{"id":23061,"date":"2024-12-04T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/?p=23061"},"modified":"2024-11-27T10:57:37","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T09:57:37","slug":"ashok-ferry-on-writing-sri-lanka-and-his-younger-selves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/2024\/12\/04\/ashok-ferry-on-writing-sri-lanka-and-his-younger-selves\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashok Ferry on writing Sri Lanka and his younger selves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“This society is fragmented \u2013 it\u2019s a product of colonialism, but it\u2019s also just a fact of paradise island.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashok Ferry is a Sri Lankan author of seven novels, including The Unmarriageable Man, which won the Gratiaen Prize in 2021, one of the highest literary awards in Sri Lanka. He is based in Colombo, and spent his earlier years in Sri Lanka, throughout East Africa, and the United Kingdom.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A central theme in your writing is grief \u2013 but it really seems to take different faces. In The Unmarriageable Man<\/em>, Sanjay is grieving his dad, his relationship, but also his life in Sri Lanka with his family. He seems to be plotting his return to Sri Lanka almost immediately after arriving in London which subverts the common idea of an \u2018American dream\u2019 (or in this case \u2018British dream\u2019). What was your thinking behind this?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You hit the nail on the head. For many people, they want to get to the West at any price.  I grew up in Sri Lanka until the age of eight, and then in East Africa until eleven, and then England. So, I had been out of my home country from a young age, and I was itching to get back, but I also knew that to have a life in Sri Lanka, you need money. I could see that the government in Sri Lanka was tumbling, and I knew I had to work in England and make money. But I also thought that I would move back by thirty \u2013 whether or not I had any money. What really happened, is that thirty came and went, the money came, and I stayed a bit longer before returning. And all of my books are autobiographical \u2013 for me, writing is like vomiting after drinking too much. I never sat down to be a writer; it just came out of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanjay discovers he\u2019s half British, but his \u2018Britishness\u2019 seems to really only go so far as passport \u2013 when he gets to London, his camaraderie is mostly with undocumented Sri Lankans, and he\u2019s largely seen as an outsider.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly, the \u2018Britishness\u2019 is irrelevant. I wanted to make Sanjay a bit more British than I am – I\u2019m not a British citizen. But Sanjay is also so diametrically opposed to many Sri Lankans who go to the West and all too happily ditch their belonging to the home country \u2013 and their home country only creeps back later in their life. We\u2019ve just had elections here and Colombo is crawling with elderly Sri Lankans who have sold their soul to go to the West and they\u2019re back here not knowing what to do. I feel like tapping them on the shoulder and saying, \u2018you did it wrong, you should have come back when you had your wits about you!\u2019 But it\u2019s so easy to be wise after the event \u2013 and it says a lot about the Western countries that they\u2019re able to sell you this dream. But I wanted to show the other side of the picture \u2013 to show a Sri Lankan that only went there out of sufferance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


This is a great segue to the character of Janak \u2013 a Sri Lankan man who embodies so much of Sri Lanka, but who can\u2019t necessarily come back because of his queerness. What is your thinking there?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly, there are many Sri Lankans that can\u2019t come back because of so many things, including \u2018unsuitable marriages,\u2019 \u2013 even a young man with a much older woman! Sri Lanka is still a very traditional country. There are many Sri Lankans in the West who can\u2019t come back, but that Sri Lankanness will never leave them. I\u2019ve seen grandchildren come back and say,+ \u2018oh my God, this is where I belong.