“Generation Z, Same-Sex Intimacies, and the Hegemonic Constraints of Desire: Reading Athugala’s Makara Pendanaya”

 

Citations: Jinadasa, M. (2025). “Generation Z, Same-Sex Intimacies, and the Hegemonic Constraints of Desire: Reading Athugala’s Makara Pendanaya”. Manoj  Jinadasa Blog https://manojjinadasa.blogspot.com/2025/12/why-young-z-generation-men-are-more.html

 

Abstract

In his latest novel, Makara Pendanaya, Emeritus Professor Dr. Athugala explores why young men today increasingly gravitate toward same-sex intimacies, framing the phenomenon through a psychoanalytical lens. The narrative examines how economic pressures, cultural hegemony, and rigid heteronormative expectations shape Generation Z’s approach to relationships, intimacy, and desire. Through the experiences of Sahan and Li, Athugala reveals how young men negotiate personal identity and affection in a world where parental authority, societal norms, and inherited traditions often obstruct heterosexual expression. The novel portrays same-sex connections, homosocial bonds, and bromances not merely as emotional substitutes, but as adaptive responses to structural and cultural constraints—a nuanced reflection on desire, autonomy, and modern masculinity.

Keywords: masculinity, homosociality, Generation Z, heteronormativity, Sri Lankan fiction, Asian cultural studies

 

Introduction

In contemporary society, young men of Generation Z increasingly navigate intimacy through same-sex bonds—whether as homosocial friendships, bromances, or eroticized connections—finding them more emotionally secure and socially legible than traditional heterosexual relationships. This shift is not merely a matter of sexual preference but emerges from the profound pressures exerted by an unstable economic environment, rigid parental expectations, and entrenched cultural and hegemonic norms. In families where inherited values, social obligations, and economic ambitions dominate daily life, heterosexual desire is often constrained, moralized, or surveilled, leaving young men seeking connection, trust, and vulnerability elsewhere. Same-sex intimacy, by contrast, offers a relational space where emotional expression, loyalty, and desire can coexist with minimal judgment, creating a refuge from the suffocating demands of normative society.

Dr. Ariyarathna Athugala’s latest novel, Makara Pendanaya, provides a literary reflection of this generational phenomenon. Through the characters Sahan, a Sri Lankan youth, and Li, a Chinese peer, Athugala explores the pressures of cultural inheritance, parental expectation, and the complex negotiations of identity in a transnational Asian context (pp. 56–63). Sahan’s heteronormative desires are continually disrupted by societal and familial constraints, leaving him emotionally vulnerable and psychologically unsettled. In response, he develops deeper bonds with his male friend Gang, illustrating how homosocial and same-sex intimacy functions as both emotional support and a space for authentic self-expression (pp. 300–320). The novel reveals that such relationships are not mere deviations from heterosexuality but deliberate, culturally conditioned strategies for coping with hegemonic pressures, economic uncertainty, and the moral weight of inherited traditions. Athugala’s narrative captures the broader condition of Generation Z men: their yearning for connection and desire for intimacy, negotiated in parallel worlds of digital, social, and familial influence, where the traditional heterosexual ideal is often unattainable.

Through this lens, Makara Pendanaya becomes more than a story of romantic entanglement; it is a psycho-social and cultural investigation into why young men today increasingly find comfort, freedom, and emotional authenticity in same-sex bonds, exposing the tensions between inherited norms and lived desire, and offering a profound commentary on contemporary Asian youth navigating the pressures of modernity.

Emeritus Professor Dr. Ariyarathna Athugala has long stood as a transformative figure in Sri Lankan media and communication, challenging conventional frameworks of knowledge, culture, and representation. His fiction, pedagogy, and creative work blur the boundaries between literature, media, and cultural critique, inviting readers to confront the psychological, social, and ideological forces shaping contemporary life. Makara Pendanaya, his latest novel, continues this project, exploring the tensions between inherited cultural codes, modern youth desire, and cross-cultural encounters, particularly within the evolving Sri Lanka–China relationship. Through its symbolic narratives and intricate character dynamics, the novel becomes not just a story but a lens through which we can examine identity, intimacy, and the negotiation of desire under hegemonic societal pressures.

