Book talk

Writing Chinaman with cricket and arrack

By Anuradha Kodagoda

We are a nation filled with laughter and turn dramatic at the smallest excuse. This is no exaggeration! I don’t think anybody would disagree with this notion. Excited to the point of boiling over - is the Sri Lankan psyche.

Could our artistes evoke this emotion exhibited by people in their artistic endeavours? In my simple opinion many cannot achieve this, even those who could gain the recognition in international arena too have a depleted idea of the emotive nature of Sri Lankans. We are portrayed as being dumb and thunder-stuck! And most of the stories have not captured the eye and thinking of the common man.

Is this the emotive nature of Sri Lankans? No, not really. We are a nation given to expression, emotion, sense and sensibility.

It was thrilling to meet a rare artiste of this calibre who could feel the pulse of the common man and in the first instance itself prove beyond doubt that he had picked the sharpness of wit and mind – cricket and arrack to portray Sri Lanka.

He’s none other than the witty Shehan Karunatilaka and his chased after work Chinaman – The Legend of Pradeep Mathew which won the Commonwealth Book Prize in 2012.

Chinaman is now being translated into Sinhala by Dileepa Abeysekara.

This is an extract from a long chat had with Shehan about his debut novel Chinaman – The Legend of Pradeep Mathew and his literary career.

Question: What attracted you to become a writer?

Answer: I really don’t think it’s a conscious decision to become a writer but I wrote since I was a child. However, the appeal for writing was obvious; there is so much of mad and absurd things happening in this country. When I lived in different countries, though I kept a diary, I never felt like writing a novel. But here when you go through the Sunday newspapers you’ll easily pick two or three ideas to compile a short story every weekend.

I think I rose from there by keeping diaries for ages and then attempted to write a novel. It was only in 2007 that I got the idea of writing Chinaman, maybe that was the right time that I was ready to focus on something serious and dedicate a few years of my life. So I drifted into it without any guarantee of being published or read by people or even make a living from writing. I just continued writing for the same reason that you take up any hobby. However, I was lucky to get an attractive hype for Chinaman and then I realised I can do something by being a writer.

Q: Why did you choose English as your language of expression?

A: I had less choice there. Though I grew up here and studied in the Sinhala medium, it’s always English that we used at home and school and moreover my reading habits were in English. As I did my higher studies in New Zealand, English became the key language for me. However, now I read a lot in Sinhala because I don’t want to knock that part of experience from my life.

Influence

Q: Which writers influenced you most in your literary career?

A: I guess it depends on what you are writing. Even before my creative writing career, when I wrote articles I read things which went with the feel that I wanted to capture in my article. For example the current book that I’m working on is a bit darker and sinister, so I’m reading more pulp-thrillers and horror books.

Since Chinaman was about an old drunkard telling a story, I read Kurt Vonnegut’s books because his writings had the tone of voice that I wanted to capture in my story. Other than that Chuck Palahniuk’s first few books including Fight Club made a big impact on writing Chinaman. Again the structure of short chapters and how he brings in completely irrelevant factors together to describe the characters and tell the story is something that I admire and wanted to do in my style of writing as well. Therefore, these two men made a big influence in writing Chinaman.

Q: Any influence from Sri Lankan writers?

A: Without a doubt. I tried to read every English book which comes out to the market. The first influence among Sri Lankan writers was Carl Muller’s Jam Fruit Tree. That book influenced a lot of us to start writing because he’s the first writer who showed that it really was not necessary to write in proper English but you can write the way you talk. Obviously Michael Ondaatje and Romesh Gunasekara were big influences in my writing career even though they carry an elegant class of their own.

Other than that Ajith Thilakasena’s surrealistic writing style I admire the most and I read him recently.

First novel

Q:The Painter was your first novel which never got published. Why was that?

A: It wasn’t good. I was in my twenties when I was writing it and I guess I really didn’t know what I was doing. It started as a detective story and suddenly an alien popped up and the story went everywhere. However, I submitted it to the Gratiaen Awards and it got somewhere but I wasn’t satisfied at all. I think I didn’t do much research and I lacked reading, experience and exposure to write a novel.

