It is not often that a more poignant tale is heard. A mother came weeping into one of the most well known publishing houses in the US - I think Faber and Faber it was - and handed over a manuscript to be considered for publication. She said it had been written by her only son, who committed suicide at 31 because he couldn't find anybody to publish the work as a book.

The Editor promised to read the manuscript because the mother's tale was simply so heart rending. He thought he would read a chapter or two, and then dispatch a polite rejection slip to the old lady (…her name was Thelma) who brought it along. The manuscript was dog-eared and in tatters, and moreover the carbon was fading to the point of illegibility. But, he screwed his eyes and read the first chapter, and to his consternation, it was good. He read on with a sense of chagrin that a manuscript that was so hard to read and which he was going to reject anyway, was turning out to be so engrossing.

But by the end of the third chapter he was telling everybody in the publishing house about it. "It couldn't be so good,'' he told himself. But against his own prejudice, and his sense of disgust at having to read something that was in such bad physical shape, was this developing sense of bewilderment. He had come across an obvious bestseller.

The book, published later by the same publisher, was called a Confederacy of Dunces. It has since become a classic that has been translated into 14 languages. The book won a Pulitzer, and subsequently, to add to all irony, the mother became a celebrity, giving interviews to Jhonny Carson and all popular talk show hosts.

How many confederacies of Dunces are there in Sri Lanka's book industry, one does not know. But, one thing is certain, it is difficult to find a good book here in Colombo. I've been going to a couple of the top-end book shops trying to find some of the raging best sellers on the lists by Rohington Mistry. But, stores don't even seem to stock Rohington Mistry. If I placed and order for the book, they told me, I could get his latest bestseller in a cool four to six weeks! The book, A Fine Balance, which was published some years ago, would take even longer to reach me. "For some readers, the final 200 pages of the two time Booker Prize nominee Rohington Mistry's 1995 novel A Fine Balance was an out of body experience.

You forgot the day of the week. You forgot where you were. Interruptions were waived off impatiently. The only sound that registered was the breaking of your heart. As one harrowing scene followed another, you silently pleaded with the author to spare his characters. They had already suffered so much. They deserved even an Indian long shot at happiness.'' That is part of a review of A Fine Balance by Chalres Foran.

Not that all books by Mistry break your heart. But, they are always so powerful, even if they are almost comically poignant as in Such a Long Journey, also set in the author's beloved native Bombay.

Sometimes, Colombo is so insatiable in its lust for politics that one needs to get away in ones head at least to Bombay, or Katmandu. Or someplace where the topic of the moment every day in and day out is not "how soon the Norwegians are going to fix that deal to hatch that peace.''

But it seems easier to get to Bombay from Colombo on an aircraft. In Colombo they think it is better to stock 8 titles by someone called Imgon Parker, and to stock glossies on The Food of Indonesia, the Food of Malaysia, and the Food of the Philippines. Personally, I think, my preference is to have my food eaten.

So, not being able to live vicariously at least for a moment in an author's gorgeous depiction of life in a city called Bombay, a city that is not so gorgeous, but is however pulsating and assailing the senses in turns, one turns around to catch up on the gossip on whatever that is supposed to be the buzz in the city of Colombo.
A friend invites me home, and says, oh well, there is nothing really intellectual or stimulating, but you must, you just must watch the rap.

There is a large screen television set, in front of which he sets two beers, and says "watch Bhathiya and Santhush, they are the rappers of Sinhala rap.'' So I watch Bhathiya and Sathush. No doubt they rap when they rap, but there are some dancing girls who keep going in and out of the picture doing a govi dance which - it is hard to decide - is something like what they usually do when they imitate a Hindi movie and put parts in it which are meant to retain a Sinhala flavor (….like exaggerated govi raising of legs etc.,) I suppose somebody who is really discerning and who wanted to write a piece about this to the newspapers or something, would have called this dance only one thing - "nondescript.'' But, I was not supposed to discern here, I was only supposed to cool off and have a beer and see whether I can hang out - if I can't quite get interested in Colombo's many goings-ons.

So so, rap in Sinhala please? Well, what do they say, it is a hybrid culture. Indonesian food in the books, Imogen Parker, and Bhathiya and Shanthush who keep saying "siri sanghabodi maligwa, siri sangabodhi maligawa, siri sangabohi maligawa'' with such tongue twisting speed, and a Ray-Ban like jaded-ness in their eyes.

But yet, but yet, they say redemption comes serendipitously. Someone invites me to a lecture by Princeton returned Gananath Obeysekera who wrote Medusa's Hair and has an unruly hirsute look to match his work. Unfortunately, I can't make the lecture, but I makes the post lecture discussion at a restaurant, at which Gananath cognoscenti handed me a text of the "Colonial histories and Vedda primitivism, an unorthodox reading of Kandy period texts.'' There I read enthralled that "as far as Sri Lanka was concerned, there were no "indigenous peoples'' no "aborigines'' no "wild men'' and "tribes'' of the Western imagination. I am as much an aborigine as Thisa Hami and as genetically and culturally hybrid.''

"Take the Vedda- Sinhala cultural interchanges,''Gananath says towards the end. "Veddas have Kataragama who is a Hindu and Buddhist deity as one of their own…and there is great god Saman…and yet he is also a major deity of the Sinhalas. In this situation I think it is the role of the analyst to excavate the past and hold to critical reflection, the hybrid nature, not just of the Veddahs and the Sinhalas, but of our human condition in general.'' After an absence of Mistry, an injection of Imogen Parker, and an accidental espying of Bhathiya and Santush over the evening, I can only murmur weakly - "well, tell me about it.''

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