Nostalgia and Rootlessness with Bringing Tony Home

 
While walking along the road driven to the main city alone, I suddenly felt a strange vague feeling of lost, although the road is quite familiar, this was the first time I opted to use foot to walk though this way. I wondered about the fact that whether I really belong to this place? Although it had been years since I had shifted my living to this urbanized town, I never felt the new place as mine. However-howmuch I longed to leave the place I have born, the nostalgic and romantic memories of my childhood kept on haunting me. Though the plant uprooted, only the main root came to the new pot, the hairline branches of roots must have been left where they were; new soil does not allow the new tiny roots to grow. Believe me or not, it is very hard to fit into the new pot. The sad reality says that you cannot go back! the hard reality of life keeps taunting you; like a wine circled and circled round the body of the tree, strangling and holding you to the new ground.

If you are a rootless person, you should feel for the pure loss and nostalgia of Tissa in the novella Bringing Tony Home by Tissa Abeysekara. He not only had to be uprooted at the age of a sapling but also had constantly moved into new living places like a gypsy. Once one loses his roots, it is natural to feel hard to be adapted to a new place; under that light, think of the situation of Tissa who had to move from house to a house several times! It must have been really hard for him to deal with that as a young child growing into an adolescent.

Throughout the three phases of his novella, we can clearly see his constant hunt for his identity and lost roots. As a child, at first, he struggles to fit into new places as he cannot fight against the wind of life as he had been still a child. Once he grew up as an adult too, he might have been busy with his responsibilities, his career development which resisted him going in search of roots. It is at the twilight age of his life he is able to break free and go to find his roots. Alas! Time only flows forward not backward! Time changes the landscapes and though you hunt down the lost roots, you will never find the picture engraved in your mind! This will only rub salt against your wound. As Tissa goes back to his village Depanama, he finds that the whole landscape has been transformed into a concrete jungle. His childhood landmarks have been erased like a photograph which has been faded erasing its original picture, blurred. The few people he once knew, cannot identify him anymore! Not a surprise, the time not only changes the landscapes but the person too! You grow older that means it is very hard to a person to identify a person who had left the village as a child. It is not just the people; the relationships and emotions never be the same. Once you leave, the strength of emotional bonds, relationships fade. Time erases you from memories. One day, nobody will know you unless you are a person who made an impact to the history. Read Ozymandias, you will feel this!

The feeling of nostalgia is a strange feeling which can pinch and throttle your heart once a while. When you realize the fact that you cannot go back to your past, and you cannot get what you have lost, gosh, that feeling hurts; it creates an emptiness in your life – a vague feeling – you lose a potion of your happy self forever. That space is forever filled with guilt, remorse and nostalgic feelings. Once you get isolated at a balcony on a rainy day with a cup of coffee or tea; the feeling would gush into your mind like a tidal wave.

Tissa must have felt the same when he was alone, his memories were triggered by the sound of the Little Train, the mist and the setting around him. Once he hears and experiences those, his haunting memories rush into his mind awaking his stream of consciousness. As a result of that he has been a more reserved person bent into his inside consciousness. Reader might feel sometimes that he loved that world of nostalgia where he can stay with his loving companion – Tony.

Tony, his only childhood companion has been the root cause of his life of nostalgia. When he lost his roots, along with that, he lost his only companion of his life. He bore the everlasting guilt ever since he had failed to protect his friend. He was like Casabianca, the boy who waited and roasted by the fire at the deck due to his inability to disobey! He knew that the abandonment would make Tony a street dog and might possibly be dead somewhere lonely without his master! That feeling hurts more than nostalgic memories – that is pure guilt and remorse; imagine Tissa had to endure that burden throughout his life!

At the beginning of the novella, The Twilight, we can see Tissa struggles to find his lost roots. His teledrama ‘Pitagamkarayo’ is the epitome of his effort. However, his ideas bent into his inward consciousness and his nostalgic feelings created who he is, a prominent figure of art and literature. The novella itself the saga of his life and the reflection of his nostalgia and lost roots.