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Tsunami tragedy haunts Lankan writer
Post-tsunami, Sri Lanka will never be the same again, says filmmaker and writer Tissa Abeysekara
"I am too close to the tragedy to write about it. The wounds are still raw and the scars are fresh in memory," said the author of the novella "Bringing Tony Home", of the havoc wreaked by the Dec 26 tsunami.

"Writing a novel was like coming home for me as I have always felt creatively renewed by the process of writing. Myths and legends have always inspired me and influenced my narrative style," Abeysekara told IANS in an interview here.

Here to attend the South Asian literary conference, Abeysekara sees himself as first and foremost a storyteller for it is the sorcery of the written word that mesmerises him.

His autobiographical "Bringing Tony Home" elicited lavish praise from celebrated writer Michael Ondaatje who described it as a "lost classic". Ondaatje said: "It was a book that recreated my childhood in some way and so became very dear to me. But it is a book that hasn't been published anywhere else in the world and so it has become a kind of lost classic."

How does Abeysekara compare Sri Lankan writing in English with the flowering of English fiction in India? For one thing, it is not such a big-ticket media event in Sri Lanka as it is in India, said Abeysekara, who has also written in Sinhala. "It is more a minority affair for those haunted by the cadences of the English language."

"Writing in English (in Lanka) has never had the kind of vitality it has in India. Sri Lanka had a tradition of English writing till the 1950s. Parochialism took over after that," said the writer.

He finds the Sinhala literary establishment "stifling and more interested in political agendas than in writing". "They are very parochial, cut off from the world stream as it were," he added.

Abeysekara's latest novel - "In My Kingdom of the Sun and the Holy Peak" - is an allegory and a fable dramatising various phases of the island nation's history.

The novel comprises three stories set in three different phases of Sri Lankan history: the Kandyan kingdom that lasted till 1815; the second story is set on the eve of Independence in 1948; and the third story dissects consumerism and political confusion of the 80s.

How does he relate history with the art of fiction writing?
"I grew up at a time when ethnicity was not an issue. There was a wonderful sense of connectedness. We were never aware of our differences. The political agenda started changing around 1956. Politicians started taking all kinds of shortcuts to power," he said, alluding to the deepening of ethnic rivalry between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils in his country.

"All my writings are a psychological excursion into the kind of society Sri Lanka is," he said. A distrust of power is another defining feature of his writing. Wary of all power structures, Abeysekara prefers to speak for the common man.

"Both establishments (Tamil and Sinhalese) do not reflect the views of ordinary people," he added.

-Courtesy New Kerala

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