photo by Harith Gunawardana
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Leaving Galle
Weary and bleary on Sunday afternoon I went back to my guesthouse to pack. The Festival had rented me a room in at the back of a family home inside the Fort. This afternoon the household was busy with their own event. The furniture was all pushed to the wall and mats laid on the floor and my landlady explained to me that today was the day of the annual almsgiving they gave the community, in the name of her grandmother. The had just finished cooking and there were pots waiting in every alcove.
An uncle had arrived from Colombo and he told me a little more. He said that after the men had prayed they would break fast. Then they would go to the mosque again before coming back for a fuller meal. He said everyone around would come and eat together from large communal platters. He was sad, all the same, that there were fewer families now than there had been, so many of them having sold and left their longstanding homes in the Fort. He was delighted that I'd driven down to Galle with Michael Roberts as they had gone to the same school. We talked about whereabouts in London we each had lived and worked - he as a representative of the Bank of Ceylon, I as a dramaturg.
The family invited me to a cup of kanji and a banana before I set off on my journey back to Colombo. Of course I accepted, while feeling self conscious that I was been given food while they were fasting and that today (though not on other days) I was the only woman in the house not wearing a headscarf. I took my suitcase into the lane so that the arrival of my ride would not interrupt the prayers that were about to start in the front room.
I was perfectly placed now to watch the afternoon and the week fade, while from each front door on Lighthouse Street a best-dressed family appeared and walked across to the house I had just left.
An uncle had arrived from Colombo and he told me a little more. He said that after the men had prayed they would break fast. Then they would go to the mosque again before coming back for a fuller meal. He said everyone around would come and eat together from large communal platters. He was sad, all the same, that there were fewer families now than there had been, so many of them having sold and left their longstanding homes in the Fort. He was delighted that I'd driven down to Galle with Michael Roberts as they had gone to the same school. We talked about whereabouts in London we each had lived and worked - he as a representative of the Bank of Ceylon, I as a dramaturg.
The family invited me to a cup of kanji and a banana before I set off on my journey back to Colombo. Of course I accepted, while feeling self conscious that I was been given food while they were fasting and that today (though not on other days) I was the only woman in the house not wearing a headscarf. I took my suitcase into the lane so that the arrival of my ride would not interrupt the prayers that were about to start in the front room.
I was perfectly placed now to watch the afternoon and the week fade, while from each front door on Lighthouse Street a best-dressed family appeared and walked across to the house I had just left.
www.galleliteraryfestival.com
I haven't even described the half of it. Here is the list of participants from this year's festival, with links to a little more about them:
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexandra Pringle
Anne Ranasinghe
Ashok Ferrey
Barbara Sansoni
Brian Keenan
Carina Cooper
Carl Muller
Channa Dassanayaka
Channa Daswatte
Channa Wickremesekera
Chiki Sarkar
Deepika Shetty
Delon Weerasinghe
Dominic Sansoni
Elmo Jayawardena
Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne
Gore Vidal
Hilali Noordeen
Indran Amirthanayagam
Indi Samarajiva
Indu Dharmasena
Iresha Dilhani
Ismeth Raheem
Jean Arasanayagam
Jeet Thayil
Jill Macdonald
John-James Ford
John Mateer
John Zubrzycki
Jon Halliday
Julian West
Jung Chang
Kamila Shamsie
Karen Roberts
Kim Kindersley
Kumar Sangakkara
Lal Medawattegedara
Lakmali Gunawardena
Laki Senanayake
Louise Dean
Manuka Wijesinghe
Marc Blanchet
Michael Meyler
Michael Roberts
Nazreen Sansoni
Neil Fernandopulle
Neloufer de Mel
Nury Vittachi
Peter Kuruvita
Punyakante Wijenaike
Rachel Bowden
Rama Mani
Rahul Bhattacharya
Rajiva Wijesinha
Rajpal de Silva
Randy Boyagoda
Ranil Senanayake
Ravana
Richard Boyle
Ronald Lewcock
Rory Spowers
Rukshan Jayawardene
Sam de Silva
Sam Perera
Sandra Fernando
Sandra Hoffmann
Sanjana Hattotuwa
Santhan Ayathurai
Sarah Scarborough
Sashi Mendis Decosta
Seneka Abeyratne
Sharmini Boyle
Shobhaa De
Shyam Selvadurai
Simon Prosser
Simon Winchester
Sophie Grigson
Sophie Hannah
Suman Sridhar
Sunila Galappatti
Susan Elderkin
Tim Severin
Tishani Doshi
Tom Isaacs
Tracy Holsinger
Vijita Fernando
Vikram Seth
Vikrom Mathur
Vivimarie VanderPoorten
William Dalrymple
Yasmine Gooneratne
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexandra Pringle
Anne Ranasinghe
Ashok Ferrey
Barbara Sansoni
Brian Keenan
Carina Cooper
Carl Muller
Channa Dassanayaka
