open words are for love-letting by Malinda Seneviratne

One of the best things about having friends who read, is that you can borrow their books. Though, some are as protective of their books as they are about their money! Visiting friends last week, I saw this book of poetry lying on their coffee table and asked to borrow it. What with Malinda being short-listed for the Gratiaen and all and I don't think, this book is available for sale, I was interested.
This is the third or fourth time Malinda has been short-listed for the Gratiaen and not won. A sort of record in itself I think. From what I heard of his previous work, he is a good poet and this book confirms the impression. Malinda is a damn good poet!
Firstly, I love the title: open words are for love-letting. The poems are a mix of the personal and the political. From poems about his sister (I was recently told she is Ru Freeman), to daughters, father, mother (the poem is called Ammi) he goes on to make poetry on The Mother of all Wars, War criminality, An open end-note from Geneva etc.
I am not an academic analytic critic. But I am a reader. I read something - I like it or I don't like it and use this blog to talk about some books I have read. For me, poetry should be enjoyment, whether it makes me think, whether I love the way, the words trip fast upon each other, the rhythm, the words, the sound. So for me, it is all the more difficult to review a book of poetry, as there could be good poems and bad poems in the mix offered but all in all most of the poems I read in this collection, I liked.
But after all this, I have a question: Why didn't Malinda win the Gratiaen? Aside from his politics, he is a good poet and shouldn't that be the criteria for winning? I have read Lal Medawattegedera's pervious works and didn't like any of them. I doubt that he can develop to be a writer of such astounding quality that he just had to win the Gratiaen. I saw Kalumaali and thought it was dreadful (poor Ruwanthi, what happened?), and then we have two unknowns - Rizvina Morseth and Saroj Sinnathamby alias Ashok Ferrey and we all know what his writing is like. Rizvina is the unknown quantity here. If she didn't win and being extremely biased against the other contenders, either the work or their previous writing style, I would have put my bets on Malinda winning. But he didn't. To answer my question we will have to wait a whole year for Lal to put his novel out for us readers to judge, a year too late, if he was worthy or not. And you can bet on it, that I will be reading the book.

I leave with one of Malinda's poems:

Yala
Differently colored sibling
non-identical twin
of city space
and urban things,
territory of the timeless
the hide and seek
and seek for hide,
target and shoot,
spotted meat
and jaw-jaw
fang and claw,
visitor's unmercuried mirror
reflecting but unseen

I don't know where you can buy the book, but if you see it lying on a friend's coffee table. Pick it up. Its worth a read.

 

Cry for Me a Little: Stories of the Souls by Mariam Riza.

 Its been a long time since I wrote in this blog and its not for lack of reading material, its just that I took a long break from Sri Lankan books. The Gratiaen Prize was last month and Madhubashini Ratnayake won this year but we will have to wait for at most a year until the book is published so that we can see if it is worthy or not a la Shehan Karunatilleke, Vivimarie, Ruwanthie de Chickera etc. But I have in my hands a Gratiaen shortlist from this year. At the shortlist reading at the British Council, the reader of Mariam Riza's work was so amazing that he made it a strong contender for the prize, yet now having read the whole book, I realize he could have read any of the other candidates and made them equally strong.
Mariam Riza has a lot to say and she says it bluntly. No censoring of language or situations, she addresses a multitude of situations - conflict, trafficking, drug testing on animals, and poaching are just a few. The book also traverses the globe - stories on Rwanda, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia and of course Sri Lanka are some of the countries. So it presents itself as being a sophisticated collection for the world reader.
Written in a style that is typically Sri Lankan (sloppy writing, bad grammar, wierd punctuation and capitalization) she addresses topics that are usually shunned in Sri Lankan books in a manner that is in your face. It is a style that might have worked had the author paid a little attention to details that make a book well written and above average. Having said that, I have to imagine that the Gratiaen shortlisted the book more on content and subject matter than writing style.
Most of the stories start well but then end up going nowhere or in a direction I personally did not want them to go to. The story read at the Gratiaen shortlist was titled The Smell of Roses. The direct and blunt rantings of a male gigolo peters out to become a love struck teenage like obsession that has no bite. A story titled Wrongful Imprisonment which flirts with the theme of prisoners in Guantanomo is so weakly written that you wonder what kind of President of a country has such a nincompoop working for him. After reading several stories that dealt with serious themes but failed to deliver, I began to wonder why the author would write about these topics if she didn't make the effort to ensure that the reader was moved not only by the subject matter but also by the writing.
The stories are undeniably powerful and deal with themes that are current, political, social and humanitarian but for me, the experience of reading it was frustrating with the turns and twists that some stories took that rendered them inane, and bad; and unrealistic dialogue that was featured in other stories that made them unbelievable and soppy. To cap it all off the cover, perhaps to reflect the depressing title was shaded grey depicting something I could not quite decipher so I could not even take a break from the writing to gaze at the cover and get inspired.
Mariam Riza has talent but she needs to hone it. As it is a first book a lot can be forgiven but I shall look forward to her second book and hope that it will be a lot better.