Context

සන්. in English Com. was the student magazine of the Department of Mass Communication at the time when Dr. Ariyarathna Athugala served as Head of the Department. During that period, the publication became the subject of critical debate, particularly when Professor Dala Bandara, then Professor of Sinhala at the University of Kelaniya, was invited to the department’s Sanjanani Radio. This took place when we were first-year Honours students in Mass Communication in 2001.

At that time, Athugala’s vision critically disrupted prevailing structural conditions and established notions of Mass Communication. His ideas metaphorically “blasted” the ears of the academy, challenging conventional assumptions about media, communication, and knowledge production. When we attended the first-year Honours lectures, Athugala directly confronted and unsettled the dominant identities and ideologies shaping society, culture, and representation.

Through this intellectual disruption, he offered us a sharp guide and a clear goal: to rethink how modern media and communication studies enable us to scrutinize reality in a smoother yet radically different way. He taught us that becoming a communicator or journalist is not merely about reproducing popular images or icons, but about interpreting them—rethinking their origins, meanings, and ideological functions. This, he suggested, is where the true origin of a communicator lies.

His teaching style was deeply compelling and intellectually addictive. Students who attended his lectures were visibly transformed—upended, unsettled, and reoriented. His words profoundly altered our thinking; our cognitive capacities were broadened and sharpened as a result. The impact of his lectures was not temporary but formative.

In this context, it becomes essential to understand Athugala’s fictional and creative contributions, irrespective of his personal, political, or private domains. Nevertheless, all these visible and hidden phases of his life and work are reflected in how we speak, think, and behave in our everyday lives, particularly within the creative communication enterprise. From today’s perspective, reading Athugala—his fiction, pedagogy, and total creative and academic contribution—becomes a modern psychoanalytical exercise.

The name “Athugala” resonates deeply with many of us—students, colleagues, and admirers. In Sinhala etymology, gala refers to a large rock or mountain, and Athugala also evokes the town of Kurunegala and the atmospheric identity of the Wayamba (North-Western) Province. He represents a figurative “rock” in the Department of Mass Communication, having made foundational theoretical, creative, political, and cultural contributions that shaped the academic and intellectual environment.

During my undergraduate days, I initially opposed some of his ideas in the classroom, and he encouraged this critical engagement, seemingly deriving satisfaction from debate. His teledrama Thunbiya, taught during his Creative Communication lectures at the University of Kelaniya, introduced us to modernized interpretations of myth, media, and the construction of images and icons. Later, in our final year, he directed the teleplay Samanala Kandawura.

Thunbiya can be critically interpreted as a teledrama foregrounding psychological pressure, scarcity, and containment as central metaphors of modern social life. The notion of thun biya (three fears / layered fear) functions not merely as a narrative device but as a symbolic structure through which individuals internalize authority, discipline, and social expectation. Athugala presents fear as something produced and circulated through institutions, language, and everyday interactions rather than as a purely personal emotion. The teledrama destabilizes moral binaries by showing how survival often demands silence, compliance, and self-fragmentation within hierarchies of family, class, and power. In this sense, Thunbiya aligns with Athugala’s critical media philosophy: it exposes how communication systems manufacture consent and anxiety, compelling viewers to recognize fear itself as a cultural and ideological construct embedded in Sri Lankan society.

Samanala Kandawura can be read as a symbolic teledrama that unsettles dominant social and cultural certainties through metaphor rather than narrative realism. The “butterfly camp” functions as a fragile, enclosed space where identities are suspended, observed, and disciplined, reflecting how society regulates desire, subjectivity, and difference under the guise of normalcy. Athugala resists moral closure and linear storytelling, instead exposing psychological tensions between freedom and control, visibility and silence. In doing so, the teledrama critiques ideological structures embedded in family, media, and institutions, inviting viewers to confront how power operates subtly through language, images, and everyday interactions. Samanala Kandawura mirrors Athugala’s broader intellectual project: destabilizing comfortable ways of seeing and cultivating a critical media consciousness that challenges assumptions about meaning, identity, and authority.