Channa Daswatte
Channa Wickremesekera
Chiki Sarkar
Deepika Shetty
Delon Weerasinghe
Dominic Sansoni
Elmo Jayawardena
Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne
Gore Vidal
Hilali Noordeen
Indran Amirthanayagam
Indi Samarajiva
Indu Dharmasena
Iresha Dilhani
Ismeth Raheem
Jean Arasanayagam
Jeet Thayil
Jill Macdonald
John-James Ford
John Mateer
John Zubrzycki
Jon Halliday
Julian West
Jung Chang
Kamila Shamsie
Karen Roberts
Kim Kindersley
Kumar Sangakkara
Lal Medawattegedara
Lakmali Gunawardena
Laki Senanayake
Louise Dean
Manuka Wijesinghe
Marc Blanchet
Michael Meyler
Michael Roberts
Nazreen Sansoni
Neil Fernandopulle
Neloufer de Mel
Nury Vittachi
Peter Kuruvita
Punyakante Wijenaike
Rachel Bowden
Rama Mani
Rahul Bhattacharya
Rajiva Wijesinha
Rajpal de Silva
Randy Boyagoda
Ranil Senanayake
Ravana
Richard Boyle
Ronald Lewcock
Rory Spowers
Rukshan Jayawardene
Sam de Silva
Sam Perera
Sandra Fernando
Sandra Hoffmann
Sanjana Hattotuwa
Santhan Ayathurai
Sarah Scarborough
Sashi Mendis Decosta
Seneka Abeyratne
Sharmini Boyle
Shobhaa De
Shyam Selvadurai
Simon Prosser
Simon Winchester
Sophie Grigson
Sophie Hannah
Suman Sridhar
Sunila Galappatti
Susan Elderkin
Tim Severin
Tishani Doshi
Tom Isaacs
Tracy Holsinger
Vijita Fernando
Vikram Seth
Vikrom Mathur
Vivimarie VanderPoorten
William Dalrymple
Yasmine Gooneratne
News
Some links to local press stories - (too many but thankfully not all of these written by me). Please send us more links to news of the festival.
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000010.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000016.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000017.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000019.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000020.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000018.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000010.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000016.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000017.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000019.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000020.html
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080127/Plus/plus000018.html
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Fool and Flea
Dearly beloved,
we are gathered here
to join together
this fool and this flea
in holy matrimony
Fool will sing,
flea will suck.
Fool will work,
flea will pluck.
Both will learn
the virtue of obedience.
Fool will give up his freedom.
Flea will give up
whatever chance
she may have had
at happiness.
Both will die.
Fool first.
Flea so full
she'll burst.
by JEET THAYIL, from the collection ENGLISH
we are gathered here
to join together
this fool and this flea
in holy matrimony
Fool will sing,
flea will suck.
Fool will work,
flea will pluck.
Both will learn
the virtue of obedience.
Fool will give up his freedom.
Flea will give up
whatever chance
she may have had
at happiness.
Both will die.
Fool first.
Flea so full
she'll burst.
by JEET THAYIL, from the collection ENGLISH
Vikram Seth Answers Questions
This question was about the source of his novel AN EQUAL MUSIC, and his knowledge of Western classical music.
'I love music. Of course that’s no qualification for being able to write a novel about it. In fact music, like any other art, seems to be a particularly poor subject for a novel. Because how do you explain one art in terms of another? The second disqualification is that my own training – my original training – was in Indian classical music. North Indian classical music I should say (because we have Karnatik music as well as Hindustani music so to speak). I played the flute for a while – but basically it was gazal singing and a bit of tabla just to get the thal right.
I came to Western music somewhat late. I’d heard a little bit of it when I was young but basically it was when I was in university in England; and largely through a friend who loved Bach. And actually that was a wonderful ingress into Western music because there are aspects of Bach which are very appreciable by people trained in the Indian tradition. So that’s how I got into it; and twenty years or twenty five years later I wrote this novel about Western music, called AN EQUAL MUSIC.
The first question is why or how did the novel come about? That happened because I was walking across Hyde Park on a rainy day with a friend of mine: a musician, in fact the dedicatee of the book.
And I said “Phillipe, I have this sudden feeling that this chap who is staring at the Serpentine is related to my next book. But tell me something about him – I don’t know his nationality, his profession…”
Phillipe says “well, where is this person?”
I said “no, I mean in my mind’s eye”
He says “all I can say is, he’s a musician.”
I said “well that’s special pleading – you’re a musician. But can you go on from there?”
“Well, he’s a violinist”
“Phillipe, I know you’re a violinist, but the violin isn’t my favourite instrument. Can’t he be a cellist?”
“No, he’d have to lug it around.”
And that’s how it began.
