Satire in the Sri Lankan soul

Sri Lanka has a tradition of satire as journalism that is unparalleled in the subcontinent. Barring possibly, Pakistan (The Diary of a Social Butterfly), there is no country in South Asia that can match the wit and wordplay of Sri Lankan journalists. There were the greats of the 1950s such as Tarzie Vittachi whose weekly column “Bouquets and Brickbats” had many shifting uncomfortably in their chair every Sunday morning. And in the 1970s and 1980s there were Denzil Peiris’s biting comments on the functioning of the government, which were never influenced by the fact that the government owned the paper for which he worked; and Mervyn de Silva’s satirical pieces under the pseudonyms Daedalus and The Outsider (nobody knew why he needed pseudonyms, because everyone knew he was the author and if you had a beef with him he could be found every day at the Taprobane hotel for his lunchtime beer). His son Dayan, an important pillar of the establishment now, but an influential commentator on Sri Lanka’s society and politics in his own right, keeps the irony sheathed these days but when the flashes show, they are blindingly brilliant. Indian journalism seems earnest and positively stodgy by comparison.

The Sri Lankan tradition of sardonic comment on its bureaucracy, politicians and Important People, is kept alive, we report thankfully, by Andrew Fidel Fernando in Upon a Sleepless Isle, a travel diary by a Sri Lankan-born cricket journalist who grew up in New Zealand and has returned to Sri Lanka to report. If, like many of us, you were wondering how Sri Lanka manages to function, in fact thrive, despite its dysfunctional political class, its entitled bureaucracy and incestuous elite, the answer lies in a haiku written by Fernando that is at the heart of the country’s political culture: what he calls “Sri Lanka’s great propensity to quietly tolerate inconvenience”. The haiku reads: Yes, I’m unhappy/But I’m too scared to complain/Can’t somebody else?

The book chronicles travels through some of the former hot spots on the island but its gaze lingers on aspects ignored by the professional war correspondent. In Mannar, other reporters might have seen remnants of the Sinhala-Tamil conflict. Fernando describes the origins of Catholicism on the island: the Church of Our Lady of Madhu, a centre of pilgrimage for all communities, which has amazingly survived years of war. There’s a poignant prayer engraved below her statue. It says, simply: “Grant our country permanent peace”.

Fernando also chronicles the arrival of the Muslims — the Marrakalayo, from the Tamil ‘maran’ for wood and ‘kala’ for vessel — on the island. Muslims and Sinhalese enjoyed rare cordiality during the medieval era, but British policies of divide and rule caused suspicion and ill will. As Muslims moved from Colombo, further north to Batticaloa they found themselves fighting a two-front war: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam on the one hand and the Sinhala Buddhists on the other. Both wanted them to take sides, they stayed indifferent to both. Now, the LTTE may have been demolished but extremist Sinhala Buddhists have powerful patrons. Among the (largely) Sunni Muslim community, Sri Lanka is waging its own quiet battle against the rise of Wahhabism. Same war, different names, different actors….

What seems to be missing from Fernando’s voyage of re-discovery of the land of his birth is the elephant in the room: India. He makes no comment whatsoever about Sri Lanka’s neighbour that has been such a source of tribulation for the island in the recent past. Many attribute to India the distortions in Sri Lanka, the rise and development of  its large ( and now, unnecessary?) military-industrial complex and its compulsive need to ensure a balance of power in the Indian Ocean by a China tilt (so that there is no Indian-fuelled Tamil nationalism ever in the future, only Sinhala nationalism). If a visitor to Sri Lanka were to read this book as the first introduction to the island, the impression he would get is that India has played no role in Sri Lanka at all — which, we know, is not true.

But that is the only missing element in a book that is utterly engaging, wickedly funny and actually quite heroic: Fernando battles attacks by packs of stray dogs, wild chattering monkeys, elephants in rut (though his preoccupation with animal copulation is, frankly, a bit tedious), three-wheeler and bus drivers and foreign tourists in the line of duty. 

He is also brave, as he describes the rise and rise and sudden fall of Hambantota: the constituency of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa (“personal motto: making Sri Lanka wildly prosperous, one immediate family member at a time”). Anyone who has been to Hambantota knows the silent but empty grandeur of enormous stadia and vast airfields (built in anticipation of a huge influx of tourists, especially from China). Nothing has moved in Hambantota after Rajapaksa was ousted from power and these facilities now represent capacity created using public money that no one is using: yet another example of the way Sri Lanka’s ruling class works.  Everyone who is interested in social processes in South Asia must read this book. Move over Bill Bryson: Andrew Fidel Fernando is the new kid on the block.

Upon a Sleepless Isle 

Andrew Fidel Fernando 

Pan Macmillan; Rs 599; 256 pages