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Samudra’s incident shows how sudden impulse can change people and how Damayantha’s sudden outburst with violence later cause him to get stuck in it. It all happens so quickly and he ends up as DJV activist in couple of days. Maybe this process can be generalized to understand how most of the youth joined that organization in those days. It does not happen after rigorous philosophical in-depth thinking about what’s right or wrong. But it was not a mere impulse which causes Damayantha to take this decision. Samudra’s plight motivated him to make the decision, change his ideology and undergo a transformation process. So it’s an impulse together with an experience associated with social injustice which caused people to take that step. The place where Damayantha talks with Rajiv and Nanditha shows his inner conflict and hidden guilt associated with Anoma’s letter. He recalls all things about that incident and unconsciously believes that things might have been completely different if he gave the letter to Nanda, which might be true. Whenever Rajiv reveals his stance and nanditha shows her disgust towards Nanda, Damayantha recalls phrases and sentences from old conversations associated with Anoma and Nanda. (pg278-280) This part of the book is very cleverly written and reveals Damayantha’s character. The dogmatic nature of most of the rural youth who joined DJV movement, how their naïve political ideology is constrained by slogans and limited exposure to various aspects of the society is also shown in this conversation.

But again the affectionate friendship of Ravi, Dilki and Anisha who visits Damayantha questions the raw simple class concept of DJV. Rajiv’s makes a sarcastic statement about being with Ravi and friends and skipping DJV meeting which reveals Rajiv’s hostility towards Ravi and friends. According to this classification, Engels also might have been branded as bourgeois and being ostracized if he lived there in srilanka in those days. We know how other leftist leaders were assassinated in those days in cold blood. As Amarasekara also has pointed out in his earlier work, inferiority complex is a main reason which motivates petite bourgeois youth to be militant. Damayantha also says to Ravi, “palayan ban yanna, eyala kawda api kawda? ” when Ravi mentions about Dilki (page289) Damayantha’s struggle with his Victorian ideals about sex which make sex mysterious thing, and natural desire to go to Dilki and his inner psyche is nicely shown in that night they spend in the village. Rajiv’s hostility towards Ravi and Dilki, and later surrendering to Army, Damayantha’s attitude about pol sunil and doubts about potential of pol sunil to be a good activist, all together reveals interesting aspects of the common mindset of people in that kind of village subculture. Because of being socially conditioned by the folk society and the above mentioned mindset, Damayantha believes that pol sunil cannot be good political activist. But at the same times empirical observations make him reconsider his opinion. This inner conflict is nicely presented when Damayantha goes to a meeting with pol sunil after Rajiv surrender to army.

Damayantha forgets the name ‘Gotabaya’ when he just escaped from the police jeep with the help of sunil. He calls him sunil aiya instead of gotabaya. This shows how emotions and feelings predominate over names imposed on them by the organization. We can see that DJV ideology has not integrated with the deepest roots of souls of rural youth and its artificial nature which has neglected the material reality of grassroots level. This dogmatic nature of the organization becomes apparent to the reader when they try to assassin the village midwife who is a radical individual, because of voting. Damayantha leaves back to Colombo and gets to know that his studentship has been cancelled because of getting involved the riot and sabotaging the examination. Nanda’s pragmatic attitude about this and how he tries to gain advantage of this in a selfish way is very interesting. Cambridge owner offers Damayantha to teach A/L which is very symbolic in the sense it symbolizes what can happen to an individual like damayantha in such scenario. Cambridge owner becomes a friend of Damayantha because Damayantha attacked a professor with whom he had disputes. Damayantha realizes that something is wrong in his politics when he sees that this kind of people also indirectly gains the advantage of things DJV does. Throughout the story, Prof. Ekanayake’s plays quite significant role which quite resembles characters we have met in books like “Mage naduwa iwarai” and “Aththa bindei paya burulen” and we can see what happens to him in last few pages of the book which again reminds us the impermanence and make us sympathize about his plight.

