Artscope | Online edition of Daily News

Since everybody is on to him, our next encounter on Daily News Artscope says he might take up another pseudonym for his next book, and another for the next and the next. Might seem like a tedious process. What can I say, the man likes his privacy. With his signature kid-like unusually large, gaudy, bright orange watch, tight T-shirt, shorts and hole-ridden car, he is just too much in love to part with, Ashok Ferrey is probably as quirky as his writing.

“Sri Lankans have this habit of judging a book by the name of the author,” he chuckles. However he explains that the name ‘Ashok Ferrey’, he adopted to escape this objectivity, has worked against him. “Most Sri Lankans suffer from the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ in a big way. They resent anyone who becomes too popular.

Cowardice. It takes a lot of courage to write under one’s own name. It’s something I never had. I thought that my writing was so awful that I would be the laughing stock of the whole country. However I chose to write under a pseudonym also because there is no anonymity in Sri Lanka. We live in houses where all the doors are open. In the West all doors are shut for practical purposes, to keep the heat in. But this leads to a much more cloistered, secluded, anonymous life. We are a relatively small population and our degree of separation is rather small. We probably all have mutual relatives. If I write about a grandmother tearing off her clothes and running stark naked on the road, there is a good chance that another reader will know exactly who I am talking about. You just can’t write what you want to write.

The war is such a complex subject. In my opinion, not a single novel has done justice to the subject, because we have not been able to come to terms with it. I certainly don’t think I should be the one to deal with it. We need a Tolstoy to write a novel that could truly do justice to the issue. It is so complex that it may not be written for another hundred years

A good quality of a writer is to tap into his subconscious and lose his self-consciousness. This self-consciousness comes from lack of privacy. Writing is quite a personal thing; it is quite similar to taking your clothes off in public. Readers develop an image of a writer through his work. The reader, subconsciously, gets a feel for the author’s views and prejudices. The name ‘Ashok Ferrey’ has worked against me. Readers always tend to relate to my work based on my persona as a personal trainer and body builder with no literary background. If you are self-consciousness, then your writing suffers. It becomes artificial and stilted and the reader picks it up. I got a strange sense of liberation by writing under a pseudonym. After Colpetty People became so successful, there was such a persona built around the name ‘Ashok Ferrey’ that I didn’t want to change it. However most Sri Lankans suffer from the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ in a big way. They resent anyone who becomes too popular.

I went from mathematician to builder, during which time I never wrote. But it must have been in me. I started writing when my father developed cancer. It was a very stressful time. Writing was a way of relieving stress.

You should never be afraid to attempt something you have never attempted in your life. Don’t let anyone else tell you that you can’t do something. True you have to earn money and pay your bills, but always keep yourself open to possibilities, that you never had the courage, time or the money to do.

Even during the two years my father was suffering from cancer there was never anything grave in my writing. Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. There is comedy in any tragedy. Some find it difficult to accept that I can see a funny side to everything, even a funeral. It is not callousness, life goes on.

My father didn’t die from cancer at the time. He lived for almost three years after that. This shows exactly why we should not succumb to the miseries of life. In fact Sri Lankans are good at celebrating the joy of life.

Probably quite rightly. It’s probably where I belonged. One must learn to play to one’s strength. We can’t all be the best. I am glad that whatever I have ever written has been short listed for something. Serendipity was short listed for the State Literary Award. What can I say, always the bridesmaid never the bride.

Any contest is like a lottery. Judges are only human and they have their personal likes and dislikes. If your writing happens to be judged by someone who likes that type of writing, then good for you.

However next to Nihal de Silva’s Road to Elephant Pass, Colpetty People is still one of the bestselling books and Serendipity is in its fourth print. I guess this in itself proves that it has lasted longer than most other books in the Sri Lankan market.

Q:You have said that you wrote your latest novel ‘Serendipity’ in a rage, what do you mean?

It was during the last year of the war. There was some bomb blast or killing in every newspaper. I felt that we were fighting an unwinnable war. Having citizenship in UK I could have decided to take off. But I made a conscious decision to stay. Naturally I was deeply upset. Curiously looking back, I realise now that I was wrong.

Where someone might have resorted to write a very dark novel, I turned this grimness on its head into humour in my writing. It turned out to be one of the most outrageous of my books. In fact some may claim that it is too outrageous. It was a hysterical reaction to the gloom that surrounded me.

Its for humorous purposes. I am portraying the westernised upper class in a satirical way. I always pick the most obscure names and misspell them on purpose, Saravanamootoo for example, so as not to step on any toes. The name ‘Fonseca’ was pure coincidence. It is the Brazilian spelling of its Sri Lankan counterpart ‘Fonseka’. I thought I had picked an obscure name, guess I was wrong.

Q:Speaking of which, are the characters of ‘Serendipity’ based on real people?

They are essentially composites of real people, I have just turned up the colour making them more lurid and surreal.

I take obvious characteristics of certain people and incorporate them into my characters. But I change their names, age and even the sex at times.

Consequently a characteristic of a young male can end up in an old woman. In fact I have autographed books for these very same people I have caricatured, secretly praying that I would not be made.

Q:Don’t you think that the twenty plus characters is too much for the reader to keep track of?

