Shazia Omar’s “Like a Diamond In the Sky”: A Floating Experience of Loose, Disengaged Roots.

Shazia Omar’s Like a Diamond In the Sky launches like a hot air balloon, but the air runs out midway over teeming metropolitan Dhaka, Bangladesh. The few reviews of the book available in the open media do no justice to the writer or the book, as they gloat over the tangibly contrived narrative of an out-of-sorts Deen’s drug culture and drug addiction. The story fails to convince, begs for a more palpable reading of society and societal relations along class lines, while it demonstrates the writer’s misplaced will of wanting to fabricate a story of youth, love and drugs.

Like a Diamond In the Sky is, indeed, like a diamond in the sky: it is illusive as it is badly put together: a fairytale patched up with a popular romance script for guidance. Omar’s is however, an extension to a growing corpus of Asian / Asian-related writers discoursing on narcotic culture. A name that comes to mind is Jeet Thayil, whose Narcopolis (2012) takes us through the nooks and corners of 1970s Old Bombay. Mark Wilde, writing from Sri Lanka, submits in Chucking the Dragon (2009) the subterranean face of urban and suburban peddlers and pushers; the complexity of youth, relationship and love consumed in drag. Omar’s, however, is a novel that floats on surfaces – a novel that doesn’t cut deep enough, either into the personal or the social. Hers is a series of moments and motions lacking intensity or conviction.

As a reader, I need conviction that Deen’s life is in chaos and disarray. The writer insisting me that his is, every other page and paragraph, for me, is scant detail and unacceptable patronage. The childish quarrels Deen has at home – and the offhand ease with which he “disappears” from the clutch of who seems like a deeply devoted and concerned mother – and the no-questions-asked manner in which he moves into an apartment with Maria fails to leave an impression. Maria, who lives in a single apartment, readily welcomes Deen into her bed, even though it is clearly hinted that they are quite short of being mere marginal acquaintances at College. The easy fusion denies Maria a critical-minded, cautionary, far thinking personality; though, in every other instance Omar promises us that Maria is a sharp, non-bimbo type.

Deen’s “personality” at school seems to have been borrowed and plastered from a popular cinema reel. He is the type who hangs at canteens, drinking canteen chai, making eyes at passing girls: quite the “common guy” on campus. His first meeting with Maria, too, is a borrowing from popular cinema, where the inevitable bumping into each other is followed by the picking up for the girl her books and so on. Shazia Omar, for some reason, bites the end of her pencils to draw a realistic picture of an Asian University Campus; but, the efforts are even worse rewarded when she takes a crack at brining to life the entertainment halls of the local drug baron and the brothels (with benevolent prostitutes).

Once again, the aspect of class – and the relatively rigid class boundaries that operate in the Third World – is evicted from Omar’s creative formula. Deen – though out of sorts after his doctor-father’s death – is seen in the company of Falani and the dingy streets of illicit purchases. He is in the heart of brawls and beat ups, moving about the quarter that dwells on “natural justice”, facing the odds of the street with his friend AJ and, later, Parvez. The ease with which Deen permeates from one ethos to the other – the middle class universe to the street of the street-wise – is too easy and too clumsy.

Expatriate writer Karen Roberts – an émigré Sri Lanka born resident of the US (?)periodically writing of “Lankan reality” – in her 2010 novel The Lament of the Dhobi Woman narrates a section where her heroine Catrina is smoking marijuana in the suburbs of Colombo. She, from an elite Colombo neighbourhood and from an upend family, is seen sitting in an open dump, dragging away with fellow consumers who, we’re told, are from the impoverished quarter of the city. She claims that who she is or where she is from is not important to her fellow draggers; for, what binds them together is their addiction and need.

For a resident Lankan reader Roberts’ delivery is nothing more than an eyebrow-raiser as it is not a part of Lankan suburban culture to have such secluded dumps where drug pushers and users inter-mingle outside the parameters of class. Drug consumption in Lanka is essentially a classed discourse: a dimension which, I feel, Mark Wilde captures with effect in Chucking the Dragon. Shazia Omar also fails to make her delivery three-dimensional: it lacks the resonance a work would echo when hinged on a close contextualized reading of class, society and their complex interplay.