But the problem about writing about music was…I had to somehow make the musical bits of it not seem like concert notes...I basically thought that the only way of getting around it would be to write it in the first person: in the voice of a real musician, in whose mouth all this stuff would not seem like jargon but like his own obsessions. But of course the problem with the first person is the first person is an unreliable person – not only vis a vis his own memories, but also his judgement of other people. Whereas someone who writes, say, A SUITABLE BOY is sort of semi-omniscient and can tell you what these people are and who they are and so on, the first person narrator is someone who is intrinsically suspect. So that came in as an unexpected side effect of trying to get around the musical problem.'
'I love music. Of course that’s no qualification for being able to write a novel about it. In fact music, like any other art, seems to be a particularly poor subject for a novel. Because how do you explain one art in terms of another? The second disqualification is that my own training – my original training – was in Indian classical music. North Indian classical music I should say (because we have Karnatik music as well as Hindustani music so to speak). I played the flute for a while – but basically it was gazal singing and a bit of tabla just to get the thal right.
I came to Western music somewhat late. I’d heard a little bit of it when I was young but basically it was when I was in university in England; and largely through a friend who loved Bach. And actually that was a wonderful ingress into Western music because there are aspects of Bach which are very appreciable by people trained in the Indian tradition. So that’s how I got into it; and twenty years or twenty five years later I wrote this novel about Western music, called AN EQUAL MUSIC.
The first question is why or how did the novel come about? That happened because I was walking across Hyde Park on a rainy day with a friend of mine: a musician, in fact the dedicatee of the book.
And I said “Phillipe, I have this sudden feeling that this chap who is staring at the Serpentine is related to my next book. But tell me something about him – I don’t know his nationality, his profession…”
Phillipe says “well, where is this person?”
I said “no, I mean in my mind’s eye”
He says “all I can say is, he’s a musician.”
I said “well that’s special pleading – you’re a musician. But can you go on from there?”
“Well, he’s a violinist”
“Phillipe, I know you’re a violinist, but the violin isn’t my favourite instrument. Can’t he be a cellist?”
“No, he’d have to lug it around.”
And that’s how it began.
But the problem about writing about music was…I had to somehow make the musical bits of it not seem like concert notes...I basically thought that the only way of getting around it would be to write it in the first person: in the voice of a real musician, in whose mouth all this stuff would not seem like jargon but like his own obsessions. But of course the problem with the first person is the first person is an unreliable person – not only vis a vis his own memories, but also his judgement of other people. Whereas someone who writes, say, A SUITABLE BOY is sort of semi-omniscient and can tell you what these people are and who they are and so on, the first person narrator is someone who is intrinsically suspect. So that came in as an unexpected side effect of trying to get around the musical problem.'
Tishani Doshi Is Writing a Novel (that is, in addition to her poetry and dance and Antarctic travel and cricket biography)
'I’ve been working on it a long time so it’s gone through many different versions. It feels like I’ve written three books about the same story in very different styles. But I think it takes time to find your pace with something that’s quite new.
It’s a love story. It’s loosely based on my parents and I wanted to explore this idea of what it means to pick up your life and go somewhere just because you fall in love. (Tishani's father is Gujarati and her mother is from North Wales) The story of my parents is quite remarkable. It wasn’t that long ago but we don’t live in that time anymore. To have a long distance love-affair or relationship now is quite easy: you have skype, email, texts, you can call each other easily. At that time, they wrote to each other every day for six months when they couldn’t see each other. And I thought that was such a sweet testament.
And some of those letters are still there and so I discovered the letters and I got to know my parents as different people through those letters. I had thought of them as my parents and then suddenly to try and imagine them before I existed was such a fun thing.
Somebody was talking about the tradition of story telling in our part of the world and I thought: ‘nobody told me many stories and I wanted to know those stories!’ I had no grandparents who sat me on their lap, I had no aunt. My parents never spoke that much: they’d tell me the same two or three stories over and over again. And I thought: give me some juice! They were very reluctant so finally what I did was to take the bare-boned story of it and create my own thing. So it’s entirely fictionalised by I guess the root of it is loosely based on them, and then it goes back and forwards in generation.
It’s called THE PLEASURE SEEKERS and it’s a quest novel. The characters are chasing what I call pleasure. Not in a purely hedonistic sense. They’re going against the grain: not saying ‘I’m going to do this because it is what’s expected of me’ but ‘I’m going to do that because it’s what gives me joy’.'
It’s a love story. It’s loosely based on my parents and I wanted to explore this idea of what it means to pick up your life and go somewhere just because you fall in love. (Tishani's father is Gujarati and her mother is from North Wales) The story of my parents is quite remarkable. It wasn’t that long ago but we don’t live in that time anymore. To have a long distance love-affair or relationship now is quite easy: you have skype, email, texts, you can call each other easily. At that time, they wrote to each other every day for six months when they couldn’t see each other. And I thought that was such a sweet testament.
And some of those letters are still there and so I discovered the letters and I got to know my parents as different people through those letters. I had thought of them as my parents and then suddenly to try and imagine them before I existed was such a fun thing.