Yes, definitely. It’s a huge weakness in the book. All I can say is that I couldn’t help myself.

Q:Critics claim that the characters of ‘Serendipity’ are under developed and novel itself lacks depth.

The characters are under developed at times even flat, one dimensional and shallow, on purpose. There is a certain sense of beauty in a book with under developed characters too. It has a sort of freshness, immediacy. It is something akin to German expressionist paintings of the Holocaust days, where the subjects or the people in the paintings were exaggerated.

There is a sort of grim humour to it. Some critics have identified Serendipity as Sri Lanka’s first ‘Absurd’ novel in English. I did so to expose the absurdity of the characters at the time when the war was at its height. What I didn’t want was a 400 page, conventional novel with well developed characters.

It is a very abstract novel. I don’t like to tell the readers too much. There is no fun in that for the reader. In this sense the story is much like a movie. Where film-makers make use of techniques such as cinematic montage, I make use of a non linear plot to make my point – the absurdity of life at the time.

But if the reader bothers to put together the separate plots he will realise that there is a meaning in the madness, although it follows a non linear style.

Q: You rely mainly on dialogue and do not pay much attention to developing the narrative, why?

I think telling the story with a lengthy narrative is a sign of a bad writer. It is very easy to get away with. It does not challenge me and I am always up for a challenge. On the contrary it is very difficult to relate the story by dialogue. Sri Lankan writers devote page after page for narrative. This is a 19th century tradition that local writers seem stuck with. But I can understand why, it is very Dickensian. Dickens did it because his novels were originally serialised as newspaper columns and he was paid by the page. In fact he was one of the highest paid. It makes for a very satisfying read, but that is not my style of writing. In my personal opinion, a reader can derive much more satisfaction if he or she can deduce the characters all on his or her own.

Yes. Their hypocrisy is more evident now than ever before. Their behaviour at their high-end parties is quite comic. Their intentions maybe honourable but their main objective is to sustain their respective organizations. Of all the funds nearly 99 percent goes to keep the office going. In fact the glamour of life in Sri Lanka gets to them. Mostly I satirise the projects run by NGOs. All their reports are verbose garbage. Most ‘NGO people’ living on expatriate salaries can afford luxurious lifestyles in Sri Lanka.

I also satirise ‘new age colonialism’ in Serendipity, where foreigners treat us as if we are beneath them and we actually put up with it simply because they pay better than local employers.

Q: There is little reference to ethnic violence in ‘Serendipity’ which is set in the 80s, when Sri Lankan was undergoing a lot of it, why?

I didn’t want ethnic violence to take over the book, it would have become very serious and dark. Different writers react to situations in different ways. Michael Ondaatje reacts to violence with Anil’s Ghost, a very grim novel, I react to it with ‘Serendipity’. That is not to say that I have not dealt with it in the book.

I would love to. But it is such a complex subject. In my opinion, not a single novel has done justice to the subject. In fact there is no novel about the tsunami yet, because we have not been able to come to terms with it. I certainly don’t think I should be the one to deal with it.

We need a Tolstoy to write a novel that could truly do justice to the issue. It is so complex that it may not be written for another hundred years.

Q: Critics claim that your writing is largely Orientalist and at times snobby, your comment.

I write about what I know and choose not to write about what I don’t. Just by pretending to be totally Sri Lanka, one does not become Sri Lankan. It is merely a charade. My work reflects the many cultures that have influenced me. Perhaps this may come out as Orientalist.

Q: The elite society is your usual subject matter, why have you not made any attempt to move beyond this?

True I have been unable to set my writing in the truly native Sri Lankan milieu. I have written about the working class in England, because a major part of my impressionable life was spent in that environment. I don’t have any experience with the working class of Sri Lanka because I have not had the chance of moving with them and an attempt at portraying them would be futile. What is artificial and forced is not art. It will not have a readership and will not have resonance.

However the accounts provided by Sri Lankan writers of poverty stricken communities in the lowest rung of the social strata does not also ring true. It’s always doom and gloom, which I believe is highly unrealistic.

Q: Critics claim that you are unrestrained in the use of profanity, is this advisable for Sri Lankan English fiction?

Guilty as charged. Even as I speak profanities stream out. I do use the ‘f’ word quite a lot. But that is me. I don’t think it is inappropriate, because I believe that if you use a bad word often enough it becomes rather polite. As Sri Lankans we are too conservative.

This is yet again a very 19th century approach. In 19th century England piano legs were covered because it was believed that it aroused men’s emotions. I believe that artistes, writers included, have earned the license to do what they feel is right.

Q: Most claim that ‘Colpetty People’ is the best out of your books, what has made it more appealing?

Any writer’s first book has the greatest impact. Over forty years of my experience went into Colpetty People. Moreover I was a total stranger to the literary circle back then.

It is easier to be treated subjectively by readers and critics alike, if you are a total stranger.

Readers also preferred it because of its personal aspect, the reminiscences, and a young man’s struggle to come to terms with life.

Q: Do you consider ‘Colpetty People’ an account of the privileged class of Westernised people, as a dying race?

Some say Colpetty People could be used as a historical record of a certain segment of society – the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie have undergone much structural changes since I wrote the book. But I did not intend it to be so, it was quite accidental.

Bright side of Ferrey