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The many-faceted aspects of post-colonial literature

LITERATURE: The Postcolonial has been a time of testing the waters. Writers have made their mark by manipulating words to suit or criticize the many controversial and political subjects that have simmered around them. They have done so by connecting themselves with langauge; and in this way, language became their tool. After all, no person has become a worse writer by writing.

I have found in most postcolonial literature an unconscious cry for stability. The colonial period had inflicted on us a quite dampening effect. We had come to accept the experiences of life while things just seemed to happen around us.

There was little dignity of ancestry or hope for posterity. The colonials gave us their vision and we danced to the tunes they played. Yet, as we see, the colonial era did not leave us barren of interest and devoid of purpose. This age of Postcolonial Literature has become, in many ways, an era of Postcolonial Literary Revolution.

Everything that has been written has been, in a sense, bonded with personal experience - but this is usually defined as an attempt to set down one's conclusions about a part of human living which no one except the writer could possible master: that part which is wholly comprised observations, experiences, emotions and thoughts of the writer himself.

Yet, in much of the writing that has emerged, we see how, unlike the sociologists who may understand the workings of people in the mass, the writer is, shall I say cuter?

He can tell of how forces enwrap or buffet his characters, and yet limits himself to a chosen few.

True models

I recall how Bertrand Russel once said that, as a young man, he was unhappy because he thought too much about himself and conceived of the universe as being centred about his own interests. This could be applied for much of postcolonial literature too.

It has its bark and its bite and the true models of such literature become valid when the writer appreciates his own relative unimportance and recognizes the much greater importance of the world around him and knows when he or she should bark and when to bite.

A new Sri Lankan writer from Victoria, Canada, Shane Joseph, has given us his first novel, "Redemption in Paradise." The novel is rich and set in a landscape that is fluid and where time itself is inconsequential. We are assured of many barks and bites. In the novel, Sarah Neal, an Australian, arrives in Sri Lanka. Let me quote:

Commercial interests

"A man passing by on the sidewalk turned and caught her eye... She could see the interest in his eyes. She had seen this many times over in her travels around Asia. Men desired Western women in these parts of the world, mostly as sexual objects.

"Maybe there was a thirst for conquest over past colonial masters and attaining it via a European-looking woman was one way of gratification."

We also have the author's comments on Colombo - so very true - deftly sandwiched into the thoughts of another visitor to the island, an expatriate, Lionel Kodituwakku:

"Colombo was oblivious to the troubles in the country: a crowded city where commercial interests switched allegiances with changing trends. He remembered when the socialist government of the Bandaranaike era had throttled free market forces in the early Seventies. The city was filled up with bureaucrats mainly from the Eastern bloc.

When the rival UNP government finally reinstated a freemarket system seven years later, trading companies flourished as the companies strove to catch up with the rest of the world. Imported cars, motorcycles and electronics flooded in. Television was introduced into the country for the first time. Merchants became all-powerful once again.

Inflation raged in the 20 to 50 p.c. range and the middle classes began to disappear. One either had a business and was rich or was a salaried worker and lived poor... When the Middle East expatriate worker exodus reached its zenith in the early Eighties, Colombo changed complexion again and was littered with recruitment and travel agencies.

Now, with the ethnic war in full swing up north, and the socialists back in power in a more capitalistic mode, all sorts of new businesses were in evidence: arms imports, security systems, casinos, immigrant consultants, internet-based businesses.

This city always made good on the ups and downs of the rest of the country; and villagers still streamed into this big city that promised one a chance to get rich or get chewed up in the attempt."

Tourist group

The novel comes to a tourist group at the Dalada Maligawa. There is tour guide Asoka, there is Lionel, Jefferson from New York, Robert, Sarah, John and Margaret. Robert comments: "I can't believe the security. This is more like a military establishment."

Sarah: "They obviously have a lot of national treasure here to protect."

Robert: "I wonder whether the Buddha's message of being above earthly things has gotten a bit lost here."

Sarah: "The monks here look very hierarchical - as if they are entitled to respect from the lay folk."

Lionel: "The monks here are on top of the food chain."

Robert: "Buddhism in this country has penetrated the political spectrum. I guess you sense some of the political power here. Soldiers and politicised monks - an interesting combination."

What do we have? Evidently we have the author's own thoughts, his denunciations, his own views uttered by his characters.

But isn't there something else? Is he not trying to also tell us that he will bark as long as he pleases and also show us that this country and its people fared better in colonial times? This is something about postcolonial writing that needs to be addressed.

How much looking back carries such a message? The writings of Anita Desai, Arundathi Roy, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Shiva and V. S. Naipaul, David Davidar and so many others are strong-voiced postcolonial works, but we have to own that the writer's own view of many things could be coloured by preconceptions and prejudices.

What do we then have? Thinking writing or rationalised writing? Is postcolonial literature caught up in a process of finding arguments for going on believing as the writer already does?

What follows then is that Postcolonial Literature blossomed because of this thing called literary ability. This is the hallmark of the really professional writer who is able to handle hopes and fears of his or her own experiences and weave them into a story that can be properly handled and understood.

What we now have, with our feet planted on this postcolonial road, is a rapid succession of literary forms that always stimulate interest. There are so may expressed or implied standards, and, above all, they coalesce with the writer's relations to a fast-changing world.

Wealth of words

The biggest explosion has been langauge; and, as Cratylus said, "Language is divinely ordained." But I will go a step farther and add that even if langauge can help us to suggest our conception of the meaning of things, it can only approximate exactitude.

I have yet to come upon a language that can fully or accurately express the finest shades of meaning. So we are now grown accustomed to the Jamaican way, the Indian way, the Sri Lankan way, the English way.

In his book "What a World", A. P. Herbert gave us an essay on "Jungle English" which was most amusing. It has taken us some effort to break out of the hard-set mould of colonial schooling and values; but we have pulled ourselves out of that rut and I can now say that the Empire is also barking back in its many tongues!

George Orwell, you will remember, saw it coming when he wrote "Politics and the English Language." He said: "Most people who bother with the matter at all, would admit that the English langauge is in a bad way."

Orwell did not live to see how well the postcolonial writers redeemed it! It began to absorb and accept the great wealth of words that moved in battalions across the West.

These became telling literary works, carrying an Indian-ness, a Sri Lankan-ness, sopping the sorry air with phrases and new approaches from Bangladesh to Berlin, Kandy to Kent, Pakistan to Pennsylvania, Africa to Auckland. Just consider what happened. Did we give a hoot? There were no dead or dying metaphors, no verbal wooden legs, no pretentious diction, no meaningless words.

India was speaking out in a strong Indian voice. The old English concreteness was shattered. Suddenly there was a new refreshment and, if I may say so, a refreshing vulgarity as well that certainly rocked the staid British cradle.

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