Somebody was talking about the tradition of story telling in our part of the world and I thought: ‘nobody told me many stories and I wanted to know those stories!’ I had no grandparents who sat me on their lap, I had no aunt. My parents never spoke that much: they’d tell me the same two or three stories over and over again. And I thought: give me some juice! They were very reluctant so finally what I did was to take the bare-boned story of it and create my own thing. So it’s entirely fictionalised by I guess the root of it is loosely based on them, and then it goes back and forwards in generation.
It’s called THE PLEASURE SEEKERS and it’s a quest novel. The characters are chasing what I call pleasure. Not in a purely hedonistic sense. They’re going against the grain: not saying ‘I’m going to do this because it is what’s expected of me’ but ‘I’m going to do that because it’s what gives me joy’.'
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Slumming in Bombay, Beelzebub
found himself at home. Finally, he
had a reason for lethargy.
Inert like everybody, unable to work,
he blamed the humidity.
No use to say, 'But B,
that's what this city does, man, saps you,
leaves you spent like change,
separates the dudes from the ditties.'
He was having none of it,
and then the boss arrived, unexpected,
on a Sunday.
But the boss - now what? - had changed.
Hard as it was to believe,
she was kind, distracted, funny,
endearing even.
The day she came to take him home,
they were seen at the Hanging Gardens,
hand in hand, watching the dust bees
ride their favourite pollen machines.
It was Christmas Day, just after dawn,
the heat and humidity at peace
it seemed, and Beelzebub's boss serene.
by JEET THAYIL from the collection ENGLISH
had a reason for lethargy.
Inert like everybody, unable to work,
he blamed the humidity.
No use to say, 'But B,
that's what this city does, man, saps you,
leaves you spent like change,
separates the dudes from the ditties.'
He was having none of it,
and then the boss arrived, unexpected,
on a Sunday.
But the boss - now what? - had changed.
Hard as it was to believe,
she was kind, distracted, funny,
endearing even.
The day she came to take him home,
they were seen at the Hanging Gardens,
hand in hand, watching the dust bees
ride their favourite pollen machines.
It was Christmas Day, just after dawn,
the heat and humidity at peace
it seemed, and Beelzebub's boss serene.
by JEET THAYIL from the collection ENGLISH
Panel Discussion
On Friday morning Sophie Hannah reminded us that it isn't only poets who are promiscuous drunks. Some novelists are, and some policemen and bakers and investment bankers.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Poetry Slam at the Sun House
Were you there? Did you hear Suman Sridhar’s wonderful ironic soprano and Sophie Hannah’s (equally ironic) poems in the voices of guarded ex-lovers? Were you sitting in the beds of the Sun House’s tiered garden because there was no space left on the verandah? Did you stay out the fire in the electric mains till the lights came back on? Did you read a poem yourself? Wasn’t it good?
One Out-Take From An Interview With Alexander McCall Smith
I interviewed Alexander McCall Smith for a newspaper and we had such a long and reflective conversation that there is enough material to go into both this blog and the article.
One thing that really struck me was when he said that he finds kindness very interesting as a subject of literary interest. And that forgiveness is another thing he is thinking a lot about as he writes the next Isabel Dalhousie novel while he’s here in Galle. He reflected that we live in very unforgiving times and that cultures of accountability can lead to the failure of forgiveness as we look for someone to blame. Concerns for public safety too can lead us to back ourselves into a corner and get stuck in a circle of alarm and restriction and recrimination. Mma Ramotswe on the other hand sometimes tells her wrong-doers that she’ll let them off as long as they don’t do it again. She is, in her own words, ‘a forgiving lady’.
I will send you a link to the full article when it’s published or, if it isn’t, publish it here.
One thing that really struck me was when he said that he finds kindness very interesting as a subject of literary interest. And that forgiveness is another thing he is thinking a lot about as he writes the next Isabel Dalhousie novel while he’s here in Galle. He reflected that we live in very unforgiving times and that cultures of accountability can lead to the failure of forgiveness as we look for someone to blame. Concerns for public safety too can lead us to back ourselves into a corner and get stuck in a circle of alarm and restriction and recrimination. Mma Ramotswe on the other hand sometimes tells her wrong-doers that she’ll let them off as long as they don’t do it again. She is, in her own words, ‘a forgiving lady’.
I will send you a link to the full article when it’s published or, if it isn’t, publish it here.
In Their Own Words
Rather than just hear my accounts of the festival I thought you might like to hear some of our writers in their own voices. Below is a ten minute excerpt from Friday afternoon’s session on ‘Longing and Belonging’. There was a lot more in the session – and interesting accounts from all the panellists, Shyam Selvadurai, Karen Roberts, Channa Wickremesekera and Randy Boygoda – but here is just a ten minute out-take:
RANDY BOYAGODA (imagine the accents as you read this one)
‘My most recent experience with the diasporic community in Toronto was this past spring – I was asked to be something like the Chief Guest of Honour at the Sri Lankan New Year celebration in the east end of Toronto. And I was asked to do this because I’d written a novel that making fun of official multiculturalism and of ethnic parading. And then there I was on stage parading around with everyone else and I sort of brought this up through my remarks and – dead silence in the crowd – everybody was too busy playing with their video cameras getting ready for their kids to dance on stage. I don’t think anybody was listening.