His film Matha expanded my understanding of cinema. I recall repeatedly trying to remain in the hall during screenings, only to be overwhelmed by the sounds, colours, and screen dynamics—experiences beyond my usual cognitive and perceptual limits. Matha is not set textually or narratively in the North–Eastern war zone, yet it resonates deeply with the historical, emotional, and ideological atmosphere produced by the conflict. The maternal figure operates as a symbolic condensation of loss, sacrifice, mourning, and moral obligation, reflecting societal experiences of prolonged militarization, disappearances, and normalized suffering. In this sense, Matha functions as a national allegory: the maternal body embodies a wounded social body, haunted by the war’s emotional and ideological afterlife.

His magnum opus stage theatre, Mahāsamāyama, stands out as a comprehensive work, integrating folk dance-drama traditions from kolam, sanni, sokari, mask dances, and other folk theatrical performances. Mahāsamāyama can be read as a dense allegorical work interrogating collective consciousness, authority, and ritualized power in Sri Lankan social life. Drawing on the idea of a “great assembly,” Athugala exposes how consensus is often manufactured through ideology, symbolism, and performative unity rather than genuine democratic engagement. The text dramatizes the tension between individuality and collectivity, revealing how subjects are absorbed, silenced, or disciplined within larger moral, religious, or political formations. Rather than celebrating harmony, Mahāsamāyama problematizes it, showing how collective order often depends on exclusion, fear, and the suppression of dissent. In this sense, the work resonates with Athugala’s broader critical project: unsettling sacred social narratives and revealing how communication, ritual, and spectacle function as instruments of power.

 Athugala’s film Saho can be read as a restrained yet incisive meditation on intimacy, male companionship, and the quiet violence of social expectation. Rather than relying on overt narrative drama, the film works through silence, gesture, and atmosphere, allowing affect to accumulate in the spaces between dialogue. Saho foregrounds male relationality not as heroic camaraderie or nationalist masculinity, but as a fragile emotional terrain shaped by fear, loyalty, repression, and unspoken desire. Athugala’s cinematic language—marked by slow pacing, minimalism, and a careful use of framing—disrupts dominant Sri Lankan filmic traditions that privilege moral closure and clear binaries. Instead, the film exposes how hegemonic cultural norms, particularly heteronormativity and moral discipline, render male intimacy both necessary and impossible. In this sense, Saho functions less as a conventional social realist film and more as a psycho-cultural text, revealing how modern South Asian masculinity is structured by silence, proximity, and unresolved affect rather than by articulation or resolution.

During my undergraduate thesis on Kandyan Udarata Bali Shanthikarmaya and its communicational meanings, later published as a book as Bali Sanniwedanaya (2010), supervised by Professor Sunanda Mahendra, I was deeply influenced by Athugala’s doctoral work, later published as Perception and Communication (1998/2008). He outlines how Sri Lankan and South Asian cultural narratives and myths—such as Kandyan and other traditional codes—provide a structured lens for understanding jana rūpa (folk form). These theoretical codes and metaphors offer analytical tools to interpret how local people perceive and interact with the world.

Many of these codes emerge from traditional forms of communication, including Bali–Sanni rites, rituals, and symbolic practices such as Patapahe Mal, ritual numbers (3, 5, 7), and offerings of food and flowers. These folk forms offer a systematic way to understand Bali and its communicational meanings. Professor Sunanda Mahendra, guided by his doctoral supervisor at the University of Leicester, Professor James Halloran, studied Buddhist Jātaka stories and their anthropological significance. His later books, such as Man and Myth (1992), and his work during our Mass Communication Bachelor’s Honours  degree program years, focused extensively on folk stories, myths, legends, and mythologies, forming a grand series of explorations that informed Creative Communications Trends 1, 2, 3… (2002)

Athugala expanded this framework, providing a richer context for reading traditional communication systems. He utilized popular cinema and cultural artifacts to teach how media images and icons should be interpreted beyond conventional stereotypes. One lecture on the time and space of cinematic language fascinated me and profoundly influenced my thinking; later, I published it as a paper in my book Sannevedana addyanaya: Understanding Media & Communication (2009). Cinematic language, he explained, captures and plots long verbal prose and stories quickly and symbolically, using visual codes to convey meaning without narrating every detail. It demonstrates how day-to-day physical time and space can be expressed visually, capturing symbolic and aesthetic depth.

