Published: July 25, 2025
Hakawati was born from a love of storytelling, but also from necessity. This post takes you behind one of its storiesâThe Moonstone Lanternâcrafted during a time of real darkness, both literal and political.
In the late 1980s, Sri Lanka was under the shadow of the JVP-led insurrection. Part of life then was the daily "lights-off" command, imposed at 6 p.m. sharp. Out of fear and obedienceâor sometimes resistanceâentire neighborhoods flicked off their switches, plunging into silence. No TVs. No radios. Just the crackle of oil lamps, kerosene lanterns, and the soft murmur of people finding ways to fill the void.
For our family, that silence became sacred. It became story time. And The Moonstone Lantern emerged from one such evening, when my younger sister demanded a new taleâone about something as mundane and mystical as a moonstone.
The story was improvised, playful, full of contradictions. I wove together Buddhist symbolism, folk myth, architectural fragments, and pure fictionâtalking about kings who carved animals into stone, sculptors who protested war with symbolism, and ancient beliefs that animals once lived on the moon. It wasnât about historical accuracy; it was about giving meaning to the silence around us.
Through those made-up stories, I began to understand the power of oral tradition. Not just to entertain, but to preserve emotion. To wrap fear, loss, and longing inside a lie beautiful enough to believe.
What does one learn by creating stories in the dark? That storytelling is survival. That during times of fear, words become shelter. And that even childrenâespecially childrenâhunger for myths that connect their confusing world to something larger, more eternal.
When I revisited this memory while drafting Hakawati, I realized that these stories were not just creative exercises. They were forms of defiance. In a time where speech was risky, storytelling became our subversive code. We spoke freely, but in metaphor. We laughed, but with reverence. We remembered without exposing names.
The Moonstone Lantern is more than a short story. It is a record of those blackout nights, when the country was quiet but our minds were loud. It is a fossil of memory, carved from improvisation, fear, and familial warmth.