But there was another experience – this Omni [have I got this wrong?] television channel – which is the ethnic station in Toronto. And at some point someone called me wanting to know if I’d come on to their Sri Lankan Sunday morning News-Hour show to talk about my book. So I said,
“ok I will get my publisher to send you a copy and some advance material”
“No no no no, just come on and talk it’s ok!”
…I said “look I’m not going to come on your show and basically talk about how my book makes fun of shows like yours unless you read this”. So he was very upset with me and said, “ah, right!” hung up the phone. And Penguin sent him a copy of the material and I never heard back from him (I don’t think the stuff was ever opened) and then my mother, who watches the show, called me up very excited and said
‘Son, son, they mentioned your show on Sri Lankan News-Hour today’
‘What did they say?’
She said “They said this: [And here Randy does a voice of great alarm and ponderous amazement]
‘One of our own has published a book with the Penguin’”
[…]
SHYAM SELVADURAI
‘Randy I was going to say that’s one of the differences between you and me – I’ve sat through enough Royal College prizegivings. I know to say “no, I’m not going! I know how long those things go for.”
How has it shaped my relationship with the community here? I don’t know. The thing about literature is it doesn’t really do that oddly. You write the book in private and then people read it in private. It’s not a communal activity reading a book – so it’s very hard to say that it’s changed my relationship with the community. The relationship just continues on as it is.
[Rama Mani asks Shyam about arriving in Sri Lanka now 25 years after the 1983 riots and how in his mind that relates to the place he left after the riots, “how have you been conscious and not conscious of being as you say a Sinhalese speaking Tamil as you’ve come in this time?’]
‘Ok, I see what you mean. Well to be honest I had actually forgotten it was 25 years – I’m ashamed to say that because considering FUNNY BOY everybody probably thinks I should remember that. I think one of the things is, Rama, I’ve been coming back so often now that there are layers upon layers of experience. So I wasn’t feeling greatly nostalgic for my childhood or the post-1983 period. I was more thinking of being in my 20s and coming here to do research and then coming with my partner to spend a year here. Those are stronger memories and things that draw me back than my childhood anymore. I’m not really interested in going back to my childhood house. The only place I really want to go and visit is the place where my partner and I lived for a year and spend time with the landlady and talk and have a meal and stuff.
I think what you want me to talk about is the fact that I have a Tamil name but I’m actually more Sinhalese in many ways because I speak Sinhalese and I don’t speak Tamil and I eat Sinhalese food and I don’t eat Tamil food… And that thing that happens between two people in the course of one minute where you can read each other – you can read an amazing amount of stuff about somebody in a minute: I can read a Sinhalese person but I can’t read a Tamil person from Jaffna, for example; I don’t know what the social markers are. So it’s always very strange for me that I have this Tamil name that then puts me in this oddly vulnerable position with checkpoints and the military and all that. I don’t know how to describe it: it’s just an odd disjunction for me. It’s not that I’m not proud of being Tamil. I’m very proud of being Tamil but I’m also very proud of the Sinhalese part of me but that’s always kind of cut out. The war forces me to cut it out of myself. It forces me into this one little box into which I don’t feel I quite belong.’
RANDY BOYAGODA (imagine the accents as you read this one)
‘My most recent experience with the diasporic community in Toronto was this past spring – I was asked to be something like the Chief Guest of Honour at the Sri Lankan New Year celebration in the east end of Toronto. And I was asked to do this because I’d written a novel that making fun of official multiculturalism and of ethnic parading. And then there I was on stage parading around with everyone else and I sort of brought this up through my remarks and – dead silence in the crowd – everybody was too busy playing with their video cameras getting ready for their kids to dance on stage. I don’t think anybody was listening.
But there was another experience – this Omni [have I got this wrong?] television channel – which is the ethnic station in Toronto. And at some point someone called me wanting to know if I’d come on to their Sri Lankan Sunday morning News-Hour show to talk about my book. So I said,
“ok I will get my publisher to send you a copy and some advance material”
“No no no no, just come on and talk it’s ok!”
…I said “look I’m not going to come on your show and basically talk about how my book makes fun of shows like yours unless you read this”. So he was very upset with me and said, “ah, right!” hung up the phone. And Penguin sent him a copy of the material and I never heard back from him (I don’t think the stuff was ever opened) and then my mother, who watches the show, called me up very excited and said
‘Son, son, they mentioned your show on Sri Lankan News-Hour today’
‘What did they say?’