The novel ends with a whimper, as it rounds off as a prescription against all users of narcotics. Deen is both disappointed and futilely stripped of his dreams and hopes for life. His tragic end – an abrupt termination of a young life that (as implied) would have blossomed for the better – is the final card played to the audience: a cathartic sympathy campaign against psychedelic usage. Throughout the novel, the irredeemable and phony view of the Street from the class-elite, class-superior bastion – through the reeking stench of its fake morality and hypocrisy – works as a drawback. In the end, the novel implodes unto itself as a schoolmistress’ commandment of how to be a good boy and thrive.

“An energetic debut novel that heralds a new voice in Bangladeshi fiction” says Tahmima Anam. Jessica Mudditt concedes that the novel demonstrates “all the rigour you would expect of someone who has spent a month in a rehab centre studying dependence” (italics mine). Whether the implication here is that Omar actively researched on drug addiction in a rehab center is vague to me. But, if it is indeed the case, a better novel would have been possible had Omar begun her “research” with a month or so on the Dhaka streets. Such a novel would have, perhaps, elicited a less slavish, less ignorant claim from an energy-conscious Anam.

Ministers of Sirisena’s 100 Days and the FUTA’s 100 Days

The Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) — or so its Facebook Group indicates — is in high spirits over the “dethroning” of Mahinda Rajapaksha and the election win of President Sirisena. President Rajapaksha and his ministers of Education and Higher Education — Bandula Gunawardena and SB Dissanayake — had totally “lost it” with even the less anti-governmental of the University community, that people seem to be a tad over-enthusiastic to see a “Maithree Yugaya” for education in the appointment of Akila Viraj Kariyawasam and Rajiva Wijesinha to the above-mentioned, freshly evacuated seats.

In a mighty hurry to blot out / set straight the perceived “grievances” caused by the Percy Regime, people are over-eager and expect ready-made-solutions; and in their ignorant hurry, tend to mix up Sirisena with Santa Claus. Akila Viraj and Wijesinha, then, are — for the ignorant theoric — a couple of reindeers: either way, pack hounds of good omens. In that one mighty mad bid for freedom, these simpletons forget the great tutor in history — not, say, history dealing with the ruins of kingdoms now long lost; but, the history where the reindeer of today was the barking watchdog of a “kingdom” recently toppled; the ex-watchdog assisting.

Akila Viraj Kariyawasam is untested matrial. His wikipedia page, updated up to his current appointment, doesn’t say much either. At 41, he is probably one of the younger Ministers of Education the country has seen since Ranil Wickramasinghe. His education indicates a General Degree from Colombo and an LLB from the Open University. Rajiva Wijesinha, on the other hand, is a seasoned campaigner who, as the bulwark of “The Liberal Party” has been liberally moving up and down the political lobby over the past two decades. Since the 1994 Presidential election, he has been quite mobile, his penultimate stint being the defence of Mahinda Rajapaksha’s regime in the face of (globally) Northern media, when being prodded with allegations of war crimes. I well remember one such instance where, when pressured of genocide during the closing stages of the war, Wijesinha took a pot shot at the interviewer (who didn’t see it coming) with the old trick: that there are little children up North idling in around with eyes of blue.

The blue-eyed, blue-tied Wijesinha — one time court-of-arms embossed Rajapaksha shield — then, four years later, is among one of the “original pilgrim fathers” at regime-break. Flippant as my essay may sound, I don’t hold it personally against Wijesinha that he defended the regime against BBC (or whatever it was). He was merely doing his job; and as the Godfather and the Sicily-descended mafia operating in New York believes, “it is not personal; it is just business”. None of us are in this for the love of the country. That is why the “The country first, country second, country third” piece of poetry doesn’t work for a third time.

FUTA — the “real” and “virtual” FUTA — has to understand this fundamental fact, as well. That there is nothing personal in any of these government topplings, ministerial appointments, majority securing etc. Irritatingly, a fair number of ignorant people (for FUTA Facebook is an open forum — its membership cuts across the board) seem to think that Maithreepala Sirisena and his merry “100 day cabinet” is obliged to deliver what they have promised as election manifesto: in that same quantity and quality; in the very same way they said it will be given. Of course, they will / may / would / could get down to deliver what was promised: it is, indeed, their prerogative to do so. But, politics and power is such a fundamentally delicate pair of twins, even the slight changes to equations and stakes thereupon hinged call for “second thoughts” and “deviations” from original promises. Once again, make history your tutor. Of course, continue the struggle, until your demands are addressed, or are heard. But, do not expect what you demand to be slipped down your chimney: that everything is now solved and there will be lasting peace. Maithreepala Sirisena doesn’t wear a Christmas beard, so you cannot later accuse him of having faked it.

