From Rasika Wickramanayaka’s
short story anthology The Storyteller of Kabul (කාබුල් දස්තාන්),
which brings together ten distinct narratives, I have chosen to examine Daydreams (දහවල් සිහින) as the first in a series of critical readings.
Another story from the same collection, Divorced Cat (දික්කසාද බළලා), will be taken up in a subsequent review.
In Daydreams (දහවල් සිහින), Wickramanayaka offers a tightly structured
narrative that, in my reading, articulates with striking clarity Jacques
Lacan’s proposition that “there is no sexual relationship,” rendered
here in the form of literary fiction. The story does not treat sexual failure
as a matter of individual psychology, moral hesitation, or circumstantial
disruption. Rather, it exposes a structural impossibility at the heart of
desire itself—an impossibility that becomes visible precisely at the moment
when fantasy appears closest to realization.
In the story, Sithara is the
main character, and he feels his masculinity is lacking or not strong enough.
He keeps telling himself: “Love is the civilized pathway to lust” (ආදරය යනු රාගයට ඇති ශිෂ්ට මාවතයි). This belief
acts as a kind of excuse or shield. It lets him explain why he avoids
approaching “respectable” or “civilized” women, why he keeps getting rejected,
and why he ends up looking like the weakest guy in his group of male friends.
On the surface, it seems like he’s being thoughtful, polite, or morally
superior. But underneath, it’s a defense mechanism to protect himself from what
Lacan calls symbolic castration.
Symbolic castration, in Lacanian
theory, is not literal (no one is physically cutting anything off). It means
accepting that no one—man or woman—is ever fully complete or “whole.” We all
have a fundamental lack built into us by language, society, and the rules of
the symbolic order. For men especially, this lack is often experienced as the
fear that they don’t truly “have” the phallus (the symbolic marker of power,
potency, and completeness). They fear exposure as inadequate, impotent, or
rejected in the sexual field.
Some examples from reality to
make that point clear are below:
- A man who repeatedly says, “I’m waiting for the right person” or “I
don’t do casual sex—I want real love,” not because he truly believes in
romance, but because he’s terrified of approaching women and being turned
down or failing to “perform” sexually. The ideal of “love” becomes a safe
excuse to avoid the risk of castration (being seen as lacking).
- Someone who spends hours in the gym, posts constantly about his
conquests on social media, or brags about how many partners he’s had. This
hyper-masculine display is often a desperate attempt to
cover up deep insecurity about not being “man enough.” The boasting is a
defense against the symbolic wound of castration.
- In everyday life, think of the guy who stays single for years,
saying “women are too complicated” or “I’m too busy for relationships.”
Behind the words is often the fear that if he tries,
he’ll be rejected or unable to satisfy, which would force him to confront
his own lack.
In Sithara’s case, his maxim
about love being the “civilized” path is exactly this kind of fragile defense.
It preserves his dignity and self-image so he never has to face the possibility
of sexual failure or rejection. But the story shows how brittle that defense
is: when he finally tries to bypass it by going straight to the prostitute (no
romance, no risk of refusal), the fantasy still collapses under the weight of
the Real. The wound on her leg shatters the illusion, forcing him to confront
the impossibility of ever fully overcoming that lack.
The visit to the cheap hotel,
therefore, is not merely an erotic decision. It is an attempt at symbolic
repair. Sithara must prove otherwise—to himself, and implicitly to
the imagined gaze of his friends—that he can occupy the position of the
desiring male without mediation, without romance, without refusal. The
prostitute becomes the stage upon which this proof is to be enacted.
Fantasy
and the Invention of the “Dream Angel”
Sithara
does not encounter Sonali as a subject in her own right. Instead, he constructs
her as what Lacan terms a fantasy object—an objet a custom-fitted
to stabilize and sustain his desire. He imagines her as a “dream angel,” a
pristine figure deliberately stripped of history, pain, opacity, or any trace
of real subjectivity. At the same time, he is fully aware that “Sonali” is only
a pseudonym, one of the many assumed names prostitutes adopt to conceal their
identities. This awareness quietly exposes the structural tension of his
position: his reliance on an anonymous, commodified encounter already signals
his marginal place within the social and sexual order, marking his distance
from what counts as legitimate romantic or sexual access.
This
invention is not accidental but essential. In the Lacanian sense, fantasy does
not aim at genuine contact with the Other. Rather, it functions as
a protective screen, shielding the subject from the Other’s irreducible
difference and from the fundamental lack that structures desire itself. By
reducing Sonali to an idealized, ahistorical objet a, Sithara
attempts to neutralize the traumatic dimension of sexual non-relation and
preserve the illusion of coherence and control.
