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• Hippocrates, where art thou?
• The truth about chickenpox - Medical Measures
• A drink a day, does it keep the doc away?
• It's not always the woman's fault! - Infertility:
• Polythene politics
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• He was the painter with the witty light-hearted touch
• Kala Corner - By Dee Cee
• He believed in the old and the new
• Remembering a father
• Mr. Rajapakse goes to Corfu
• Whata thrill !
• Human dignity through school children - A view from the hills
• People and Events
• Houses of all houses
• It's a full time job
• Letters to the editor

Spicy hot in cold Toronto

Can you describe where you are right now ?

I am in my study. I have a huge set of glass doors that opens onto a balcony and from where I am sitting, I can see the neighbour's garden and beyond that the rooftops of the houses on the adjoining streets. My walls are painted yellow. My house is a 100-year- old Victorian house. It is in the middle of an old neighbourhood called Parkdale.

What is your neighbourhood like ?

In the 1890's Parkdale was the Cinnamon Gardens of Toronto. But in the 1930's with the depression a lot of the old mansions were abandoned and the gentry moved north. So the old mansions became rooming houses and today their occupants are the mentally ill, prostitutes, pimps, drug pushers and just the poor who can't afford anything else. In the 1970's huge apartment complexes were built on some of the roads and these house new immigrants and refugees. Hence a lot of Sri Lankans, West Indians and Vietnamese.

The area is thus very multicultural and just teeming with all sorts of fantastic foods and shopping. And I can get my string-hoppers and pittu and thosai at the Tastee Restaurant at the bottom of my street! All in all everyone seems to exist peaceably, the Tamil ladies in their sarees delicately picking their way through the prostitutes that line every street corner. Of recent there have been a lot of artists who have moved into the area and also a lot of gay and lesbian people.

What's the weather like?

Today is a strange day. Over the last weeks we have been getting so much snow that no-one seems to know where to put it. We are expecting a big storm today and it is going to bring the city to a standstill. So the mayor of Toronto has called on the military to help us.

Everyone is supposed to stay home today as the subway tracks are frozen and so the trains can't run. Yesterday it was just pandemonium here. People having to walk miles in the freezing cold to work. The strange thing is that all this snow has also made the city absolutely beautiful. This is especially true of Parkdale. With all the dirt hidden, it suddenly looks like a 19th century Victorian village.

Let's move on to your new book 'Cinnamon Gardens'. Why did you pick this particular period of Sri Lankan history (1920's) to write about ?

What particular relevance does it have for you?

Gosh, where do I start. I think this period is important on a number of levels. First of all it was the period in which we began to see the first serious rift between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. But also with the arrival of the Donoughmore Commission other rifts began to show as well. For example, I am sure most Sri Lankans have no idea that, long before the Tamils were asking for a separate state, the Kandyans were demanding a state of their own and in fact put that idea forward to the Donoughmore Commission. They suggested a country of three loosely federated states: Low Country Sinhalese, Tamil and Kandyan. Now, of course, I am not advocating separate states or anything like that. But what is interesting about this time is that you really get a sense of how many levels of complexity there were and still are in this country. As Balendran says in his conversation with F.C. Wijewardena on pg 69 "It is like an Arabian mosaic, take one tile out and you might ruin the entire design." Their whole conversation is extremely instructive for you to look at in terms of this question. Because F.C. is expressing the views of Congress of that time, views that have been held by so many governments since- that we must have a unitary Whitehall style centralized government.

But Balendran just like many others of his time (Arunachalam for example) are saying no , no, that doesn't work. WE are not British, we are a unique culture with a unique cultural heritage and so we must find a constitution that reflects the numerous vertical and horizontal divisions in our society (in fact Arunachalam pointed out that, long before the British, there actually was a Sri Lankan government which was village heads appointed to a district council, which then appointed a minister who sat on a council of ministers of State. Very federal as you can see. Even the British turn out to be smarter than the so-called leaders of Ceylon and recommend a different type of constitution.

You know, the strange thing is that not long after I had started to write the book, the possibility of a Donoughmore type constitution came up as a way to solve our current ethnic problems. Isn't that strange?

History repeats itself in strange ways, I guess. What else about that period interests you ?

There are a couple of other historical things that are interesting. The first is the women's movement that began in that time. I really wanted to draw attention to that just to show that we DO have a history of feminism in our country and it is important to protect and preserve that.

The same is true for the Labour history, of which we know so little. Without A.E. Goonesinghe the poor in this country would have never progressed at all. You should just read about the hardship and indignities that were carried out against the poor of this country before he came along! And what is interesting here is that the British and our local elite were hand in glove in terms of exploiting the poor. What "I like about Goonesinghe (and why he was so feared) was that he said, I don't care what the hell the colour of your skin is, if you are exploiting the poor, then you must be dealt with"

So he conducted strikes not just against British companies like the Boustead Tramway service but also against Lake House and certain other Ceylonese owned companies. I think that this is something that is very important in our society today.

Because increasingly we live in a neo-colonial society in which the Sri Lankan poor is being exploited and made to suffer again.

And this is not just at the hands of the Western countries through the IMF and World Bank but also propagated by our own elite.

The other important issue is Universal Franchise and how almost all the organizations that appeared before the Donoughmore commission were against it. Included in this group were some of the "fathers" of our nation- Bandaranaike and others.

It was funny how the elite who were jockeying for power amongst themselves were almost united in their opposition to sharing that power with the masses of our country. Ultimately it was the British who practically shoved universal franchise down the throats of our elite forcing them to become men of the people. This is something I really stress in the book.

Our politicians today and in the past have always tried to blame all the ills of the country on the British who have become a convenient scapegoat. But, while colonialism was a terrible thing, it is important to remember that it was the British and not our own elite who brought about a democratization of our society, who by shoving universal franchise down the throats of our elite, gave a sudden power to the masses, a power that very quickly got translated into tougher labour laws, universal education and medicine etc.

