Another fine Sri Lankan writer has appeared from nowhere, as it were, and written an eminently readable novel based on his experiences as an English teacher in Rome. His name appears only as Anura, his first name, but only a very few will fail to recognize that he is the son of S. D. Saparamadu, former civil servant and of Tisara Prakasakayo fame, and grandson of Martin Wickremasinghe.
Anura left Sri Lanka at the age of 18 to pursue his higher studies in the United States, where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Languages and Liberal Arts from Adelphi University and an MBA in Finance and International Business from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. He worked in America until 9/11, when he was laid off along with thousands of others.
Browsing the jobs vacant column, Anura spots a “Wanted English teachers in Italy” ad in the New York Times classifieds, and soon finds his way there, leaving Upper East Side” that “I called home for the last twenty years” for “the Eternal City”, which will “remain forever in my heart”.
Anura declares that his story is a personal one - “confessions of an English teacher in Italy” and “a compilation of actual events that took place while the author lived and worked in Rome”.
The chapter titled ‘My Peisani’ begins with a perceptive though cynical comment on the American dream that makes people move away from third world countries to better themselves and improve their sad lot in life. “The land of opportunity where everybody has hot and cold running water, 24-hour cable TV, and an Amex Platinum card is a far cry from the comforts of back home where lunch is at times a bi-weekly occurrence. In countries where young Einsteins compete against each other to be accepted to a university so they would have a life marginally better than their parents would, the allure of moving to the West, where the streets are paved with gold, is irresistible.
Every South Asian I’ve met in America, was consumed by this most American of pursuits: wealth, success and a Green Card. The last item was of course the legitimization of every hardship that one had to undergo in their new homeland since it meant that one now had the possibility to stay forever in America without being sent back to the hovels of Calcutta. As cynical as it may seem, this is what the American dream means to most South Asian immigrants.”
“Why the hell” Anura moved to America is a different story. His parents belonged to that rare breed; wealthy South Asians who earned more money at home than most investment bankers did on Wall Street. For them life was simply grand. Houses with every imported accoutrement, fancy cars, servants, flourishing businesses and landholdings, which at the end of the day actually made them even richer because the local currencies were always on a steady decline against the dollar and the Euro.
This is what Anura grew up with. He wishes the reason why he moved was a noble one like pursuing his education or exploring new opportunities and careers but the raw truth is “I left because I was bored and didn’t know what to do with myself after I graduated from high school. Since my parents were paying for it, going to college in America seemed like a good idea and off I went to the Big Apple to get myself a college degree. Afterwards, I got a job just like every other newly minted grad and never went back,’ says Anura with utmost candour.
Anura’s characters that he draws with unusual perception keep his book ticking from page to page. He begins with the unwashed Punjabi cabbie Malkot Singh, who drives him to JFK Terminal 4 from Upper East Side “the place I called home for the last twenty years”. His son is an investment banker and daughter a medical student but he drives a cab because he couldn’t find a job when he came over to Manhattan twenty-five years ago though he was a lawyer in Chandigarh.
Next, there is John, the personnel director of the school where Anura is going to teach English. John is a pathological liar and a dirty pervert, pretending to have been a FBI agent who went after the Mafia and arrested John Gotti. He is also a moviemaker and everything else he is not from being Jewish.
It’s not fair by the reader to introduce all of the characters. This is a book about people and places. It is episodic in nature and not a novel as such. What is clever about it is the deftness with which the author delineates events, places and character. Begin with Rome’s airport that nobody in Italy calls by its official name –Leonardo da Vinci Intercontinental Airport.
Move on to Camp Dei Fiori, literally “the field of flowers”, which is why there are about thirty Bangladeshis selling roses and harassing tourists; it’s a great place to hook up with drunken British slappers.
Then, to the trattoria, where when you order a Dewars on the rocks, you get a glass of warm Scotch because “Italians like to enjoy the nuances and the full complexity of the beverage”; Celestina, Gioliti, La Locanda Trattoria, La Paizeta, Porchetta Restaurants of Ariccia and Rockness, whose food the author describes with mouth-watering clarity.
Piazza Vittorio is the heart of Rome’s ethnic quarter, where the Chinese occupy almost every building in the area –hundreds of clothing stores, restaurants, supermarkets, gift shops and video stores. The Chinese triads wield enormous influence here. Little India is full of restaurants, grocery stores, jewellery stores and phone centres.
Grandma’s Shop, known as Achchige Kade amongst the Sri Lankan community, is a Sri Lankan grocery store run by a very pleasant Jewish grandma; it stocks everything a homesick Sri Lankan heart would desire: jams, jellies, pickles, chutneys, spices, red rice, dried fish, coconut treacle, nuts, canned fruits, Sri Lankan newspapers and magazines, even arrack discreetly re-labelled as coconut syrup.
The final scene of throwing in coins at Fontana di Trevi before Anura leaves for Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami draws the book to a poignant close.
Written in a free and easy style, his first and “probably last novel” (as stated –sadly- in the dust jacket) is hugely readable; it is also unabashedly littered with a lot of slang and vulgar words and a liberal use in the dialogues of Italian expressions unfamiliar to the reader, neither of which detracts from but supports its “unputdownability”. |
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