Ah, where do I begin now? Perhaps, some arrack will help me. No, that’ll only help Shehan Karunatilaka’s protagonists and not this essay that I’m writing. Whether it’s WG Karunasena from Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (2010), or Maali Almeida from the recent Booker winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022, Penguin India, Rs 399, 400 pages), I’ve found out that it’s mostly liquor that keeps them happy. Suffice it to say that reading Karunatilaka’s works is akin to sharing a table at a dive bar with strangers whose desires align with yours. Loud conversations and louder cries for attention are, therefore, inevitable.
And in each of his books, dark humour is pinned to the wall of his prose. This brilliant technique allows him to drive through the hard and sticky parts of his country’s descent. Sri Lanka, which has often been described as an island that looks like a teardrop, cannot erase its past. It’s a burden that several generations will have to carry; the scars left by the Holocaust and Partition of India similarly are too large to ignore.
The Sri Lankan civil war shadows Karunatilaka’s tales. In Chinaman, a tiny section that details the differences between the Sinhalese and the Tamils ends with, “The truth is, whatever differences there may be, they are not large enough to burn down libraries, blow up banks, or send children to minefields. They are not significant enough to waste hundreds of months firing millions of bullets into thousands of bodies.” Isn’t that profound?
War, religion, friendship
On a parallel vein, he also brings down the façade of Buddhism. Take this from Chinaman, “Buddhism is a non-violent, non-materialistic philosophy everywhere, that is, except for this fair island of ours.” And, for a second, take this paragraph from "The Ceylon Islands" (a short story from the collection The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises, 2022), “Buddhism is a way of being grounded in empathy, in benevolence, in non-violence. Ceylon has made a joke of that, a deeply unfunny joke. Those who industrialise aggression — the military, the cops, the gangsters, the politicians — claim to use violence as a last resort. Over here, in the sovereign home of non-violent Buddhism, it is our first port of call.”
Since Buddhism is followed by a large population of Sri Lanka, it naturally rises to become the majority. And when there’s a majority, it flexes its muscles against the minority. This happens, in my opinion, irrespective of religion. If it’s not Buddhism, it’s something else — race, caste, class, sexual orientation, etc. In fact, Almeida is constantly humiliated for being gay. Remarkably, however, Almeida and Karunasena are atheists. The lenses through which they observe the rights and wrongs are probably obtained from the distance they put between gods and themselves.
But, even in this tight space, there’s a lot of cheer. Karunatilaka’s characters are wrapped in the warm blankets of friendship — Karunasena has Ariyaratne Byrd with whom he works on a documentary about Sri Lankan cricketers, and Almeida has Jacqueline Vairavanathan and Dilan Dharmendran, two people whom he can trust from the bottom of his heart.
The Seven Moons..., which is set in the afterlife, doesn’t have angels in wings. Instead, it’s set in the rather dull realm known as the "In Between". Alan Garner's Treacle Walker, which was shortlisted for the Booker this year, also operates on the same level. If these critically-acclaimed books are placed side by side, one will be able to see how authors from different corners of the world are influenced by different myths. While Treacle Walker is a thoroughly enjoyable adventure that involves just a handful of characters, Karunatilaka’s offering is a whodunnit.
Setting and gambling
Karunatilaka usually travels back to the 1980s to chart the political and violent clashes between the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and the Sri Lankan government. He questions the cruelty in furious tones through some of his powerful characters. Almeida, a war photographer, has “photos of the government minister who looked on while the savages of ’83 torched Tamil homes and slaughtered the occupants.”
Unlike the current pandemic that can be brushed aside, it’s quite impossible to set a story in Sri Lanka without digging up the dirt, especially when it involves talking about the past. Maybe, authors who are keen on sharpening their pencils in the alternative history genre can do it. But Karunatilaka is not one of them even though he likes to play with its tropes, as the lines between fantasy and reality are transparent for him. The journalist Karunasena in Chinaman says his hero, Pradeep Mathew, is the greatest cricketer and goes on to brazenly rank him above Muttiah Muralitharan.
In "The Ceylon Islands", the captain of the Sri Lankan cricket team resigns by voicing his anger and displeasure. And he delivers a speech that hits the nail on the head, “I wish to resign as Captain, and to renounce my race and religion. I no longer consider myself a Sinhalese or a Buddhist, as doing so implies complicity to these crimes, implies allegiance to these animals.” And by animals, he means the Buddhist monks who have set fire to Muslim businesses in Kandy.
And as I was wondering about the colourful men of Karunatilaka’s colourful imagination, it occurred to me that it might be because they’re gamblers who lose their money. They sometimes double their earnings, too. Although Almeida gambles like an addict who doesn’t know when to stop, it was Karunasena’s betting on cricket games that kept me chuckling for more than a day. I also happen to think that Karunasena is a better bettor because he’s evidently aware of where he’s putting his bucks.
Death and twist ending
Karunasena spends his twilight years drinking (against the wishes of his wife and friends) and typing up the biography of Mathew, but dies before he’s given the chance to put the finishing touches. And Almeida, who starts off taking pictures of sunsets and elephants, takes a detour later in order to zoom in on serious subjects. Wars kill people from all sides — it doesn’t care for civilians, either.
And interestingly, Chinaman and The Seven Moons age beyond the deaths of their eponymous characters. Karunasena’s son goes to New Zealand to make sense of his father’s ramblings and to find a way to turn the spotlight on Mathew. And Almeida, on the other hand, roams around his buddies and opponents trying to uncover the secret behind his killing. The climactic passages in both of them, narrated in the first-person and second-person, respectively, are shocking. While the former announces that Pradeep Mathew is a fictitious name, the murderer in the latter is revealed to be a person who’s well-known to Almeida.
If the structures of those novels seem mainstream, then you can turn to "Short Eats", another short story from The Birth Lottery, which is just around half a page. It excellently extends the cords of dark humour without making it seem unholy to the eyes of the reader. The setting is that of a funeral where the guests are served cured ham, mince pies, and pastries filled with curried flesh. But do not be fooled by the rich menu. The twist will arrive slowly, albeit without warning, in which the guests come to learn that their snacks are going to haunt them for the rest of their lives.
In an interview with Time magazine, the author stated that he wanted to “let the dead speak because the living doesn’t have a clue” while theorising about the origins of The Seven Moons. Be that as it may, I consider his books to be love letters to Sri Lanka despite being drenched in blood. I say this as I’ve realised that love (in any form) cannot exist without criticism. And it can never be unconditional.
In the words of Karunatilaka (from "Assassin’s Paradise", a short story): “Criticising your country is not an act of treason. It is an act of love.” Many celebrated thinkers and writers have echoed this sentiment in varying terms, but the crux of the matter remains the same. Here is James Baldwin’s quote that cushions the above statement, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticise her perpetually.”
We cannot change the past. Time’s arrow only moves ahead. Patriotism should bring us all together even in the face of storms and differences. Karunatilaka’s latest feather in the cap is a win for Sri Lanka, too, and if he once again turns his gaze toward the war, I’ll be eagerly waiting for it.
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