Meantime, vivacious FUTA members seem to have gone back and opened the thread dealing with their “6%” battlecry from 2012. For those who may forget — because we do forget — in 2012, FUTA gatecrashed Rajapaksha’s party with a sustained struggle that almost touched on 100 days, demanding a higher state investment on national education. FUTA lobbied with confidence and managed to muster the strength of multiple civil agencies, trade unions and students. In a very rare development in Lankan University history, the lecturers (of whom, 95% for 95% of the time know next to nothing about the students) and the Students’ Movement joined forces to combat a common enemy: the State. Bala Tampoe, the veteren trade unionist / lawyer, addressed the nation from the FUTA stage. A five day march was held — lecturers marching to Hyde Park from Galle, and the IUSF-backed students from Kandy — in which hundreds of the University community threw a last gauntlet at Rajapaksha’s regime. Two Students’ Movement frontliners, Sisitha Priyankara and Janaka Ekanayake, were killed in the midst of it, under “dubious” circumstances (which moved Vivimarie VanderPoorten to write a haunting poem, “Borrowed Dust”). The Students’ Movement maintained an allegation of foul play; that the government was responsible for the deaths.

The “6%” TUA ended inconclusively. What happened right at the end — the final agreement between the governmental and the FUTA representatives — was not given publicity. If it was, indeed, given publicity, not many of us heard of it. The only tangible outcome of the Lankanized “Occupy Wall Street” type “struggle” seemed to be a salary increase to the senior tiers of lecturers. But, a few months ago, a very intriguing and annoying sequence came to pass. This is when an academic (one who made his demonstration debut in 2012) stated with all seriousness that the “TUA in 2012 was more an attempt to get a pay hike” for the lecturers. That, the “real struggle for 6% was beginning only now“. The same line was repeated to me, almost in the same words, a month back by a colleague I met at a seminar: “though we said ‘6% for education’, our main intention was to effect a pay hike, isn’t it? The real struggle will start now” (italics mine). The “isn’t it?” in this colleague’s question is rhetorical, and it already frames me in giving agreement and consent to the statement, which — by all means — has been pre-empted. This repeated reference to a “real struggle”, which incidentally is afoot, further baffles me. I sincerely hope these individuals’ reading of the FUTA TUA is personal gibberish and does not reflect the stance held by FUTA as a body in 2012; that there is no such demarcation between a “phony” and “real” struggle; for, much irretrievable was invested on that 100 day agitation, including the young lives of the slain student leaders.

To connect the story of the new ministers with the story of FUTA, I think it is more than beneficial to accept that we all work with agendas, complexities and complacencies. Our demands and projects are steered around these larger “themes” of contest, while that engagement continuously redefines and refreshes us all the time. In other words, there is nothing called a “renewal of a 6% struggle”; perhaps, there never was such a struggle to begin with. Even if it did, that historical moment has passed and the facts and figures of the equation has changed. With that lost initiative, the struggle — if at all — must collect anew, and begin again. Some of the naive, less critical people on FUTA Facebook should seriously take a second glance at declarations they make and tempers they share. Their absence of critical-minded thinking and their prattle-talk only wastes net space; and that is irresponsible cyber practice.

The Price of Grief: On Sonali Deraniyagala’s “Wave”.

On the 26^th of December 2004, the Eastern, Southern, South Western and North Western coasts of Sri Lanka are devastated by the Tsunami catastrophe, leaving behind a stunned and shattered island to bury the dead – or their remains. Sonali Deraniyagala’s memoir of loss and trauma – the retrospective account of a mother/wife who loses her family to a single tidal stroke – is a memorable and powerful rendition looking back on this fateful day. Wave is about Deraniyagala’s husband, her parents, and her two kid sons who died in a single morning, ending in utter tragedy a holiday season spent in her native country of birth. Deraniyagala and her family had earlier arrived on the island from their home in England, and were resorting in Yala in the South Eastern part of the country on the 26th.