Theoretical Framework: Male Intimacy, Silence, and Cultural Power

Professor Ariyarathna Athugala’s Saho can be theoretically situated within critical frameworks of masculinity, homosociality, and cinematic affect. The film’s emphasis on silence, proximity, and emotional restraint aligns with what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick defines as homosocial desire—a form of male bonding structured by intimacy, rivalry, and repression rather than explicit sexual articulation. Sedgwick (1985) argues that “male homosocial desire is structured by a continuum that includes male bonding, rivalry, and the potential of erotic charge, even where sexuality is publicly denied” (p. 2). In Saho, this continuum is rendered cinematically through gesture, shared space, and withheld speech, allowing desire to circulate without being named.

The film’s resistance to narrative closure and explicit meaning also resonates with Roland Barthes’ theory of the writerly text, where meaning is not delivered but produced by the reader or viewer. Barthes (1974) observes that “the writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the world” (p. 5). Saho operates precisely in this register: the spectator is compelled to read silences, decode glances, and engage effectively rather than consume a fixed moral message. Athugala’s cinematic strategy thus destabilizes the dominant Sri Lankan realist tradition, which often relies on moral resolution and clear ideological positioning.

From a psycho-cultural perspective, Michel Foucault’s analysis of sexuality and power provides a crucial lens for understanding how intimacy in Saho is regulated. Foucault (1978) argues that “power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (p. 93). The constraints placed upon male intimacy in Saho are not enforced through overt violence but through internalized discipline—social norms, moral expectations, and cultural surveillance. The film reveals how men learn to govern their own desires, rendering intimacy both necessary and impossible.

Cinematically, Athugala’s use of slowness, minimal dialogue, and visual framing aligns with Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the time-image, where cinema moves away from action-driven narratives toward affective duration. Deleuze (1989) notes that the time-image emerges when “situations no longer extend into action or reaction, but into a pure optical and sound situation” (p. 17). Saho exemplifies this mode by privileging mood, stillness, and emotional suspension over plot progression, allowing the viewer to inhabit the psychological weight of male relationality.

Finally, the film’s critique of hegemonic masculinity can be read alongside R. W. Connell’s formulation of hegemonic masculinity as a culturally dominant ideal that marginalizes alternative masculinities. Connell (1995) states that hegemonic masculinity “is not a fixed character type but the masculinity that occupies the hegemonic position in a given pattern of gender relations” (p. 76). Saho exposes how such dominance is maintained through silence and emotional repression, producing male subjects who are bonded yet isolated, intimate yet emotionally immobilized.

Taken together, these theoretical perspectives position Saho as a psycho-cultural cinematic text that interrogates masculinity not through spectacle or confrontation, but through absence, restraint, and unresolved affect. Athugala’s film thus contributes to a critical South Asian film language that challenges heteronormative moralism and reveals male intimacy as a deeply political, culturally regulated, and emotionally charged terrain.

Makara Pendanaya - Critical Appreciation 

Athugala’s theoretical rigor and expertise have provided me with a holistic framework to read his latest fiction, Makara Pendanaya. The novel operates as a lucid metaphor and metonym for existing cultural conflicts, particularly highlighting tensions between Sri Lankan stereotypical cultural representations and transformations imposed by Chinese cultural influences and their global reach.

In the novel Makara Pendanaya, the protagonists Sahan and Li—the Sri Lankan young man and the Chinese woman—are used by Athugala to construct a cultural critique of conflict and contrast arising from contemporary cultural innovation and confrontation within the intertwined political and cultural metamorphosis of Sri Lanka–China relations. Makara symbolizes Chinese culture, while Pendanaya (the necklace) signifies how the Sri Lankan younger generation “wears” cultural heritage—often as a burden placed upon the head—reflecting the invasion, negotiation, and transformation of local traditions. At the same time, the novel acknowledges shared Asian philosophical lineages, particularly Confucian humanism, suggesting cultural closeness and mutual inspiration that allow both traditions to learn from one another and coexist as an intertwined cultural fabric.

However, Athugala does not romanticize this encounter. He carefully crafts the internalized tensions and psychological struggles faced by both characters, exposing how cultural negotiation is never seamless. Pages 46–50 are devoted to introducing Confucian thought and preparing the ideological ground for subsequent chapters. Pages 56–58 explore the cultural contradiction between Sahan’s Kandyan upbringing and his parents’ expectations for his future, expectations unsettled when he pursues higher education in China. This choice results in Sahan’s symbolic outcasting, as he becomes caught between inherited Sri Lankan cultural obligations and lived engagement with Chinese academic and social life.