The Whirlwind by Ayathurai Santhan

First I shall grouse about the Grataien. It is really irritating not to be able to read the shortlisted works and sometimes not even to be able to read the winning works until a year has passed. So this year there were three manuscripts and two books and of course last year's winner got published just in time as well. I have yet to pick up copies of the two winners - this year and last year, but my aunt who went for the Gratiaen picked this book up for me.

I didn't go for either the shortlisting or the award night but the literary chatter was that there was this interesting book written by a writer from Jaffna about the time the IPKF was stationed there. In fact, I thought at the time, that this might have been a sure winner. Then I read the book and straight off, I will tell you if it had won, I would have been dissapointed.

In my opinion a prize winning book has to stand out. While this book actually had what could have been a gripping story, the writing style left much to be desired and I was not even sure that it should have been shortlisted.

The story is set over a very short period of time. Perhaps over a few days. When the IPKF came as so called peace monitors to the North of the Island, they saw all the people there as Sri Lankans - an identity the Northerners had erased from their psyche and they saw all Tamils as potential LTTErs. Concentrating on one village that has all the people rounded up and housed in one compound that had one toilet for around 400 people, the people are confused if they are there for their safety or being detained. The depiction of the Indian army is sketchy and not drawn out yet it does not turn out to be a weakness of the book, for the slim novel in fact concentrates on the relationships, hardships and fears that the Northern Tamil families were going through during a period that they hoped would save them and yet became another kind of horror for them.

When you read this book, you feel for our people and what they have had to go through. They are mere pawns that are toyed with all players - the LTTE, the Sri Lankan army, the Indian army. Ayathurai Santhan is careful not to tread on the ideology of the average Northern Tamil person. He shows all these people as victims, being tossed from one side to the other at the whim of whoever rules. It might have been interesting if he had taken a stance, for after all the LTTE could not have existed and been successful for so long, without popular support in the area. The book ends without resolution.

The writing is replete with Sri Lankan English of the lesser kind: akward, clumsy and sometimes grammatically incorrect. Now, I hope I don't get flak for this comment. For example: "Though everyday, Sivan had passed by this house often, this was the second time he happened to be inside." Is a sentence written in the way Sri Lankan's typically speak. And there is nothing wrong with that if it was written as direct speech.

My final comments is that this is a book that I highly recommend only because there is a dearth of writing in English about the conflict from the Tamil perspective. I admit that it is written in a sometimes crude and akward manner, that the story could have been fleshed out better, that as it is, it is not a very strong book. But it is important that all Sri Lankans be able to read about our history, and what better way to do it, than through fiction, the different voices and perspectives of our history - be it good or evil. I applaud Ayathurai Santhan for taking the courage and writing such a book. I just wish it had been edited much more and we would have a stronger perhaps even a prize winning book. I look forward to more books written from varying perspectives, perhaps one that is sympathetic to the LTTE cause for we need to know how part of our own people wished to secede from the country in the hope for a life of equality, justice and peace.