A close scrutiny indicates that Wave, in fact, is a story with three interwoven threads. The Tsunami encounter and its consequent events drilled with personal trauma and gradual – but, hard – acceptance is the dominant of these threads; but, it is emphatically infused with a second thread to do with Sonali’s English home and family life. These two tracks incessantly cut across each other in an overwhelming juxtaposing of loss with joy; fatality, with happiness and hope. The third thread focuses on the “recuperation” (for the want of a word) upon Sonali’s difficult return home; and of the time between 2004 and 2010. Taken together, the narrative is overlaid with personal grief – a trigger of a composite range of happy and homely memories with the angst of the “sole survivor” – which, at times, makes Wave a difficult and even tedious read: a tester of the reader’s threshold for an overdose of trauma.

Intriguingly, of a growing corpus of Lankan / Lankan-related literature which focuses on the Tsunami crisis, Deraniyagala’s is an unlikely biographical tale which has received global transmission. It is by no means isolated in its poignancy, for there may be countless thousands of similarly harrowing tales from coast to coast; if at all not yet narrativized as is the story of the elite Sonali Deraniyagala. But, at least, one other text that comes to mind is the recently published short novel by Eric Illeyapparachchi, Paadha Yaathra (පාද යාත්‍රා) which is also set on the day of the Tsunami, exploring the fates of a cluster of people who, at strategic points of the book, connect with each other. Illeyapparachchi’s book, to be honest, failed to engage my imagination, as it read more-or-less as a rehashed dishing out of the “Tsunami stories” one used to read in the Lankadeepa newspaper. However, to Illeyapparachchi’s credit, the craftsman in him takes over when Illeyapparachchi paints with a surreal brush the chaotic re-definition of the Tsunami-struck universe: a universe where realities snap and blur, possibilities refresh and where identities get displaced, disfigured and recycled.

Illeyapparachchi’s “Paadha Yaathra”

In Illeyapparachchi’s case, emotions and grief feature less or little. The diabolical inexplicability of the turnaround leaves everyone too dazed for human reaction. Only a smattering of non-Lankan characters seem to have an energy left in engaging with the chaos within the frame/logic of the pre-Tsunami world. This is an intriguing intersect, as Sonali in Deraniyagala’s text, too, is a “non-Lankan” presence; for she is presented to us as a fully immersed English national. The depth of her loss – even at the immediate aftermath of the assault – is not even shadowed in Illeyapparachchi’s character portrayal. Perhaps, Illeyapparachchi’s creative priorities are different; maybe, the dispassionate detachment is a ploy used by the writer for his own project does not hinge on the personal nature of Deraniyagala’s cathartic recollection. However, in exciting reader empathy, Deraniyagala has a very timorous voice articulated through her disturbing story.

Reviewing Deraniyagala in the New Yorker, Teju Cole asks as to “why… some unconcerned individual, someone who has not been similarly shattered, wish to read this book?”. For Cole, the biography is a meditation of impulses such as grief and rage; and a study as to how they have to be contained and mastered: a case study of self-transformation and self-containment. He, in support, quotes a writer who reflects on Greek tragedy, where the horror and the trauma has to be “lived” as a part of the Aristotelian requirement of catharsis.

The theory aside, why, indeed, must some unconcerned individual read Deraniyagala’s Wave: the story of an affluent, socially and economically empowered woman’s vigil at a catastrophic encounter? What are we, the mass audience, in search of in reading line-to-line of Sonali’s breakdown? Is, in Sonali’s heart-wrenching agony, embedded the satisfaction of the reader? In other words, is the Sonali Deraniyagala saga successful for the very trauma and powerlessness of the narrator’s situation? Would Sonali Deraniyagala’s publishers undertake the story had – hypothetically – the family been rescued? Would there be a story if such a miraculous rescue been effected? Don’t we, the mass readership, earnestly wish the family to die even as we read Sonali’s husband, children and elders being carried away by the wave? These question are enough reason for our reading experience to be disturbing.

If Sonali Deraniyagala had a better conscience she shouldn’t have published this book for a global audience. By doing so, she has deserted among the intricacies of narrativization – the inevitable mazes of story-telling and story-selling – a more precious organic part of her, which is now being sold over the counter for Rs 1300 each (the translation, by Malini Govinnage is a bargain, at 400 rupees each). We read Wave in search of the thrill and sadistic satisfaction we may derive from the momentary consumption of Deraniyagala.