On page 60, Athugala explicitly foregrounds the mutual struggle of Sahan and Li as they confront their respective cultural codes and inherited meanings. He narrates how their lives and metaphors intertwine in a shared search for peace beyond the confines of two traditions and two systems of cultural disposition. They reflect that while their words and languages differ, they are “strangely similar,” revealing a state of dialogic tension in which they continue to live and negotiate meaning. Through this historical and emotional passage, the two characters undergo a process of cultural metamorphosis. On page 63, the Makara—the Chinese dragon—emerges as a humanistic symbol, expressed in the poetic line, “We fly with this humanistic dragon.” This image captures the condition of the contemporary younger generation struggling within overlapping cultural, economic, political, and geopolitical layers.

Athugala’s portrayal is further enriched by his own lived experience. During recent years, he served as an invited visiting professor in several Chinese universities, teaching Sinhala to Chinese students. These encounters are creatively transformed through empathetic observation and critical reflection, resulting in a novel that objectifies lived experience through subjective, poetic, and culturally sensitive fictional expression.

In Chapter 6 of the novel, Athugala frames the discussion through concepts such as betrayal, treason, handing over, delivery, and cession of heritage, offering an incisive way of articulating contemporary cultural anxiety. Through the romantic relationship between Sahan and Li, the chapter psychoanalytically directs the reader to recognize how the younger generation is rendered ill or diseased by unresolved modern cultural conflicts. The relationship itself becomes symptomatic of deeper ideological fractures rather than a space of emotional resolution.

In Chapter 7, the dialogue between Sahan and Li develops into a comparative analysis of Sri Lankan Theravāda Buddhist values and Chinese (largely Mahāyāna-influenced) cultural ethics, articulated through Confucian philosophical principles. The novel suggests that the world constantly contains a space for spiritual politics (p. 83). Through the metaphor of the humanistic Dragon in Confucian philosophy, Athugala illustrates how Sahan becomes culturally alienated within China, while simultaneously being unjustly expelled—emotionally and symbolically—from his parental home in Sri Lanka, where his parents suffer in his absence. As Sahan remains caught between Li and these competing cultural–political codes, the novel foregrounds a Confucian vision that emphasizes harmony, asserting that peace within the family leads to peace in the world (p. 85).

My own skim-and-scan reading of this novel occurred during a particularly hectic period of life, shaped by my deep immersion in digital spaces—as both an ethnographic researcher and an isolated individual navigating a sense of a “lost world.” This condition was further entangled with institutional responsibilities as Head of the Department. These broader contexts inevitably shaped how I read and re-read the text, moving beyond traditional literary criticism or Western theoretical frameworks such as Roland Barthes or James Joyce. What the novel articulates—particularly on page 87—is that the relationship between Sahan and Li is narrativized not as a conventional romantic or sexual bond, but as a Hobson’s-choice relationship, marked by inertia and silence. Although they meet daily, they are neither fully lovers nor strangers; they encounter each other as if in love, yet spend more time in shared silence than in dialogue, often gazing into the distance. This quietude exposes a deep cultural irony embedded within contemporary intimacy.

From Chapters 10 to 24, the novel grapples with how two culturally distinct societies attempt—and often fail—to negotiate compromise and coexistence. Through the youthful journey of Sahan and Li, Athugala explores the difficulty of forming a smooth cultural synthesis while parental authority and inherited traditions directly obstruct their autonomy and humanity. The novel suggests that young people living within contemporary Asian societies—though sharing regional affinities—experience deep internal conflict, not only at the psychological level but also in their very sense of identity, leaving them uncertain of who they truly are.