China Bay Blues by Afdhel Aziz

I have two favourite Sri Lankan poets. Vivimarie van der Poorten (whom I have reviewed earlier) is one and Afdhel Aziz is the other. In this book of poetry, Afdhel Aziz crams a staggering 93 poems and one short story into his first collection of poetry. Interspersed with interesting photographs by Shehani Fernando (though if you took the photographs out, you wouldn’t have missed them), the poems are light, deep, frivolous, tender, passionate, imaginative, jazzy … let me stop there, or else I would run out of adjectives. So, what do I like about this book?
I like that China Bay Blues is modern, snappy and yet there are poems that turn my insides to water. I like that China Bay Blues has love poems written by a guy, is patriotic without being Sinhala Buddhist, and male bonding is between father and son. I like that China Bay Blues finishes with prose in the form of a short story that is to me still like a long poem.
Afdhel Aziz uses language that he is comfortable with. Don’t look here if you want village lasses, odes to ancient kings or chaste love poems. Instead you have raw sensuality: For instance:

Your naked body is silhouetted against
The bare boards of the wooden floor
as you tread softly to the window and
look at the quiet square below the window.

The line of your back
as you lean out, hiding
your skin with the curtain

Now is the time to live. (Quartert, Kandy)

It is like a scene from a movie. I can imagine the scene. And that is perhaps what I get out of each of his poems. Strong imagery that creates such a vivid scene, I can say almost say: I was there! The best part of it, is that his poetry speaks to me. It says what I want to say to lovers, parents, countrymen – just better than I could ever do.
The poems address a multitude of topics. His poem titled Patriot has this great line:

‘So will you die for your country?’
Surprised, I counter
‘Surely it is better to live for it?’

What a great concept? It takes the idea of patriotism that has been traditionally thought of in one way and turns it on its head. With Sri Lanka currently poised at the crossroads, perhaps its worth to take such an attitude towards our countrymen.
Afdhel Aziz is perhaps one of our truly modern poets writing in English. He takes everyday objects and traces the multiple lines of historical meaning. He writes about the hummingbird, about a secret garden, a tattoo, a light house, a radio song. He is obsessed about jazz. And reading his poems on jazz have made me aware of the sounds, the rhythm, the feeling:

Sweet soulful song
from shiny brass horn
fingers moving like hydra
as the notes sound high up
to the heavens

like butterflies hovering
around the wings of a sail
curved in the breeze

pursed lips, brow furrowed
in concentration, as
cheeks puff in prayer

air turns to gold
and the wind sings along
the memory of home
the echo of jazz
when Miles plays . . . (Miles away)

It has been too long since Afdhel gave us another collection of poetry. Afdhel Aziz, I await.

Stable Horses by Vihanga Perera

According to C.S. Kaushalyan, the protagonist in the novel Stable Horses, the Salalihini Sandeshaya nor the Hansa Sandeshaya are epic poems. Consider his statement in Vihanga Perera’s new Gratiaen shortlisted novel: “To say the least, none of the Lankan writers had ever – ever - versed in epic formats.” But perhaps he didn’t know of our epic poems existence and for that he could be forgiven in making such a broad statement. But I do hope that statement is not a reflection of Vihanga Perera’s personal opinion.
Just weeks after the Gratiaen Prize shortlist, I picked up a copy of the book.
The very first sentence, the very first paragraph was unfortunately replete with akwardness, missing articles, spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes that are so numerous, they cannot be listed. The sentence construction of the whole novel was also clumsy and graceless but that could be a particular style and I could get used to it, if it was consistent. Think Animal’s People by Indra Sinha or Londonstani by Gautam Malkani. The point was that it wasn’t. Even though the blurb at the back says: “It is the story of his entering a literary competition. With the necessity of winning. With the urge to rhyme it to the top.” The novel itself other than for the introduction is nothing about the literary competition but rather about the complexities of life and growing up.
Perhaps Vihanga Perera is writing for an uber intelligent reader. And that I confess, I am not. For us average readers, this book was confusing in the chapter arrangement, confusing in the presentation of ideas, confusing in the use of language, confusing in the theme. I admit that it was a tough read for me. The book begins with informing the reader the book is to be submitted to the prestigious GoldenFoot prize. Everybody and their grandmother knows that this is a reference to the Gratiaen Prize. Ok, so the judges may have had a little giggle at that ‘clever’ reference. Then the ‘novel’ but it really is a series of interconnected short stories, with pompous and vague titles, stumbles through a series of themes: A young man working unhappily in an advertising agency, arranges to meet a young woman later that day. We are then taken into a chapter that delves on an attempt at writing poetry or song, I am not sure which. To tell you the truth it is not that good. But perhaps that is point the author is trying to depict. Then there is a little aside about saving drowning ants in the loo, a little pseudo- philosophizing and then we are moved abruptly onto a lover’s parting. Perhaps one of the better chapters. After that a school teachers funeral, a rambling on the last year of school, and then onto another good chapter on rejection at love again. Then more bad trite chapters and a good chapter. It goes on and on.
Oh dear! I am rather upset. Here I am, an amateur reviewer who has not read the winning submission at the Gratiaen and is reviewing now the second Gratiaen shortlist and its not going well either, I am beginning to wonder if something is wrong with me! Perhaps I cannot appreciate good writing by our good Sri Lankan authors. It must be me because the alternative thought that the Gratiaen judges could be wrong, is too disturbing.
What really bugs me about this book, is that the author spent a few weekends in his newspaper column complaining about the difference between Sri Lankan English and Standard English and then I find that this book is nothing but Sri Lankan English and written badly at that!
Don’t get me wrong Vihanga Perera has potential. His writing has moments of being funny, clever, witty, etc but to get there you have to wade through numerous hours of pure rubbish. So in the end, I don’t think its worth it at all. At this rate, I have to take back my previous review on the Gratiaen shortlist and say that Anthea was much better! Trite, but much better.

