Anil's Ghost

The uncanny nature of the past, returning repeatedly, both familiar and strange, permeates the narrative present. Anil obsessively revisits her past, in the form of childhood memories and recent encounters with lovers and friends. Sarath, Gamini, and Ananda are all, in similar ways, trapped by past events, the death of loved ones and the never-ending atrocities of war. Even the central business of the novel, the mystery of Sailor’s bones, is steeped in the murky waters of the past, and Sarath’s profession as an archeologist directly concerns itself with such mysteries and discoveries. Further, the specters of colonialism and nationalism, two sides of a single coin, hover over everything.

Throughout the novel, as the characters get to know and understand one another, they reminisce about past events and share personal memories. These reminiscences illustrate the similar ways in which each of the characters is haunted by their own unresolved pasts. Sarath and Gamini, for example, are both haunted by the death of Sarath’s wife, Ravina, choosing to pour their emotional efforts into their work instead. Anil, similarly unmoored by her separation from her birthplace, also derives great meaning and purpose from her work. Her relationship with Cullis Wright, a married photojournalist, represents her inability to commit and her tendency to alienate herself from others. This suggests that divesting from her homeland resulted in other types of emotional alienation. Once she starts working on Sailor’s case, however, she begins to reconnect with all that she thought she left behind in Sri Lanka.

The caves in which Anil and Sarath find Sailor serve as an important symbol of the past’s influence on the present. Most of the remains there are quite old, as the caves functioned as sacred burial grounds for religious orders, and its oldness gives it a feeling of timelessness. That sense of timelessness suggests that their discovery of Sailor’s body mixed in with the older corpses is just another discovery in a long line of killings. The recently murdered body, which they call Sailor, was burned and moved to this site, to which only high-ranking government officials have access. In this way, the past becomes a cover for present atrocities. Both Anil and Sarath deal with dead bodies, bringing the past into their present on a regular basis. As a forensic pathologist, Anil determines how past events have impacted the human bodies she investigates, while archeologist Sarath discovers the remains of civilizations and interprets these for present audiences. Sarath’s mind, like that of his mentor, Palipana, always keeps watch on the past—and how it translates to the present. For Sarath, as for Palipana, “History [is] ever-present” (80). When Sarath and Anil walk along the pathways near Palipana’s forest monastery, the ruins of past civilizations peek through the foliage. The forest provides temporary sanctuary—the war is audible in the distance—but these present events are not comprehensible without evidence from the past. For instance, the civil war in the narrative present is the result not only of recent events, such as government oppression of minority groups, but also of historical circumstances, including the colonial intrusions that pitted Indigenous Sri Lankans against one another. Further, the ruins in the forest imply that earlier wars and conflicts preceded this one, suggesting that war is timeless.

The past functions to preserve heritage and identity, as well, connecting it to the theme of Rootlessness and Return. For example, when specific medications are in short supply, Gamini uses traditional remedies to combat illnesses and injuries. Memory also serves as an anchor, a way in which to retain the self. Anil’s friend Leaf, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, for example, “was starting to lose her memory, fighting for her life” (256). Without memories of the past, the opportunities for the present are limited. This is, ultimately, what reconnects Anil to her work and her birthplace. She stops trying “to escape the past” (265) and instead meets it, in the form of her desire to identify Sailor, to set right what war made wrong. This reconnection is also a kind of salvation, as implied by Ondaatje’s structure. Early sections depicting past events in the novel appear isolated from the main narrative, demarcated by italics. As the novel develops, however, the past intrudes more heavily on the present, interspersing memories in the main narrative. The fact that the novel ends on Ananda’s work with the Buddha statue reinforces this point: The past becomes sacred again. Anil and Ananda both work to reconstruct, restore, and respect the past work, and this work saves them.