In Chapter 25, the narrative introduces another layer of complexity within the troubled relationship between Sahan and Li. Sahan’s close friend Gang questions whether Sahan intends to continue his relationship with Li, subtly hinting at an unspoken tension between the two men. That night, Sahan repeatedly wakes, troubled by the question and reflecting on its deeper meaning. Eventually, Gang reveals his attraction toward same-sex relationships, a disclosure later communicated to Li. Li reveals that Gang’s affection predated Sahan’s relationship with her. Through this triangular dynamic, Athugala exposes a contemporary Chinese youth cultural phenomenon in which same-sex intimacy among young men does not always align with Western categorizations of “gay” or “homosexual.” Instead, the novel situates these relationships within pressures generated by urbanization, economic competition, social mobility, and heightened expectations placed upon young men—conditions that foster forms of homosociality, bromance, and fluid romantic or sexual bonds. This theme is carefully juxtaposed against the cultural conflict between Sahan and Li and the broader generational gap between a digitally mediated society and a more conventional parental social order.

By Chapter 32 (around page 300), the novel explicitly engages with contemporary Sri Lankan political life, particularly the Aragalaya movement. Athugala interrogates whether this uprising truly represents the authentic rebellion of modern Sri Lankan youth or whether it remains constrained by deeper structural limitations. The narrative examines how young people attempt to emerge from political, cultural, and economic entanglements, only to find themselves caught within complex global and regional power dynamics. Athugala extends this critique to the Global South more broadly, illustrating how everyday life is shaped and dramatized by regional geopolitics. Youth agency is simultaneously activated and suppressed by Indian and Chinese cultural–political influences, while local cultural authenticity and resistance are obstructed and fragmented by dominant regional power structures.

At times, I reread the novel from beginning to end in order to undertake a deconstructive reading of the text—one that combines communicative attention with a horizontal, virtual, and cross-sectional mode of analysis rather than a conventional intersectional or linear reading. Through this approach, I came to recognize how Athugala, as a former university academic shaped by Sri Lanka’s political drama, institutional academic turbulence, and intellectual disillusionment, brings a heightened sensitivity to social intensity and cultural conflict. Following his retirement and a period as a visiting fellow in China, Athugala appears particularly attentive to everyday cultural tensions, which he pinpoints and serially narrativizes through a comparative genealogy of Sri Lankan and Chinese regional cultures within a contemporary, digitally mediated political context. The novel functions less as a poetic or aesthetically driven literary work and more as an informative, reflective, almost curatorial narrative that documents how society and generations alike are caught in a state of conundrum and metamorphosis, living as citizens of a disturbed and dilapidated modernity.

For much of my reading, I found the novel difficult and even boring, particularly because it resists the familiar fictional communicative structure of ārambha, yatnā, niyathapthi, and phalāgama—the conventional narrative progression from beginning and struggle to climax and resolution. Yet, as the narrative slowly unfolds, a Makara pendanaya emerges, revealing a contemporary reality: the increasing visibility of same-sex intimacy among young men, whether explicitly homosexual or ethically ambiguous forms of same-sex romance. The novel suggests that this phenomenon is less a matter of Westernized sexual identity and more a consequence of intensified economic pressure and the widening cultural gap between digitally mediated youth and conventional parental heteronormative expectations. This is most clearly illustrated through the relationship between Sahan, Gang, and Li, where their friendship gradually shifts into a form of male bromance and same-sex intimacy, while the heterosexual relationship between Sahan and Li remains unresolved. Both Sahan and Li struggle to identify who they are, constrained by national belonging, parental economic expectations, and socio-cultural politics. In contrast, emotional clarity and affection are more coherently generated among the men themselves.

This tension culminates in Chapter 34, when Sahan, as an artist, portrays Gang instead of Li. When questioned by Li, Sahan explains (p. 320) that Gang was able to articulate who he was with honesty, openly expressing his same-sex desire, whereas both Li—and perhaps Sahan himself—remain trapped in uncertainty. Their inability to recognize themselves is thus framed not as personal failure but as a structural condition produced by cultural context, parental economic pressure, and restrictive social politics that deny young people the space to discover who they are.

After four years of university life, Li and Sahan finally arrive at a painful conclusion. Li speaks first, acknowledging that their respective countries—and the cultural, political, and familial structures embedded within them—do not allow their relationship to continue unless they choose to migrate elsewhere. In response, Sahan erupts in anguish, shouting, “Please do not play with my life. Stop this now” (p. 332). At this moment, Sahan is portrayed as deeply tormented, caught in an intense inner conflict. Athugala depicts his psyche as being galvanized by a Sri Lankan rural Kandyan embodiment, noting that “his mind was now searching for an ancient psychology, as though his values and norms had been preserved in a museum or an archive.” This metaphor powerfully conveys the weight of inherited cultural memory pressing upon the present, immobilizing the subject in a conflict between lived desire and ancestral moral codes.