Actually when I wrote Chinaman after 10 years, I’m glad that I did that mistake earlier because I researched a lot and I was well-read and I knew what I wanted to do. I’m glad that at least I was smart enough not to publish it at that time because here if you have a couple of lakhs of rupees you can easily be on the bookshelves, which is quite absurd. So I’m glad I wasn’t that egoistic to do so.

Q: How was the initial plot of Chinaman conceived in you?

A: It wasn’t one thing really, but a series of things. When I was in New Zealand I watched a documentary Forgotten Silver by Peter Jackson. It was one of Peter Jackson’s early productions and he used to do cheap horrors and zombie movies before his star days. It was a documentary about a brilliant film-maker who lived in the 1890s who used film lenses to make eggs, shot the first flight and did a lot of unbelievable stuff. It’s all a joke but done so convincingly. I really moved with the structure of the film and it was there on my mind for ages. Ten or 15 years later I thought what if I did it in Sri Lanka and it is obviously going to be a cricketer.

However, I really don’t have one precise moment that I thought of writing Chinaman but it came through a series of incidents.

Fanatic

Q: How could you develop Chinaman to be so realistic? Is it because you are a belligerent drunkard as W.G Karunasena or a Cricket fanatic or a good researcher?

A: Hmm.. I think that was another lesson from my debut novel The Painter. Most of the time if you are writing a fiction, the main character ends up being you. That is one of the weaknesses I see in many young writers as all their characters are in their eighteens, twenties and reflect who they are. W.G. Karunasena is an old conservative man who’s twice my age. That is one thing which pursued me to write from the point of view of a person who’s quite different to me. I might have had a drink with him but I’m sure I’ve never been friends with him or agreed with him on a lot of things.

I’m not much of a drinker and not a cricket fanatic either. I did a lot of research before and in the process of writing Chinaman. Through advertising I knew all the doggy bars around Colombo and I used to spend most of my research time in these bars talking to uncles who won their betting, some had lost, some want to talk about their angry wives and on many other topics. By hanging around in these bars I tried mimicking their speech style.

However, I was a cricket fanatic during the two years that I spent writing Chinaman. I’m not any more. It’s a bit tough, especially when I meet a fan and they expect me to give my opinion about Mahela’s retirement or various other recent updates on cricket these days of which I’m clueless.

I suppose I’m a good researcher. It always comes with the insecurity that I always have when I’m writing something that I don’t know what I’m talking about until I read as much as I can. Proper notes and sufficient information about the subject only makes me feel comfortable to write.

Q: You have selected the most appropriate two aspects which are cricket and arrack to explore Sri Lanka. Was it a conscious decision that you made when writing Chinaman?

A: As you said cricket and the arrack thing was quite surprising to me. Especially in English literature it was always about wars and arranged marriages and similar stuff. But I thought cricket and arrack were the most represented elements in Sri Lankan society and I wanted to write a novel by incorporating these two. Yes it’s a conscious decision and I must mention Carl Muller used a lot of drinking in his writing and his structure of saying things really influenced my literary capabilities during my young days.

Narrative structure

Q: Talking about the narrative structure of Chinaman, did you develop the story according to the pre-planned narrative structure or the story had its own life?

A: In terms of structure I don’t do it like an architect who builds the house according to the plan where you know the beginning, middle and the end. For me to write knowing the end is a boring process like filling a form. I enjoy being a ‘gardener’ who throws a few seeds and doesn’t know what will come up but keep on watering it and waiting.

Some days later something will come up and you trim a bit and keep on watering and keep going. That’s a more exciting way of doing it. I just had the premise of W.G. that he doesn’t have much time to live and with the limited time he had he wanted to do a documentary about the unsound legend Pradeep Mathews. Other than that I didn’t know anything at the time when I started writing. I kept on going with the flow and found the story that I wanted to write through this process.

Q: What are your writing habits?