The Mango Tree by Anthea Senaratna

When the Gratiaen shortlist was announced and I noticed this book among the six, I went out and bought it. Dressed with a nice attractive cover which is also quirky, Anthea Seneratna presents the reader with 16 stories in 121 pages. I read the book in one evening as it is a very easy read. I found some of the titles of the stories rather intriguing: Two Pieces of Chicken; Wednesdays and Weekends; Shut –ins; Rainburst etc.
Let me digress for a moment to set the stage before I comment on the book per se. Imagine yourself driving down Arnold Coomaraswamy Mawatha on the weekends, looking at the paintings hung all along the park boundary. Imagine yourself evaluating the paintings. While there are some extremely talented artists to be discovered here, most of them are pleasant, entertaining, nicely done but absolutely ordinary. They have talent but it is like a drawing room talent – certainly not art gallery talent.
When a book is shortlisted for the Gratiaen, you expect it to be art gallery talent not drawing room talent. Unfortunately, The Mango Tree while sweet and nice and pleasant and nicely written with good English and no grammatical errors, is eventually a mediocre book. It is definitely drawing room talent.
Now onto the stories:
It’s amazing how many middle class writers are obsessed about the poor, the underprivileged, the seamy side of life. A life that they know nothing of, can hope to know nothing of and they certainly would not want to know anything of and it shows in their writing. I call it the guilty middle class woman syndrome. So they will write about poor illtreated housewives, they write about soldiers injured in the war and unable to fit into ‘normal’ life. They write about unhappy women, unhappy situations far removed from their own experience.
For a book to grip you, to hold you spellbound, there has to be an element of truth and reality in it. Good writers, and I am not talking about great writers, but merely good writers have that ability of taking you through the most mundane of situations but holding you spellbound. When Arthur Golden wrote Memoirs of a Geisha, I am sure most readers completely forgot the writer was not a geisha, not a woman, not a Japanese. In Sri Lanka we have a few writers who can do this, but not many. Among the younger writer’s however, I can see a different breed who write about what they know, in their own style, and that makes all the difference.
For the first time since I started this blog, I am stuck. I do not quite know how to finish this review. I am not sure if I can say any more. But I will try. For a light read, this is certainly a good book. The English is good, the grammar is correct, some stories are amusing. The ones that stand out for me are: Tuition Class, Freedom Bound. Some stories had no point or were an indulgence for the writer. Perhaps if it hadn’t been shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize I might have been kinder. But because it was, and because I expected so much more, in all fairness to those who read, I cannot. However, I hasten to add, that I am sure there will be many people who will read this book and like it. It may sell well, and I do hope so. But in the end, in my opinion the book is a self indulgent exercise that has been offered to the public as literature.