She said “They said this: [And here Randy does a voice of great alarm and ponderous amazement]
‘One of our own has published a book with the Penguin’”
[…]
SHYAM SELVADURAI
‘Randy I was going to say that’s one of the differences between you and me – I’ve sat through enough Royal College prizegivings. I know to say “no, I’m not going! I know how long those things go for.”
How has it shaped my relationship with the community here? I don’t know. The thing about literature is it doesn’t really do that oddly. You write the book in private and then people read it in private. It’s not a communal activity reading a book – so it’s very hard to say that it’s changed my relationship with the community. The relationship just continues on as it is.
[Rama Mani asks Shyam about arriving in Sri Lanka now 25 years after the 1983 riots and how in his mind that relates to the place he left after the riots, “how have you been conscious and not conscious of being as you say a Sinhalese speaking Tamil as you’ve come in this time?’]
‘Ok, I see what you mean. Well to be honest I had actually forgotten it was 25 years – I’m ashamed to say that because considering FUNNY BOY everybody probably thinks I should remember that. I think one of the things is, Rama, I’ve been coming back so often now that there are layers upon layers of experience. So I wasn’t feeling greatly nostalgic for my childhood or the post-1983 period. I was more thinking of being in my 20s and coming here to do research and then coming with my partner to spend a year here. Those are stronger memories and things that draw me back than my childhood anymore. I’m not really interested in going back to my childhood house. The only place I really want to go and visit is the place where my partner and I lived for a year and spend time with the landlady and talk and have a meal and stuff.
I think what you want me to talk about is the fact that I have a Tamil name but I’m actually more Sinhalese in many ways because I speak Sinhalese and I don’t speak Tamil and I eat Sinhalese food and I don’t eat Tamil food… And that thing that happens between two people in the course of one minute where you can read each other – you can read an amazing amount of stuff about somebody in a minute: I can read a Sinhalese person but I can’t read a Tamil person from Jaffna, for example; I don’t know what the social markers are. So it’s always very strange for me that I have this Tamil name that then puts me in this oddly vulnerable position with checkpoints and the military and all that. I don’t know how to describe it: it’s just an odd disjunction for me. It’s not that I’m not proud of being Tamil. I’m very proud of being Tamil but I’m also very proud of the Sinhalese part of me but that’s always kind of cut out. The war forces me to cut it out of myself. It forces me into this one little box into which I don’t feel I quite belong.’
Thursday (as I knew it - tell me what I missed!)
My day began in a small classroom of the Mercantile Seamen’s Training Institute where, ironically, I was to run a writing workshop for thirty teenagers. One of the students of the Institute, who’d been instructed to scrub the whiteboards extra clean for us, was pleasantly intrigued by the Festival’s invasion and wanted to know more about it. My Sinhala isn’t as literary as I’d like it to be but I conveyed it was all about writing. Quite possibly I then confused the matter by running a very noisy and active workshop immediately afterwards as we all moved around the room creating stories out of thin air. Counting our characters, there must have been a good seventy of us crowded into the room (directly outside was a small, quiet cove to bring the contrast home).
When we emerged we discovered we hadn’t been the only group making a big noise. Several excited people told me I’d ‘missed a fiery morning’ at the session discussing the Gratiaen Prize (controversy was inevitable then whether the poor Gratiaen Prize wanted it or not?). But now the afternoon’s sessions were already upon us and soon I was up on the high high Maritime Museum stage with fellow theatre folk, then rushing to the bijoux Galle Fort Library for a reflective Creative Writing Workshop with Shyam Selvadurai. Fifteen of us sat around a small pot of synthetic flowers on an old wooden table as Shyam quietly encouraged us through exercises and ideas. This was definitely the calm after a storming first day.
Coming out of the workshop I bumped into a friend and persuaded her she was dressed quite perfectly for the evening’s cocktail party and should come and have a quick restorative drink with me instead of rushing back to her hotel to change (she was understandably none too pleased when after the drink I decided to slip into my guesthouse and a sari). But before long we were all barefoot on the cool white floors of Orchard House, with fruity arrack concoctions in hand.
When we emerged we discovered we hadn’t been the only group making a big noise. Several excited people told me I’d ‘missed a fiery morning’ at the session discussing the Gratiaen Prize (controversy was inevitable then whether the poor Gratiaen Prize wanted it or not?). But now the afternoon’s sessions were already upon us and soon I was up on the high high Maritime Museum stage with fellow theatre folk, then rushing to the bijoux Galle Fort Library for a reflective Creative Writing Workshop with Shyam Selvadurai. Fifteen of us sat around a small pot of synthetic flowers on an old wooden table as Shyam quietly encouraged us through exercises and ideas. This was definitely the calm after a storming first day.
