Not coincidentally, the final episode in Ondaatje's novel draws our attention to the process of renovating sacred sites, featuring the artisan Ananda's attempt to rebuild a giant statue of the Buddha. According to the Pali canon, Ananda was the Buddha's constant attendant; after the latter's death, Ananda recited the entire Sutra Pitaka from memory. In a similarly elegiac gesture, Ondaatje's Ananda labours to restore a statue whose face has been broken into more than "one hundred chips and splinters of stone" (303). Although Ananda completes the statue and participates in the Buddhist tradition of the ritual of the eyes, the wounded statue of the Buddha, whose "eyes would always look north," (306) serves as a haunting reminder of the outcome of the bloody conflicts in the northern provinces. These conflicts among the Buddhist Sinhalese-dominated government, the anti-government factions, including the JVP, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have all but shattered the ideals of Buddhism. Read in the context of the ongoing historical connection between Buddhism and the ethnic violence in Sri Lanka, Anil's Ghost does not promote a transcendent, unified vision of Buddhism free from the fetters of politics. Moreover, in a country, where symbols of temporal and racial unity and fragmentation are historically embedded and politically charged, it is significant that, as Ondaatje's narrator explains, "up close the [sculpture of the newly restored Buddha's] face looked quilted" (302). Rather than" homogenize the stone" and "blend the face into a unit," Ananda decides to "leave it as it was" (302). The novel thus registers a shift from the unifying and protecting image of the thread of the pirit ceremony to the image of quilting, a form of stitching that likewise unifies yet, at the same time, acknowledges separation and difference. In portraying Buddhism, Ondaatje gestures toward the ideals of transcendence, wholeness, and unity. Ultimately, these are ideals that Ananda, one of the country's finest artisans, and Ondaatje refuses to re-inscribe. Instead, we are left pondering "the fields where Buddhism and its values met the harsh political events of the twentieth century" (300).
