"American movies, English books - remember how they all end?" Gamini asked that night. "The American or the Englishman gets on a plane and leaves. That's it. The camera leaves with him. He looks out of the window at Mombasa or Vietnam or Jakarta, someplace now he can look at through the clouds. The tired hero. A couple of words to the girl beside him. He's going home. So the war, to all purposes, is over. That's enough reality for the West. It's probably the history of the last two hundred years of Western political writing. Go home. Write a book. Hit the circuit."
Gamini is skeptical of Anil's writing endeavors. In Sri Lanka the political situation has devolved to the point of hysteria. Though Anil wants to help by finding out the truth about the mysterious body, she is operating off of her experience abroad. Gamini has become embittered by seeing the difference in how foreigners try to "help" his countrymen and how the locals stay devoted to the cause. He doesn't want Anil to try to help; he wants her to fully commit to Sri Lanka, regardless of when her specific mission is accomplish.
"At night, returning from work, Anil would slip out of her sandals and stand in the shallow water, her toes among the white petals, her arms folded as she undressed the day, removing layers of events and incidents so they would no longer be within her. She would stand there for a while, then walk wet-footed to bed."
Anil is working furiously trying to identify this body. At the end of the day, she washes layers of dirt off her body, symbolically washing away the toils of the day. In such an unstable environment as Sri Lanka, she can only deal with each day's problems individually, so she has no energy to allow yesterday's problems to endure until today. Thus her nightly routine of bathing is crucial to her mental health.
"You're an archaelogist. Truth comes finally into the light. It's in the bones and sediment.
It's in character and nuance and mood.
That is what governs us in our lives, that's not the truth.
For the living it is the truth."
Sarath has seen much of life. In his pursuits he has developed a cynical worldview, differing greatly from Anil's. He encourages her to reconsider what she calls true. In his opinion, what people call truth is actually circumstantial influence which only the living believe. Objective truth is no ascertainable in life.
"Even if you are a monk, like my brother, passion or slaughter will meet you someday. For you cannot survive as a monk if society does not exist. You renounce society, but to do so you must first be a part of it, learn your decision from it. This is the paradox of retreat. My brother entered temple life. He escaped the world and the world came after him. He was seventy when he was killed by someone, perhaps someone from the time when he was breaking free -- for that is the difficult stage, when you leave the world."
Palipana lost his brother to religious devotion. His brother retreated from society to be a monk, but he wasn't allowed to do so for long. Soon enough someone from his old life found him and killed him. Knowing this, Palipana has become skeptical of those who devote themselves to any specific cause which isolates them from the rest of society. In his years of experience, he believes that one can only accomplish great things while an active participant in society, despite its shortcomings. He doesn't want to see any more people whom he cares about killed because they tried to escape the oppressive instability of the times.