Coming out of the workshop I bumped into a friend and persuaded her she was dressed quite perfectly for the evening’s cocktail party and should come and have a quick restorative drink with me instead of rushing back to her hotel to change (she was understandably none too pleased when after the drink I decided to slip into my guesthouse and a sari). But before long we were all barefoot on the cool white floors of Orchard House, with fruity arrack concoctions in hand.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
A highlight of today's architectural tour
I’d like to dedicate a particular entry to the chapel built by Valentine Gunasekera onto the home of the Bishop of Galle. It is (and these are the comments of lay person) a fabulous room (in more ways than one) - full of suggestive arcs and incisions. It is cut open with light and air and hung with a careful asymmetry of ceiling fans and neon lights. But it has fallen into terrible disrepair and we heard a rumour that it might be demolished. This simply must not be allowed to happen. I wish you could all see it.
Wednesday
It’s midnight and I have a 9 o’clock session tomorrow morning and I should be getting some sleep. But first there is so much to tell you about today.
The BAWA AND BEYOND architecture tour was scheduled to set off at 8:15am. So I had an early morning walk down Pedlar Street and Lighthouse Street and Church Street. I watched a vegetable seller on his bike stopping at to sell bananas and sarana and gossip with the mistress of each house he passed. I saw sari-ed schoolteachers rushing in pairs to a school that was already chirping with unbroken voices.
This was followed by a wonderful tour led by Channa Daswatte of houses and temples and small hotels between Galle and Tangalle. We were given access to the home of the Bishop of Galle (built in part by the uncompromisingly modernist Valentine Gunasekera) and talked through the Victorian murals of the Kataluwa temple (where each wall is painted by a different family of artists). More often than not we were greeted – in true Sri Lankan style – with food and drink. We had kirala juice at Kurulubedde, orange squash and a large chocolate cake at the Bishop’s house, and glasses of cold water at Amanwella. At Geoffrey Bawa’s ‘Last House’ we stopped for passionfruit juice and hansi putu (chaises longues) and a delicious rice and curry lunch. At the end of the day we waded out to Taprobane Island through (a low) high tide. But Channa’s commentary was the best bit – mixing architectural insights with architect’s anecdotes and pointing out stories that lay along the roadside.
Did you know, for example, that
Geoffrey Bawa came to think the roof the most important part of any building in monsoon Asia?
It was the Southern School of mural painting in Sri Lanka that brought the everyday (the latest lamps and fabrics and ways of life) into the depiction of religious folklore?
The plane bringing news to Sri Lanka of Japanese attack during the Second World War itself crashed off the coast of Koggala (and the pilot had to swim ashore with the news)?
Bawa had the foundations of the Ruhuna campus buildings moved after they had been laid down in too regular and rectangular a way?
There has long been a temple to Vishnu at Devinuwara (‘city of the gods’), the southernmost point of the Indian Subcontinent, that looks straight out to the Antarctic?
The BAWA AND BEYOND architecture tour was scheduled to set off at 8:15am. So I had an early morning walk down Pedlar Street and Lighthouse Street and Church Street. I watched a vegetable seller on his bike stopping at to sell bananas and sarana and gossip with the mistress of each house he passed. I saw sari-ed schoolteachers rushing in pairs to a school that was already chirping with unbroken voices.
This was followed by a wonderful tour led by Channa Daswatte of houses and temples and small hotels between Galle and Tangalle. We were given access to the home of the Bishop of Galle (built in part by the uncompromisingly modernist Valentine Gunasekera) and talked through the Victorian murals of the Kataluwa temple (where each wall is painted by a different family of artists). More often than not we were greeted – in true Sri Lankan style – with food and drink. We had kirala juice at Kurulubedde, orange squash and a large chocolate cake at the Bishop’s house, and glasses of cold water at Amanwella. At Geoffrey Bawa’s ‘Last House’ we stopped for passionfruit juice and hansi putu (chaises longues) and a delicious rice and curry lunch. At the end of the day we waded out to Taprobane Island through (a low) high tide. But Channa’s commentary was the best bit – mixing architectural insights with architect’s anecdotes and pointing out stories that lay along the roadside.
Did you know, for example, that
Geoffrey Bawa came to think the roof the most important part of any building in monsoon Asia?
It was the Southern School of mural painting in Sri Lanka that brought the everyday (the latest lamps and fabrics and ways of life) into the depiction of religious folklore?
The plane bringing news to Sri Lanka of Japanese attack during the Second World War itself crashed off the coast of Koggala (and the pilot had to swim ashore with the news)?
Bawa had the foundations of the Ruhuna campus buildings moved after they had been laid down in too regular and rectangular a way?
There has long been a temple to Vishnu at Devinuwara (‘city of the gods’), the southernmost point of the Indian Subcontinent, that looks straight out to the Antarctic?
From 'The Crocodile and The Monkey'
‘On the Ganga’s greenest isle
Lived Kuroop the crocodile:
Greeny-brown with gentle grin,
Stubby legs and scaly skin,
He would view with tepid eyes
Prey below a certain size –
But when a substantial dish
-Dolphin, turtle, fatter fish –
Swam across his field of view,
He would test the water too.