Within
this fantasy, sexual relation appears possible precisely because it is already
scripted. Payment, space, timing, and bodily availability are aligned in
advance. The symbolic order seems to guarantee closure, symmetry, and
satisfaction. This is similar to the way some people believe that removing
uncertainty will eliminate anxiety: for instance, the man who turns to dating
apps or commercial sex not primarily for pleasure, but because the encounter
feels administratively secure—profiles, prices, expectations, and roles are
clearly defined. The fantasy here is that if all variables are fixed in
advance, desire will function smoothly and without risk.
A
comparable logic operates in many modern relationships structured around
performance and assurance. One partner may believe that following the “correct”
sequence—dinner, intimacy, emotional validation—will necessarily produce
fulfillment. When this script is followed faithfully, disappointment often
comes as a shock, because the expectation was not desire but guarantee. In both
cases, scripting serves as a defense against exposure to lack.
It
is precisely at this point—when fantasy appears most complete and most
secure—that it collapses. The wound on Sonali’s leg tears through the fantasy
screen, forcing the return of what Sithara has tried to disavow: the Real of
sexual non-relation, where no script can fully align bodies, desire, and
meaning. This rupture resembles moments in everyday life when an apparently
“successful” sexual or romantic encounter is suddenly undone by something that
cannot be assimilated—an unexpected vulnerability, a bodily limitation, a sign
of suffering, or a reminder of another person’s irreducible history. At such
moments, desire falters not because of moral hesitation, but because fantasy
can no longer sustain the illusion of completeness.
What
Sonali’s wound reveals, then, is not an accidental disruption but a structural
truth: no arrangement, however carefully scripted, can eliminate the gap at the
heart of sexual relation. Fantasy promises harmony; the Real returns to show
why that promise can never be fulfilled.
The
Wound at the Heel: The Return of the Real
The revelation of Sonali’s
wound, located specifically at her right heel (විළුඹ),
is the decisive moment of the story. This is not an incidental injury, nor a
mere trigger for pity. The wound functions as the irruption of the Real—that
which resists symbolization and refuses incorporation into fantasy.
The heel is not a neutral body
part. It is a site of grounding, balance, and movement. A wound there signifies
not only physical damage but structural instability. Sithara’s “angel” is
suddenly unable to stand within the fantasy that required her seamless
availability.
At this moment, desire does not
gently fade; it disintegrates. Sithara is confronted not with Sonali’s
suffering alone, but with the impossibility of translating that suffering into
his libidinal economy. The body ceases to function as an erotic surface and
becomes instead a bearer of history, exploitation, and pain that cannot be
metabolized.
This is the precise point at
which Lacan’s claim—there is no sexual relationship—becomes legible.
There is no formula that can reconcile Sithara’s fantasy with Sonali’s wounded
reality. What remains is an irreducible gap.
Masculinity, Capital, and the Spider Motif
The domestic spider that appears
at the beginning and reappears at the end of the story, dragging a cockroach
into its den, brackets the narrative with a silent but powerful metaphor. This
image reframes the sexual encounter not as intimacy, but as predation
within a capitalist circuit.
Sithara imagines himself as the
agent, the chooser, the consumer. Yet the spider motif suggests that all
participants—Sithara included—are already caught within a structure that
reduces bodies to functions and desire to circulation. Sonali’s wound is not
accidental; it is the visible inscription of this system on the body.
In this sense, the story resists
moral simplification. Sithara is neither villain nor hero. Sonali is neither
pure victim nor symbolic savior. Both are positioned asymmetrically within the
same discourse—one protected by fantasy, the other exposed by the Real.
What
the Spider Carries Away
Daydreams is not a story about compassion triumphing
over desire, nor about moral awakening. It is a structural narrative that
reveals why fantasy is necessary and why it must fail. Sithara’s maxim about
love as a “civilized pathway to lust” is exposed, finally, as a defensive
fiction—one that collapses when confronted with a body that refuses
idealization.
By ending, as it begins, with
the spider and its prey, Wickramanayaka insists that nothing has been resolved.
The fantasy dissolves, but the structure remains. Desire continues without
relation, and sex remains unable to write itself as harmony.
In this way, Daydreams offers
not a psychological case study, but a precise literary articulation of Lacan’s
most unsettling insight: that the sexual relation is not forbidden or lost—but
structurally impossible.