The last part of the book turnout to be very different and interesting story. Sometimes we feel that this is a product of a collective effort of Gunadasa amarasekara, John Grisham, Boris Pasternak, and G.B.Senanayake because of the style and the content of the book. It discusses the mentality of rural youth and its limitations, becomes an intriguing detective story (when Damayantha has been abducted) , Shows the inner conflict of characters and psychological aspects of characters, and also discusses the hardships individuals undergo when this kind of militant struggle is carried out.

The story of Dilki’s family which is presented next bears a resemblance to Indira’s ostalgic memories about her mom and childhood in “Premaye sathya kathawa” (by Amarasekara). As individual characters also, Indira and Dilki have many similarities. The story smoothly flows since then until Damayantha becomes Suneth and goes to Sarartha and talks to a girl called Randima confidently after going through a sophistication process using library and other resources there and then, the story is propelled towards a dramatic ending. This final part of the book shows how life experiences can groom a person to be a matured, worldly and complete person. Suneth is almost free from naïve immature reactionary Damayantha because of experiences he had and the productive time he spent in Sarartha. Nanda’s mental disorder also gets healed by being in his native village up to which roots of his illness, guilt and controversies extend. Dr Zoysa and Pradeep from Jaffna visits Nanda and they have very interesting discussion about the country as well as university education. Nanda with his wife and daughter finds the life and missing parts of it while being in the village once again. Retired from pursuit of false values which were presented to them by the capitalistic society, they start a new life. Nanda is going to resume his intellectual life which was paused when he started tuition and Nayani who was a conservative wife becomes a social activist who eventually becomes the leader of a movement which challenges the existing government. She is particularly motivated by the guilt of not answering to Damayantha’s call which again shows us how a particular incident or experience can affect one’s life and can result in a dramatic change.

The remaining part of the book sums up to a very good conclusion. The writer artistically points out the impermanence as a fundamental reality by showing the new era after the armed uprising of DJV and the oppression carried out by government in response. Ravi is emerged in his own work and Dilki too is busy and new Suneth realizes impermanence, emptiness and loneliness while being at Sarartha. Ravi is not single anymore, but a family and Suneth is experiencing a profound loneliness as if he lost his twin again. In these days, Suneth finds a book from Sarartha library which discuses this concept of twin or soul mate in a profound philosophical problem. But Anisha’s gets assassinated in cold blood by her ex boyfriend who was the police SI which again makes the whole outset topsy-turvy. This part of the book is simply awesome. Dilki falls in love with Ravi while they try to empathize with Ravi who is miserable after Anisha’s departure. In fact we can see that Dilki had vestiges of her feelings she had on the first day she met Ravi in conference hall (the day on which Ravi and Damayantha was arrested) and at the same time we cannot see any lapse of her love or whatever feelings she had towards Damayantha. The whole story therefore points out the intricate, profound, subtle, complicated nature of the phenomena called love. Love is indefinable for sure and is hard to distinguish with certainty by comparing the consistence with a certain predefined criteria. And the way it operates cannot be quantified and measured, cannot be theorized and is always mind boggling like quantum physics. Meanwhile the pursuits of charactors for better society also continue. Ravi reveals the astute plans minister had regarding the teledrama he acts which again reminds us that most of the things in this society which looks nice and awesome overtly, is not really independent from capital and horrendous plans and agendas of some invisible personals which make us recall the metaphor, Kafka’s world which is extensively used in this book. Meanwhile Nanda and Nayani together with Vajira reveal the rotten character of Prof. Ekanayake while taking part in many other social activities in a positive way.

As a whole the book is a very unique piece of work which cleverly discusses a variety of themes simultaneously and consistently which is quite similar to life itself. It make anybody who has a personal history, to go back to his nostalgic memories and recall about friends, soul mates, congenial companions, teachers and other people who are there in his/her life, and at its culmination, it makes the reader to perceive what life is, as a whole at once. This novel (especially the end) contains life, its profound philosophical depth as well as beauty and delight, which poets like Frost and Sekara saw.