Bold attempt to capture topical issues

Reviewed by Manikya Kodithuwakku

Vihanga Perera's latest book, The Fear of Gambling (FOG), is, on the surface, several stories braided into a single-story form. FOG consists of four primary story strands; the narrator's quest for a woman that he once lost, his search for the successor to his art, his nostalgic record of his Domestic Cricket career with Cousin CJ and his failed years as a self-made Table Tennis player. In bringing these strands together, FOG is a blurring of many boundaries; of time, space, autobiography, the real and fantastic, truth, fiction and metafiction. And through this blurring, FOG focuses on the grey spaces of the current political landscape, literary representation and the search for identity.

The diffusion of the plotlines and the random episodic style of writing Vihanga has used to tell his story/ies made this book a somewhat difficult one for this reader to initially read mainly because there did not appear to be a coherent order to the episodes that were related. This difficulty was also due to the frequent, seemingly random, shifts between time and space.

As the stories progressed, though, it became clear that it is exactly these very interruptions and shifts that made the book appear rather like life in general with its random, and chaotic, episodes. Vihanga seems to know exactly what he's doing for within the seemingly randomness of it all, there is a method to the madness; plotlines that appear arbitrary develop into foils for other plotlines while personal anecdotes elucidate greater national truth.

A telling example of this is how the narrator's cousin's personal history is constructed through specifically chosen moments and so evolves into a foil for the chosen trajectories of larger historical narratives.

In essence, FOG appears to attempt to capture a moment in time that would otherwise be lost in a matter of days and weeks. In that light, FOG doesn't appear to attempt to give a specific message on a specific issue, but rather succeeds in representing a time and space that is 'in passing'; it is an attempt to nail down a moment that would be gone too soon, historicized with the general at the cost of the particular.

As the narrative comments, in the latter stages of the book, "history will be rewritten...(and it) will be hasty and gaps will be left." FOG seems to be trying to depict some of these gaps that may be left gaping. Even when FOG ends, it does not do so with the end of the story/ies, but because the book must end. Such an ending reinforces the idea that the story/ies told, and the events and memories recounted, are only the specifically chosen moments of much longer trajectories of personal and national history.

What I really enjoyed about this book, and for which I would ultimately recommend it, is its depiction of the political landscape of the last two and half years in Sri Lanka. The immediate post-war political and ideological landscape is captured effortlessly, interwoven with the narrator's and his cousin's personal journey/s. FOG is topical in its preoccupation with the increasing militarisation of the nation and the seeming break down of law and order, which are skillfully captured through ball-by-ball episodes of rugger.

Within this national landscape, the ringing silence from and of the political opposition is palpably revealed. And the incapacitation of the citizen's responsibility/ies in a democratic country is captured by a short series of questions through which the narrator vents his frustration with the system. Vihanga appears to be holding most, if not all, of us responsible for this current political climate - either by being someone who passively accepts the current status quo or being one who enables it to take place by allowing or even encouraging its reinforcement through the (constructed) attitude that celebrates the "victorious forces". Pseudo-nationalism is exaggerated fictionally as much as nationalism has been embellished politically.

Running alongside this representation of the political is the personal narrative of the search/es for identity; once the narrator's mirrored self escapes from the mirror and is 'freed', his journey becomes binary where two identities attempt to negotiate one journey. Interspersed within this journey are the chronicles of love lost, attempted, waited for, imagined and finally found unexpectedly. It is in these 'personal' narratives that the poet strolls in - the writing is raw, emotionally and sexually charged and ultimately lyrical - a strength Vihanga is to yet fully explore and harness in his longer fiction.

FOG is closer in style to Vihanga's first book The(ir) Autopsy and, like it, every time it's read, some new and different perspective seems to emerge. In spite of the 'seriousness' of some the issues grappled with, Vihanga has still given in to his signature tongue-in-cheek style and attitude by depicting the 'present' moment by, ironically, moving between the past, present, future, and even spiritual, realms seamlessly.

FOG will no doubt emerge as a notable book for this year for filling a necessary gap in contemporary Sri Lankan English fiction by its bold attempt to capture the topical issues that have emerged, but has not necessarily been voiced, in the past couple of years in this country.

A point of concern is the fact that a book with much potential as FOG has is self-published. This is perhaps telling of the current publishing industry's preoccupation with easy 'marketability' of a book that leave writers, especially young writers, outside the mainstream with no other option but to self-publish.

While this no doubt would give more autonomy to the writer's creativity, it marginalises those without access to the many resources that go towards the production of a book, and forces a relatively higher price to be levied per book to cover production costs, which then can result in non-accessibility to the book by a majority of the reading population. This is a cycle that must be arrested soon if more voices of this younger generation are to emerge.

[The writer is a lecturer at the Department of Language Studies, Open University of Sri Lanka]