morning Deraniyagala and her family were on a family holiday to Sri Lanka, at the Yala National park, on the South east coast of Sri Lanka. She saw the rising waves, she grabbed her children and ran with her husband behind the hotel and into a waiting jeep. But they were driving away when the wave hit and the Jeep turned over. All over, when Sonali regained her consciousness she was bleeding, covered with mud and with her mouth full of sand. She was alone. There was no sign of her family. She is the survivor of her entire family. She recalls her painful thoughts realizing that her world has come to an end. She is taken away to her Aunt’s house in Colombo. She determines to end her life with sleeping pills, stabbing herself with a butter knife, smashing her head on the sharp corner of the wooden headboard of the bed. She surfs the internet to find painless ways of killing herself.

For months, toys, children, ball, the sound of small running children brings back the horror and filled her with grief. She starts drinking vodka with anti-depressants. Slowly she regains her strength to move on. She visits and revisits the hotel where she was staying with her beautiful family when the wave stuck.

She comes back to London. Even then she could not live after finding her husband’s eyelash on a pillow remains of beef curry he had cooked. Seven years later, “their absence has expanded, everyone vanishing in an instant, my spinning out from that mud, what is this, some kind of myth?” the story ends with her tears.

 

Critical Analysis

This story is narrated from the view of the author Sonali Deraniyagala.  She is the person experienced such a painful disaster in her life due to the natural destruction.  There can no one to express such pain other than the person who gone through it.  The story is shared by the author as she looks back her painful experiences.  The narration shifts from the past to the present.  Her family is the past and her loneliness is the present and her tears are never ending.

Symbols and objects

The branch

 The author survived by holding onto the branch.   It is the symbol of life which gives hope even at the time of her great loss.  She holds the branch to save her life so as to see her family, she thinks her family needs her with that hope she looks forwards to see them.

 Malli’s birthmark

Sonali with the hope of seeing her sons and   in curiosity she asks the ambulance driver whether they have her sons inside the van.  But the birth mark says they are not her kids. It is such a painful moment.

Bruises

The bruises on her face says the disaster she faced.  The trauma cannot be forgotten.

Door mat

The back door mat symbolizes here darkness in her lonely life.

Wave

It is the best symbol which shattered here life.  The wave covered her happiness, family and the whole world becomes the darkest place for her.

Themes, Motifs

Grief

The grief of sonali has been seen and expressed in five stages.  Denying to trust the loss and belief in her faith to see the family.  Next bargaining to herself with various possibilities to think that this could not have happened.  Compromising to herself, tries to calm herself that she would see the family soon depression is not in her , but is covered and choked with depression, her pain could not be explained but Sonalai has done, which slowly pierce the readers and reaches the eyes to shed tears.  She lived with this pain for seven years. She could not come out of this pain.

 Setting

Yala national park

Yala is one of the famous national park where the author spends her vacation with the family at the time of Tsunami.  It is no more a peaceful pale to her.  It reminds a disaster.  The place too has been destroyed do to Tsunami.

Colombo

Birth place of the author.  She lived there with her parents and grew up in Colombo.  After Tsunami she lived there with her Aunt for some time to get over her pain.  She visited again and again the hotel where she spent her last happiest moments with her family.  But she could not forget for it was a deep wound which was killing her.

 After seven years she becomes used to the loss of her life. But her life is not full again. Her world is empty, the smiles, sounds of joy and happiness, she never get them.  “Seven years on, and their absence has expanded,” she writes in the book’s final pages.

It is not an easy effort to put her sorrows in words and share it with all.  Her mind is not after the reaction or the awards.  Her only intention is to give a try to get over her grief.

“Everyone vanishing in an instant, me spinning out from that mud, what is this, some kind of myth?” her survival gives her hope of seeing her family and friends. Her braveness to deliver her grief is beyond imagination. Her whole grief is flooded the readers.

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