Romesh Gunesekera
Summary
Loss of ancestry is a very deep anxiety and misery for a human life. Donald’s life is filled in such themes. Donald was a short, dumpy man with too big coat of his father. He was not English, his parents had died in the early and he had left Luton and come to London with only his old clothes (c,d). He had no other family (a, b). He even could not find his uncle whom his father would talk before his death but was out of his contact. He recently started to love poetry, accompanied with Leonard Woolf, enjoyed Leonard’s novel; he met other poets like Tambimuttu, the poet writing poems in English. He and Donald were living in London and both had come there from other places(e). He found Eliot difficult but enjoyed the poems of his native Ceylonese; although he was not a poet, his seeked imagination in the tranquility. But he had very bad experience in the first job in the ministry of welfare organisation, (g) where he was not promoted for ten years for not protecting the paper files (h). Then he determined to preserve his personal heritage, his tiny flat became like a museum.
One Sunday morning, he was walking protecting his cap from the wind. The cap was his heritage from the childhood and he wanted to protect it (i) and he started his journey to the main library, which was in the hill. On the way, he encountered a Janice Conaway in the hurricane who offered him the lift on his car; where his family members were enjoying, crying. He had family, car, pleasure but Donald had nothing (j).
Donald once had thought of bringing up a family and had liked a receptionist Sharon, but she immigrated to New Zealand and he was upset. As he was thinking about Sharon, he saw woodpecker flying, pigeon crashing in the trees. He walked to the woods, remembered the people he met in town but it could not compensate his past family in Luton. He had to get continue in Janice’s car and go ahead, where he saw Janice’s kids were delighting. He said that he was looking for a poem and going to library. Janice also said that his (Donald’s) grandfather G.F Parker was also a poet dedicating hundreds of poems to the poets, and people would come to his house. Rohan Amaratunga was Janice’s grandfather’s friend, who had written many poems, married Gertie. Donald waited to get the poems and further information. He had much interest to find his ancestry for avoiding frustration, anxiety and alienation.
