Arts
Lively literary chat brightens up a rainy Kandy evening
The Alliance Française de Kandy held their 3rd annual ‘Lire en Fête’ (Literary Festival) from October 12-14 with a series of events to celebrate both Francophone and Sri Lankan literature, ranging from creative writing and comic strip workshops to a Literary Brunch. The Literary Chat with authors Ashok Ferrey and Yudhanjaya Wijeratne was keenly awaited, and the typically rainy Kandy evening on Saturday meant that the small number of keen literati that braved the gloom to visit the AFK were rewarded with a cosy sitting room ambience that was unexpected as it was stimulating.
Sharing their experiences: Ashok Ferrey, AFK Director Mickael Lenglet and Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
The evening was a study in contrasts: the acclaimed, multi-published and technologically (computer)-challenged author of contemporary Sri Lankan fiction and the self-taught emerging Sci-fi writer and tech-geek. But there was sufficient commonality between them: a love of short stories as the ‘purest of literary art forms’; a whimsical approach to life and its living despite the two authors’ different generations and genres; and a refreshing ability to laugh at themselves and their foibles.
Ashok shared truly valuable insights into his start in writing from where in his early forties and with no warning whatsoever, his first short story simply ‘wrote itself’, virtually ‘vomiting’ itself onto the pages of a Raheema exercise book as a form of catharsis from watching and caring for a family member dealing with the dreaded cancer, to how there is at the heart of every one of his books a ‘cold, hard, kernel of pure mathematics’ which he then spends 300 pages disguising for the reader. He spoke almost in bewilderment of the long intervals between books where he unconsciously or subconsciously puts together a story that is then supercharged into a first draft of a new book within six weeks or so. But there was a decided air of a young William Brown when he spoke of the little puzzles and ‘Easter eggs’ he hides within his stories for his own amusement, which some readers may discover ten years after they first read the book.
Yudhanjaya described the low of the agony of not being able to write anything for a week, and the high that comes after he has got down 300 words of a story, with the clear indications of one addicted to writing. It was fascinating too to listen to his description of switching between the technical writing of his day job at a Sri Lankan think-tank and his creative writing, especially how he develops his storyline in the very digital-age platform of blogging and social media. A disarmingly down-to-earth young man too, from his description of not completing formal education to being a self-taught everything, and appreciative that it is still possible to do so in this country: a welcome change that, I thought, in this time of depressingly repetitive stories of how this country is fit for no one of sanity to live in.
The Director, Alliance Francaise, Kandy, Mickael Lenglet, cleverly fostered the air of a fireside-chat which helped the two authors to connect immediately with the audience. His interactive tool of asking the authors to email in some replies to a Proust questionnaire (a standard set of questions about one’s personality popular as a form of interview due to the answers given by the French writer Marcel Proust), and asking the audience to guess the author by the response to a few questions proved to be vastly entertaining and provided a quick snap-shot of each author. So we learned that Ashok’s s favourite occupation is to sit in an armchair contemplating the novel he ought to be writing, and that Yudhanjaya’s favourite virtue is ‘honesty – raw honesty’; that Ashok would like to die in a plain, unvarnished box, while Yudhanjaya’s idea of misery is having to write the last paragraph of a story.
(For the full list of answers, check out the FB page of AFK.) With open and honest responses to questions from the audience, the evening proved to be a truly stimulating event in the 2018 Lire en Fête.