Flying
high
By Smriti Daniel
She’s only 22 years old, and she’s already written a
book. A whole book mind you, not little doodles in a notebook, not
small character sketches in her head, but a whole book. This, believe
you me, takes some doing. As someone, somewhere used to say, ‘you
just got to respect that.’ Oh, and of course, there’s
the little matter of being shortlisted for the Gratiaen awards.
Did I mention she was only 22?
Oh,
so secretive...
Her name is Shehani Dilshara Gomez, and her book is Learning To
Fly. “I wrote it right after I left school,” she says,
“I was 19 when I started.” She confesses to being something
of a night owl – “I would wake up at two in the morning,
unable to sleep and would then start writing,” she says. Ah,
with a little imagination (okay, okay, a lot of imagination) one
could have her pouring over some old typewriter by candlelight,
writing her great epic. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case
may be, Shehani is a modern young woman, and so she used her computer,
and no, it wasn’t something frighteningly classical playing
in the background, but Sinhala songs off the radio or on occasion
Yanni. Besides, this isn’t a tale of gods and monsters; instead
it is a story about ordinary people and the lives they live.
While
Shehani was up burning the midnight oil, very few people were even
aware that she was writing a book. “It was all very secretive,”
says Shehani, who chose not to show it to anyone until it was done.
When anyone asked her what Learning To Fly was about, she would
blithely reply “birds.” In truth, Learning To Fly is
all about happiness. “All the conversations revolve around
happiness, and how if you’re not careful it can just slip
through your fingers.”
For Shehani, the name of her book really says it all. “The
title, Learning To Fly conveys my central idea perfectly,”
she says, adding that at one point she had considered ‘Sitting
on the Edge of a Star’ for a name, but had then set it aside.
Painting a picture of hesitant young birds, who must either take
to the skies or die in the attempt she says, “flying isn’t
an easy thing to do, but in the end you either fly or you don’t.”
Who’s
in it?
The book is built around three main characters – Nadia, Kala
and Dylan. “They’re all going through a phase of personal
discovery,” says Shehani, explaining that like so many other
young people, these three are simply trying to live their lives
well – through trial and error more often than not.
In fact the orientation of the book as a whole seems to be not on
the tangible things, but on the intangible – what people feel,
desire or simply hope for. “My characters are asking themselves,
‘what makes me happy?’ and they’re trying to find
the answers among their family and friends.” “The fact
is that relationships don’t always work,” she says,
and obviously, that can hurt.
What’s
in it?
Family and the idea of estrangement from one’s family, in
particular are central to the novel. For instance, Dylan, one of
the major characters in the book loses his father. The two girls,
Nadia and Kala, are also separated from their parents, not by death,
but by their own choosing. “Their relationships with their
parents were simply not strong enough,” says Shehani. Aside
from this other issues, such as alcoholism also come up.
Why
address these themes in particular, do they have any personal significance?
“I haven’t gone through this directly, but it’s
not impersonal either,” she says, emphasising that feelings
such as depression and loneliness are common to everyone, “it’s
just that all these emotions are intensified here.” For her,
really slipping into the character (and taking her reader along)
is very important. However, she adds that “I think it’s
important that you have to maintain some degree of detachment,”
she says, “it’s important not to try and reflect yourself
in it.”
Even
so, she admits to having a favourite among her characters. Kala
– Shehani’s personal favourite – is also the one
she can relate to with the greatest ease. “There are a few
times I actually talk through her, though it’s not all that
obvious.” Dylan on the other hand was a real challenge, after
all, as Shehani says “He’s a guy!” However, having
some good guy friends helped her out. Even so, she left Dylan for
the last. “Dylan as a character was developed very late,”
she says, describing how she set him aside, and then went back to
him when she felt more up to it. “On top of it, it’s
not even like Dylan is a normal guy.”
A
different format
Adding to that sense of intimacy is the fact that a lot of the book
is written in the form of diary entries, with even a little poetry
thrown in for good measure. It is this, more than anything else
that gives the reader a sense of actually climbing into a character’s
mind, and looking out into the world with their perspective. Shehani,
who deliberately set out to create this feeling, believes it is
crucial to the appeal of the book.
Future
work
Is she a chain writer? Is there another book in store? “I’m
not working on anything new at the moment,” Shehani says,
besides there’s a lot of work still to be done on this book
itself – beginning with some editing. In the meantime, she’s
still very absorbed with her poetry, which she says has been an
important part of her life for years. “When I was about 15,
I started writing a lot of poetry,” she reminisces, “the
whole thing was triggered off by a personal incident, which was
something of a reality check for me.”
On
being shortlisted
Though she did not actually win the Gratiaen Prize, simply being
in the running was good enough for her. “I was completely
bowled over; I never even expected to be short listed,” she
says, describing that unreal moment when one of the judges read
out a synopsis of her book. It turns out that this is not her first
book (“I remember attempting to write this book, when I was
eight years old, but I can’t even remember what it was about.”)
and hopefully it won’t be her last. Shehani, whose current
job involves financial research, has also worked as a journalist,
and put in some time with news reading for television as well. Does
she have any burning ambition waiting to be fulfilled? “I
don’t really have anything concrete in mind, but I do want
to be in writing,” she says.
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