Out he’d glide, a floating log,
Silent as a polliwog –
Nearer, nearer, till his prey
Swam a single length away;
Then he’d lunge with smiling head,
Grab, and snap, and rip it dead –
Then (prime pleasure of his life)
Drag the carcass to his wife,
Lay it humbly at her feet,
Eat a bit, and watch her eat.
All along the river-bank
Mango trees stood rank on rank,
And his monkey friend would throw
To his as he swam below
Mangoes gold and ripe and sweet
As a special summer treat.
“Crocodile, your wife, I know
Hungers after mangoes so
That she’d pine and weep and swoon,
Mango-less in burning June”
Then Kuroop the crocodile,
Gazing upwards with a smile,
Thus addressed his monkey friend:
“Dearest monkey, in the end,
Not the fruit, but your sweet love,
Showered on us from above,
Constant through the changing years,
Slakes her griefs and dries her tears.”
(This was only partly true.
She liked love, and mangoes too.)…’
Read the rest in BEASTLY TALES FROM HERE AND THERE by Vikram Seth.
Lived Kuroop the crocodile:
Greeny-brown with gentle grin,
Stubby legs and scaly skin,
He would view with tepid eyes
Prey below a certain size –
But when a substantial dish
-Dolphin, turtle, fatter fish –
Swam across his field of view,
He would test the water too.
Out he’d glide, a floating log,
Silent as a polliwog –
Nearer, nearer, till his prey
Swam a single length away;
Then he’d lunge with smiling head,
Grab, and snap, and rip it dead –
Then (prime pleasure of his life)
Drag the carcass to his wife,
Lay it humbly at her feet,
Eat a bit, and watch her eat.
All along the river-bank
Mango trees stood rank on rank,
And his monkey friend would throw
To his as he swam below
Mangoes gold and ripe and sweet
As a special summer treat.
“Crocodile, your wife, I know
Hungers after mangoes so
That she’d pine and weep and swoon,
Mango-less in burning June”
Then Kuroop the crocodile,
Gazing upwards with a smile,
Thus addressed his monkey friend:
“Dearest monkey, in the end,
Not the fruit, but your sweet love,
Showered on us from above,
Constant through the changing years,
Slakes her griefs and dries her tears.”
(This was only partly true.
She liked love, and mangoes too.)…’
Read the rest in BEASTLY TALES FROM HERE AND THERE by Vikram Seth.
Home Ground
I drove down to Galle with Michael Roberts who grew up inside the Fort. As we drove in he told me the names the families who had lived in the houses we passed. He told me how once during a game of Hide and Seek as a boy he hid in the dungeons of the Fort (now closed) because everyone else was too scared to come looking for him there.
Michael told me about cycling to swim in the sea at Closenberg and remembers sociable times at the tennis tournaments of the Galle Gymkhana Club. A regular day, he said, might include a swim, a game of tennis, or an evening’s game of cricket on his school grounds, now the Test grounds at Galle.
Michael told me about cycling to swim in the sea at Closenberg and remembers sociable times at the tennis tournaments of the Galle Gymkhana Club. A regular day, he said, might include a swim, a game of tennis, or an evening’s game of cricket on his school grounds, now the Test grounds at Galle.
CHAPTER ONE of BOOK ONE
At the opening of the Festival it seems right to send you some openers by writers of the Festival. For now we’re limited to books on my own shelves but I hope to find the time for quick browsing at the Barefoot bookshop and bring you some more.
‘Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea. And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need?
Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course.’
From THE NUMBER 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY by Alexander McCall Smith
‘Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea. And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need?
Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course.’
From THE NUMBER 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY by Alexander McCall Smith
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Festival Begins Tomorrow
I am scrambling to finish everything before I set off to Galle this scorching afternoon. I must print out material for a workshop I'm running, I must reach Brian Keenan on the road, I must find my sunglasses. I can only imagine what the Festival organisers are up to at this moment, laying in the final touches before tomorrow. My festival bag arrived yesterday and the meticulous organisation of tickets and schedules within it I think bodes well. I'm really quite excited.
Since the festival begins tomorrow there is a little time now just to talk about Galle. Galle has always been one of my favourite places in the country. Not only is the sea at nearly it's bluest at Galle but inside the Fort is a town in miniature, and out of time. The old streetlamps and the Dutch streetnames and the mosque bear (in miniature) the history of this place that was a Portuguese settlement, a fort of the Dutch East India company and where a predominantly Muslim population now live their daily life.
I hope the residents of Galle are amenable to the imminent literary influx. See you there tomorrow.
Since the festival begins tomorrow there is a little time now just to talk about Galle. Galle has always been one of my favourite places in the country. Not only is the sea at nearly it's bluest at Galle but inside the Fort is a town in miniature, and out of time. The old streetlamps and the Dutch streetnames and the mosque bear (in miniature) the history of this place that was a Portuguese settlement, a fort of the Dutch East India company and where a predominantly Muslim population now live their daily life.
I hope the residents of Galle are amenable to the imminent literary influx. See you there tomorrow.
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