In a way, 'Cinnamon Gardens' seems to be a prequel to 'Funny Boy', exploring the roots of the social unrest that so affected the protagonists in your first novel.

I call Cinnamon Gardens "a colonial novel for a post-post colonial age." The post-post colonial age is defined by Jayadeva Uyangoda in the following way. "The first phase, the post-colonial phase, is over. The second, which we may call the post-post colonial phase is infinitely more complex than the first. Now the enemies are within; histories are being re-written and the futures are re-thought in a most combative and adversarial fashion." In that sense Cinnamon Gardens does not look at the colonial past from the simple position of white oppressor and Ceylonese oppressed. I can't look at it that way any more. The atrocities we Sri Lankans have carried out against each other, and which we have all witnessed in some form or the other, make what the British did seem rather tame. The enemies are definitely within.

The early nationalist models have also failed us. For they were built on notions of exclusion rather than inclusion, on the idea of the majority forcing their cultural norms on the minority (Sinhala Only law, for example). So now we must turn away from those models, if we are to survive as a nation and look towards models of nation building that are inclusive and in which there is a sharing of power. We must also begin to look at ourselves as extremely multi- cultural and multi-faceted and work with that. And Cinnamon Gardens is very much a plea towards that. So in all this, you can see how important and relevant the history of the 1920s is to Sri Lankan society today.

Your attention to socio-political detail is sure to challenge any critics who continue to pigeonhole you as a 'gay writer'. However, the challenge of sexuality does come up in the novel in the form of Balendran. He does not have the luxury of being able to 'come out' and is trapped in marriage.

Do you think this reflects a common reality for many gay men in Sri Lanka ?

Unfortunately it does. Our society really does not provide a space in which a gay or lesbian person can really be themselves. I know that from the year I spent in Sri Lanka with my partner. One is constantly looking over one's shoulder, waiting for the axe to fall. And it does fall. I saw it happen to other gay men in the year I was there.

I remember the case of a guy who was picked up on Dickman's Road by the police. This was just before the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. He spent the week of the New Year languishing in jail. His parents who live in a village in the hill country were frantic because he didn't come back for the New Y ear and they didn't hear from him. Finally, he was released. He lost his job because, of course he could not give an excuse for why he had not come in to work. And he didn't know how he would face his parents, what he would say to them. His life was completely ruined. And this was only one of the cases I saw during 1997.

The fact is that the government really has to get rid of that Sodomy law. It is such a ridiculous law. It was made at a time when homosexuality was not understood at all and was seen in the same way one might see smoking. A vice that a person could easily give up. Since the 1890s there has been a lot of change in science's approach towards homosexuality and while the debate is still not resolved on whether one is born with it, or something in the environment influences our sexuality within the first few years of infancy, at the same time science is in agreement that being gay is irreversible. It cannot be cured. So what is the purpose of this law? You might as well pass a law outlawing tall people or fat people or people with curly hair. The law serves only one purpose in Sri Lanka today- blackmail. It allows unscrupulous elements in our society to prey off gay men. I saw a lot of that too in my year in Sri Lanka. And recently this government made the situation worse. Lesbianism which was not a criminal offence has now been made one.

How do you feel that your writing style has changed since your first book?

- It has become much more complex. The sentences are still simple and clear but the plots are very complicated and interwoven. There are 22 characters with distinct histories and points of view. Some scenes have 10 -12 people in them.

I understood that you had many difficulties in researching your book , one of which was the Public Library's limitation that you could only photocopy two pages a day ? How did you get over this problem ?

Asking people to go to the archives and photocopy pages of things for me. The archivists were very sweet and occasionally tried to slip in a few pages on my behalf. That is one of the things I miss about Sri Lanka. There are rules but people will often bend them a little, are much more human about rules than over here.

Any other memorable things happen during the research period ?

- Lots of things. But too many to go into here. One of the nice things is that I really got to know the older generation.

Whatever happened to plans for making a television or film adaptation of 'Funny Boy'?

- Still in the works. These things take years.

Apparently there's an audiobook of 'Funny Boy' , featuring Sugith Varughese, an Indian Canadian actor - how is it doing ?

I don't have a clue. It is just out and so I won't know for a while.

Who are the contemporary writers that you like ?

-Naguib Mahfouz, Anita Desai, Margaret Drabble.

What do you do in your spare time ?

What spare time? Clean the house? Shop for groceries? Just kidding. I love to read. My idea of a holiday is to lie in bed and read.

Coming this way any time soon ?

No. I can't. I am teaching Creative Writing at York University and so have to be here in the winter. What a drag.

Was it easier for you to write your second book ?

No, it was much harder, because it was a complex book and also because there were a lot of expectations placed on me because of the success of the first book.

Just out of curiosity, if you hadn't started writing what would you have wanted to be when you were a kid ?

A play director.

What's taking up your life now that the book has come out ?

Doing some research on the next book. To be set in Toronto I think.

Set in Toronto ? 'Funny Boy' ended with the imminent departure of Arjie and his family to Canada - are you by any chance going to continue his saga ?

No. I can't think of anything more boring to do. Funny Boy is long over and done with as far as I am concerned. I am not the same person who wrote that book.

What else are you planning to do in your life other than write ?

I really don't know. But now you have got me thinking. Writing is so much my life. Everything else revolves around it. And I am very content what with Andrew and now this lovely cozy little house.

Now that you are smack in the middle of a cold Toronto winter, anything from Sri Lanka that you miss desperately ?

I want it to be so hot that the sweat runs down and forms pools around my feet. Oh, and I would give anything for a Green Cabin lamprais.

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