OBOC - Srilanka

Apologies for not sticking to the alphabetic order. Have been meaning to read a couple of authors but if i had to wait for their countries to pop up in order it would have taken me at least another year or two! Also the BBC World Book Club was reading "The Reef" by Romesh Gunesekera an author i've been meaning to read, so, here I am with my choice for Srilanka.

Growing up in Tamil Nadu, Ceylon (as Srilanka was called in those days) was not far away both geographically and otherwise. The geographical proximity meant that at one time almost every household in Chennai boasted these giant "booster antenna" in the hope of catching Rupavahini (the famed Srilankan television channel) airwaves. Besides the friendly airwaves we also received waves of refugees as the civil war escalated and Tamil Nadu became almost a second stage for the conflict.  Srilanka held a fair chunk of the '80s news headlines in my state and every political party has gained some mileage by exploiting "the cause". Personally I've also known some really amazing survivors from Srilanka who came as refugees to India and now call it home, and others whose families are spread all over the world that organizing a family gathering is almost like organizing a UN Security Council meeting!

So when The Reef opened with an accidental encounter of a Sinhalese and a Tamil in London, my mind immediately raced with a lot of different possibilities for the novel. The story is narrated by Triton who starts out his life as a servant boy in the household of Ranjan Salgado and gradually grows up to be Mr.Salgado's sole aide. He leads a sheltered life in the household, as Mr.Salgado is an almost reclusive bachelor with just a very small circle of friends until Missy i.e Miss Nili enters his life. Now and then we get a glimpse of the larger events happening in Srilanka at that time but by far the characters are caught up in their own microcosm until the very end when Mr.Salgado and Triton leave the country to settle down in the UK.

Triton is an amazing cook and the book is full of references to food which as a vegan I didn't appreciate much but any other food lover would probably drool over. The colonial past of Srilankan society is also brought to focus and so are the class differences. (The scene that stood out for me was when Missy gives Triton a christmas present along with a 100 rupee note)

Mr.Salgado is a Marine Biologist of sorts.  As the beautiful ocean reef that he cared for starts seeing the damaging effect of pollution one cannot but draw parallels to the beautiful country of Srilanka and the effect of terrorism and civil war on it.

I liked the book for its prose, but was a bit disappointed that it dealt too much with just the domestic tale of the Salgado household. I didn't quite appreciate the interjections into the tale, incidents from Srilankan politics without any framework of reference for me. Like Triton, I too was clueless about some of the conversations and had to look up many events. I don't mind doing that, but it just didn't flow well in my mind. Also I felt misled by the opening scene where the Tamil and the Sinhalese accidentally met in London as that led me to believe that some Tamil-Sinhala relationship was going to crop up in the flashback, but there was nothing much of that.

Anyway, I've raised this small gripe of mine with Romesh Gunesekera himself through the BBC World Book Club and i am eager to find out if that question was raised and answered.