School on The Hill is a story book of interesting anecdotes of a prize-winning writer, Vihanga Perera, of his reminiscences as a teenage student in a school in Mahanuwara, the hill capital of the Central Province.
As one of the Gratiaen Literary Award winners in the country, the citation given in the blurb shows what the book is about:
“A selection of imprints on life in the School on the Hill, drawn from diverse situations, moments, complexities and anxieties faced by individuals and collectives of a high school, set in picturesque Kandy, a school bearing the colours of maroon and blue.”
Lecturer in English, Vihanga Perera, is a master of creative use of language. I have been an admirer of his writing, both poetry and prose for some time.
Look at this passage of focusing on one single aspect with only a few sentences and long winded complexity in between, which also points to his creative use of description which is novel in a way. On page 30, in the second paragraph of the story “Strawberry Pink”, it is described as follows:
“Ms. Jayawardena was a sensation in her own way. It takes very little of above-average femininity to reveal oneself as an enigma in an all boys’ school, but she was a little bit more than what her outward looks indicated. Fair and radiant, her varied, rich collection of classic colours added to the aesthetics of her personality that entered the school at seven every morning, and there lingered till half past two, feeding and breathing fire into an array of fantasies and titillations, the collective adult and young adult community of a single school, could hold.
She was at once a wonder, a rainbow, a saint and a whore.
She carried a magical aura about her, and an effervescent lull of jasmine that accompanied her, and though Punky would speak high and mighty of screens among his classmates, he would sometimes find his throat go stiff and his abdomen smart, as she would smile and pass him by at the common door.” Another calf-love romance I enjoyed was the story titled ‘The Gian’s Daughter”. Beautiful expression of a teenager having a crush with his tuition class girl friend. In some lines you would enjoy the thrill of a first romance.
“I was eighteen, and irrespective of whether it was day or night, with Kanishkaa Kattudeniya, I was obsessed to death. Things began initially as a harmless crush, sometime during that October, in the second half of my first year in the Advanced Level; and with several casual meetings at tuition classes, with the kind of self-conscious exchanges that late teens who meet in like manner used to have back then, with inappropriate egging, insinuation and stale jokes by classmates who are otherwise indifferent to your fate. By the First Term of my exam year, my feelings for Kanishkaa had become violent and quite red…Kanishkaa came to class in a delicate affair of royal blue and immaculate white, that my throat stiffened in a sudden realization that there would be no future for me without her in my life.
Apart from these two stories, there is innate humour that he generates to the amusement of his readers on a variety of school events and experiences, that stand as a record of the past as seen by an intelligent schoolboy well versed in the classics and finer literary embellishments.
Please read the book and enjoy.