‘I’ve loved, laughed, lived…and there’s more’

As open as her book, Elizabeth Southwell who has captured the ups and downs of her life in her autobiographical novel, Monsoon Rains & Icicle Drops talks to Ayesha R. Rafiq

Ensconced in Libby's miniature bungalow with the beginnings of a storm outside, I'm waging a losing battle against her enormous cushions whilst trying to suppress a fit of giggles. Despite her sophistication and immaculate manners, she's obviously still hard put to suppress the 'little feral devil – singing, burping, farting and giving cheek in general' of her boarding school days.

Elizabeth Southwell's life at thirty-something is a kaleidoscope of paradoxes. She's lived a life so many would envy but none would ever want to live, been blessed with the most incredible friends who have caused her crushing anguish and had the best of luck and the worst of it.

Her autobiographical novel Monsoon Rain and Icicle Drops is melancholic, philosophical, questioning and blindingly positive by turn, but bursting with the sheer joy of life throughout. Like Aladdin's magic carpet ride she takes us soaring, tumbling and freewheeling through a life that has been both tragic and triumphant in turn.

But for all the wonder her life holds, “I would never have chosen the path my life has followed”, she muses. A full-blooded Australian to whom “once upon a time, happiness came naturally”, the death of her beloved fiancé Justin in a mountaineering accident, followed by the deaths of other close friends, plunged her into an abyss of sorrow, and she began to search the world for an end to it.

From a wild hedonistic party under an igloo in a Nepalese jungle, to a sacred pilgrimage to the mythical abode of Lord Shiva, from herding cattle across the Gobi desert to meditating in a Buddhist monastery in Paris, dealing with the impatience of New York and unable to settle down in her native Australia, she finally found solace in “mad, chaotic, frustrating, enchanting Sri Lanka”, where she now lives.

In a sense, reading Libby's book is not that different from talking to her. Both her book and Libby herself are so endearingly open, honest and guileless, that within minutes she feels like an old friend.

Still reeling from the tragedies in her life, Libby's greatest inspirations are her lover and friends who have left this world. “They were such free spirits. They enjoyed every bit of their life so much and were such positive energies, they taught me to live life to its fullest.”

Accompanying Libby on her dizzying travels and travails has been a fair amount of her own brand of quirky luck, perhaps bestowed on her by guardian angels in the form of loving friends who are no more. She narrowly missed being on the same flight that claimed the lives of two of her friends and believes she risked being infected by the HIV virus through a blood transfusion she received to help her recover from a near-fatal attack of dengue. And astonishingly, holidaying in Weligama in December 2004, she survived being bodily lifted and thrown by the devastating tsunami unscratched, only to suffer acute appendicitis later that night and undergo emergency surgery in the middle of the reigning chaos.

A gourmet cook, Libby's next great love after travelling is “food, glorious food”. Her current book is replete with hilarious accounts of catering impossible parties for her lovable eccentric boss, hotelier Geoffrey Dobbs. Never tiring of challenging her palate, she lets on that a book about her equally fascinating gastronomic adventures may be forthcoming. “When you're travelling, every meal is like the Last Supper. You have to savour each bite, because you never know when you will ever eat that particular dish again.” One exotic dish she particularly relished on her travels is the Genghis Khan soup she was treated to in Mongolia – a dish of small, boiled pieces of mutton and herbs, served in a sheep's large intestine. “Mmmm, delicious,” she says and grins naughtily.

On her travels, Libby also seems to have shed the religion of her childhood for the more philosophical lines of Buddhism. “After Justin died, I had to do a Ph.D on myself. I questioned fate, destiny, nature, my life, everything.

Then I came across the four Noble Truths of Buddhism and used them to overcome my despair”, and though she doesn't claim to be a Buddhist she says she finds it easy to incorporate the philosophies of Buddhism into her life.

Enviably proud of having followed her heart at all times, there's one more dream Libby wants to live. “If I were to die tomorrow, I would have just one regret. I've travelled, I've lived, I've laughed, I've loved, but I've never been able to pursue my creative side.

I want to move to Paris and go to drama school, and who knows, I may suddenly just up and go. I never want to sit on my dreams and sit around when I'm eighty saying, ‘I should have done this and I should have done that’. Instead I want to say, ‘I did this and I did that and how lucky I have been’.”
While she still hungers for what could have been and yearns to love and be loved again, she values who she is and the life she has now. A wildflower who will always survive, of her life now she says, “if Justin had lived, I would be a different person today. But….the person I have become is something to be valued. …This is it. And I like it”. And perhaps in the end, that is all that matters.