Anil’s Ghost: 4. Ananda Summary & Analysis

Anil and Sarath travel south to a town called Ekneligoda, which they think must be near where Sailor’s body was first buried. On the way, Anil and Sarath stop to meet the artist Palipana told them about, whose name is Ananda. Ananda once painted the eyes of statues of the Buddha but has since fallen on hard times and now works in a gem pit. When Anil and Sarath find him, they ask him to come with them. He initially declines but then decides to help.

Anil, Sarath, and Ananda arrive at a house in Ekneligoda that belongs to Sri Lanka’s Archaeology Society. The house sits empty, though, because the region is considered dangerous. On the first day, Ananda disappears, which alarms Anil and frustrates Sarath. It turns out, though, that Ananda has gone to town to observe and speak to locals to try and determine if there might be region-specific characteristics that he (Ananda) should incorporate into his recreation of Sailor’s face.

Sarath must return to Colombo three days a week. When Sarath is gone, Anil and Ananda rarely speak. At night, Ananda drinks heavily. One night, Anil sees Ananda cradle Sailor’s skeleton in his arms. The gesture could cause Anil alarm, but she understands that Ananda needs to see Sailor as not just evidence of a crime but as someone who was once a person with thoughts and feelings. Anil also observes Ananda’s work and thinks that Ananda works meticulously, like a scientist.

An italicized section then describes a woman named Sirissa, who works as a cleaner at a school. She has a daily routine and sees teenagers who attend the school on her walk to work, though those students often ignore her. After the workday is done, she returns home because there is a government curfew. One day, when she walks to school, she sees the heads of students she knows on spikes. She shuts her eyes and runs forward, but when she opens her eyes again, she sees more heads.  

In Ekneligoda, Anil thinks about her work. She knows that one must often find a victim before one finds a suspect. However, Anil remains skeptical that they’ll be able to identify Sailor because they have so little to go on. But Anil also recognizes how important the case may be. Thus far, no murder charges have been filed during the entire conflict. If Sailor were identified, it might present a clear case against the government.

Anil then gets an idea. She asks Ananda why he squats when he works. Ananda replies that he got used to doing it while he worked in the mines. Anil recognizes a buildup in Sailor’s ankles that suggests that he, too, worked in mines. Before working in the mines, Anil surmises, Sailor had been active. Anil announces her theory to Sarath and says that they now have a story about Sailor that they can use to try and determine the identity of the skeleton.

On the weekend, Ananda approaches Sarath and Anil to tell them that he has finished reconstructing Sailor’s face. When Anil and Sarath look at the face, they’re surprised by how peaceful the expression is. Sarath says, “It’s what [Ananda] wants from the dead.” Sarath then explains that in 1989, 46 students in the Ratnapura district went missing, along with employees who worked at the school. Ananda’s wife, Sirissa, was among those who went missing at that time.

After hearing that, Anil can’t look at the head without seeing Sirissa’s face. Sarath then says that they’ll have to take the reconstructed head to nearby towns to see if anyone can identify the person. Anil cautions against doing that because people in nearby towns have seen beheadings, but Sarath says they have to start somewhere. Anil thinks that Sarath knows, like she does, that they won’t identify Sailor using the reconstructed head because Sailor’s face isn’t the one that’s been recreated. 

One day after that, Sarath and Anil visit a monastery in Arankale. It’s peaceful, and Sarath says that one must be beyond passion to create a place like it. Anil then recalls when she and Sarath visited Gamini. On that night, Sarath and Gamini discussed Palipana and the monastery where Palipana ended up. Sarath speculated then that, as blindness took over, Palipana deceived himself into thinking he saw the inscriptions he was said to have fabricated.

In Ekneligoda, Anil wakes up one night from a deep sleep. She tries to get her bearings and then hears a sound coming from Ananda’s room. She rushes to his door, and when she opens it, she sees him stabbing himself in the neck with a knife. Anil rushes to stop him, and Sarath comes not much later. Together, they treat the wounds, and Sarath then leaves to try and phone Gamini from town. When Sarath is gone, Anil injects Ananda with epinephrine, but it’s unclear if it helps. Sarath returns and, unable to reach his brother, takes Ananda to a hospital in Ratnapura. Anil then scrubs the room to try and clean the blood off the floor.

Sarath returns to the house that afternoon. He tells Anil that Ananda is going to survive. The doctor says that Anil’s quick thinking saved Ananda and that not many people would have acted as expediently as Anil did in a crisis. Later, a storm rushes in while Sarath and Anil are outside. Suddenly, Sarath remembers what he meant to tell Anil earlier. It seems that Sailor may have worked in a graphite mine, he says. The recreated head of Sailor has been making the rounds in town, but Anil is still skeptical that anyone will recognize and identify him. Instead, she thinks their best bet will be to identify him through his former occupation, so she plans to start visiting graphite mines.