The final chapter (Chapter 36) is notably more readable and compelling than the preceding sections, as it gathers and tightens the entire narrative arc. Here, the novel articulates the contemporary condition of young people whose homosocial and affective relationships—whether with men or women—remain lived but unnamed, practiced yet undignified, and emotionally real yet socially undefined. Athugala traces the root of this condition to a historically dominant, flamboyant, hegemonic heteronormativity, compounded by grand civilizational ideologies such as “Asian values,” Buddhist moral vision, Taoism, Confucian ethics, and entrenched Sri Lankan and Chinese parental expectations. Together, these belief systems construct a rigid fence—almost a concrete barrier—that predetermines who one should be and what one is allowed to desire. Psychoanalytically, the novel suggests that contemporary choices are governed by an internalized, ancient superego, which undermines and sabotages present life by disciplining desire through inherited moral authority.

This tension reaches its most lucid articulation in the novel’s concluding scenes. As Sahan returns from China to Sri Lanka, his mother sends a message implying that all expectations attached to his return are already broken, exhausted, and exploitative. Upon arriving at the airport, Sahan observes an overwhelming presence of Indian and Chinese travelers, while Sri Lankan youth appear conspicuously absent—having migrated, dispersed, or vanished from the nation’s social landscape. This moment operates as a striking metaphor for contemporary national loss: a country emptied of its youth, yet still clinging emotionally and symbolically to ancestral archives of cultural obligation. The novel thus invites a more objective reading of national decline, exposing how excessive emotional attachment to inherited ideals—museums of desire preserved by parents and society—has rendered both generations depleted and directionless.

Although the novel remains uneven and at times difficult to read, particularly in its overextended psychoanalytic exposition, its final chapter succeeds in excavating a rich cultural and political critique. Athugala’s work once again demonstrates his longstanding experimental approach across drama, teleplays, novels, and poetry, where media theory, philosophy, and aesthetic practice intersect. Even in retirement, his creative output reflects an ongoing engagement with contemporary life, offering a reflective model for both academics and creative practitioners across generations.

Conclusion

In short, as Dr. Athugala is an expert in film, cinematic aesthetics, and visual theory, this novel cannot be read in the conventional sense—as a smoothly flowing anecdotal story from beginning to end. Instead, the text functions as a cinematic object, designed to engage the reader both visually and theoretically. The narrative unfolds through a pathologized visual spectrum, requiring the reader to decode its meaning through a cinematic lens, in line with the Professor’s intent. I scrutinized numerous instances for visual engagement and was struck by how effectively the novel converges elements reminiscent of modern South Indian commercial fantasy cinema, offering a rich, imaginative, and cinematic reading experience.

Put differently, the novel can be approached through Roland Barthes’ methodology, where the contemporary virtual and digital context functions as an intertextual framework, allowing the author to reflect on human nature in the present scenario. Similarly, the triangular relationship between Sahan, Li, and Gang cannot be neatly categorized as gay, bisexual, heterosexual, or otherwise. It mirrors the fluid spectrum of desire characteristic of digitally mediated homosocial lives, dissolving conventional divisions between men and women. The unresolved, unfulfilled, and ill-defined desires of these characters reflect a continuum of eroticism and human intimacy, entwined with societal expectations and personal bonds, producing a nuanced commentary on the complexities of modern love, lust, and relational entanglements.

This insight becomes particularly striking when contextualized within the so-called flamboyant high cultures of Asia, encompassing rich Chinese, Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian traditions. Athugala’s narrative traces how these diverse cultural and philosophical values intersect with dominant heteronormative structures, toxic patriarchal norms, and residual feudal moralities, illustrating the tensions between inherited cultural authority and contemporary desires. The novel thereby offers a critical lens on how modern Generation Z men navigate intimacy and relational identity amidst the collision of high cultural ideals, hegemonic pressures, and the fluidity of erotic and emotional expression.

 References

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