\u2019 However, the sad truth is that in many ways, living in the West can spoil you from living here. You can no longer deal with the heat, mosquitoes, the \u2018ma\u00f1ana ma\u00f1ana\u2019 life. You go to the West and do very well \u2013 I always say that all it takes for a Sri Lankan to do well in the West is to get on a plane! \u2013 you make money, you come back, but in many ways, you can\u2019t survive here for more than a few months at a time. When I came back to Sri Lanka, it was pretty much a foreigner. It took me seventeen years to start thinking like a Sri Lankan. My decision to come back was an intellectual one, not an emotional one \u2013 I decided this was the place for me. When I came back, we were in two wars at that time. In that first year back in Sri Lanka, people asked me why I came back, like I was a lunatic! I wanted to be part of this country, but foreigners are often viewed with suspicion here. Society in Sri Lanka doesn\u2019t really want you \u2013 the thinking is \u2018who are you, as a foreigner, to tell me how to do things!\u2019 There\u2019s a sense of poetic justice there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka is a post-British colonial state. There\u2019s a sense of injustice around this severing of communities with their homeland, isn\u2019t there?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have bought into this dream after 450 years of colonialism. Many of my friends, for example, are Irish. And the Irish, good on them, loathe the British! We would sit at worker\u2019s teas and damn the British, but we were both making our money in Britain. And no one was forcing us to go to London, that\u2019s one of the horrible byproducts of colonialism \u2013 it teaches us to revere the colonial master, and that life is better in the Imperial Capital than in the slave state. But life here, in many ways, is far better! But try telling that to some Sri Lankans living in London, they think I\u2019m mad. If you live in the West, you can buy wholesale into the idea of the \u2018Third World Country\u2019 with shooters on rooftops \u2013 which is more likely to happen at a Trump election than here!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before we wrap up, I wanted to ask about language \u2013 which can be very incendiary in Sri Lanka. There\u2019s been so much language-based persecution, and I wanted to ask how that\u2019s impacted your writing and how this has impacted the literary landscape in English?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe Sri Lanka \u2013 and I could be wrong \u2013 is the most colonized country in the world. 450 years between the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British. We went through many colonial ideologies, largely European, and for those reasons, it\u2019s hard for us to think of us having an identity. We\u2019ve gone through regimes that have invented identities, like the Sinhala Buddhist nationalism \u2013 what happens if you\u2019re a Sinhala Catholic, or Tamil Hindu, or a Burgur Christian? What about us? It was a shorthand to say Sri Lanka is Sinhala Buddhist, but that\u2019s wrong. In India even, there\u2019s a homogeneous quality that we don\u2019t have. We pride ourselves on the mosaic quality of us, but it\u2019s only when you stand back that this makes sense \u2013 not up close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So yes, language is explosive here. If you write in English, you can be perceived somewhat as an enemy. Between the three languages of Sri Lanka, very rarely do Sri Lankans read in the other language. My first book, Colpetty People<\/em>, written in English, is a bestseller in Sri Lanka, still hasn\u2019t found a translator. It\u2019s crazy, a best-selling book hasn\u2019t been translated into its home languages. This is because it\u2019s a comedy and hard to translate, but also because there\u2019s very few people that are truly bilingual here. People turned their backs on the colonial language, but we need English, and we\u2019re too ashamed to admit that we don\u2019t speak it well. It\u2019s a comedy of errors, but it also gets worse \u2013 Sinhala and Tamil are diglossic, which means that it\u2019s spoken differently than it\u2019s written. Written Sinhala is courtly, Sanskritic \u2013 beautiful, and no bloody use to anyone. Everyone in Colombo speaks \u2018kitchen Sinhala,\u2019 which is frowned upon. My friends who write in \u2018street Sinhala,\u2019 boy do they get criticized for it. The intelligentsia feel they\u2019re disrespecting the language. But when you write in \u2018proper\u2019 Sinhala, it’s not accessible. We\u2019re just caught here. It\u2019s changing, but it\u2019s very slow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, I\u2019m glad my books aren\u2019t translated. I wonder how Sri Lankans would react to my satirical work, for example \u2013 English humour is crueller than Sinhala or Tamil humour. It\u2019s a mine field, and you can play it safe, but no one will read it. This society is fragmented \u2013 it\u2019s a product of colonialism, but it\u2019s also just a fact of paradise island. Therein, though, lies beauty. Making sense of it is a Herculean task, but always an interesting one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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