A: I used to write in the morning before our baby girl was born. It’s refreshing to start your day with something that you like to do. I used to write from 4 am to 8 am when I was working and once I quit the job I continued till noon. I did reading at night and went to bed by 10.

I continued that throughout including Saturdays and Sundays. I don’t know any other way of doing this as if I missed one or two days of my routine it takes another two or three days to settle. However, now the hours are all over the place and my writing habits are controlled by our baby girl’s behaviour.

The most important thing is to write everyday for a few hours.

Q: The narrative structure of Chinaman has similarities to the Sri Lankan traditional literature style (Jathaka tales), which is quite different to the linear Western style. Was it that which you wanted to do?

A: Actually I’m reading Jathaka Tales for my next novel for a different reason but I did not have this idea when writing Chinaman. It is interesting to know that somebody who you know has a writing style similar to the Sri Lankan literature style which I’m quite keen these days. When I lived in other parts of the world, though I tried hard to write I couldn’t do it the way I do here. I think it’s because then we are transgressing unknown territory.

However, when I was writing Chinaman I based it on the match report or the test match structure to develop the story. So Jathaka tales must have been on the subconscious or maybe not.

Q: Have you got any feedback from Cricketers who read Chinaman?

A: Not many. Actually I asked a quote from Kumar Sangakkara and he sent me a nice message saying he read it and enjoyed. I was also scared to ask for comments from many as the book has many ‘twisted’ names related to Sri Lankan cricket.

Q: Any angry cricketers who were offended by your sarcasm?

A: No, not really. Maybe they have not read it or maybe they haven’t acknowledged the characters as being them that I was talking about. People have high opinions of themselves. They don’t think that somebody is referring to them in particular as the boozing, womanising and cheating man. They think they are wonderful and this reference is directed at someone else. That’s the beauty of fictionalising. There are no angry cricketers so far.

Q: As you have many experiences in international literary competitions and festivals, as you believe where does Sri Lankan English literature stand in the international arena? Do you think it has its own identity?

A: Not yet I think. For instance, the world accepts Indian English writings on par with any English writings even with London. As they have many Booker Prize winners such Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy and Aravind Adigar and India is well established in the world especially in literature.

I think Pakistan writing also has a spot in world literature as people are more interested in that region. When talking about Sri Lankan literature in the world arena, the analogy that I always make is we are where our cricket team was in the 1980s’. That means in the next decade we are going to win the World Cup. There are good English writers but we shouldn’t pretend that we are world class as yet.

E-books

Q: Living in the e-book era what is your preferred mode of reading? e-book or the physical book?

A: I’m an old fashioned man so I always prefer the physical feel of a book though I got an i-pad and a Kindle. Sometimes I wonder after having spent so much time in front of the computer, why we should convert even our reading habits into a digitised device. Also I have not yet figured out how to be comfortable with these devices when you are reading. However, I’m sure these won’t be issues with our children as they are born and bred in a digitised era compared with our time. They may see us as dinosaurs!

Q: How did you feel to be a Sri Lankan author in international arena?

A: I felt it as an enormous advantage to represent this part of the world in the international arena. I never dreamed of writing in New York rather I’m glad I’m not writing in New York. Sometimes I feel sorry to see some Sri Lankan writer trying hard to write as New Yorkers.

Actually critics and people like to know this part of the world. I think now it’s time for Asia as people are turning into hear our stories as they have heard a lot from America and the West. So I didn’t feel anything other than welcome by representing Sri Lanka in international arena.

Q: Why do you write?

A: It wasn’t an ambition to express me or anything, it’s just a hobby that I did to amuse myself. However, later on I have found a readership and I know I have an opportunity to write more. Now I continue with writing I see many stories around us which we have to tell to the world. When I’m here I am always inspired to write so I quit the life in Singapore and returned to Sri Lanka to continue my hobby full time. In other words, it’s a career I can sit in a Sarong all day long, listen to music, reading books and keep typing even with screaming babies. It’s the best way to spend the day. Isn’t it?