Haruki Murakami

In March, The New Yorker ran a short story by Haruki Murakami. "U.F.O. in Kushiro" had been first published in March, 2001. In the 20 years I have been a subscriber of  The New Yorker, this was the first time that the magazine repeated a story.  

I have been reading Murakami for two decades. At Miho's urging, I bought A Wild Sheep Chase around 1990, long before he was well known among non-Japanese readers. The background was Hokkaido, where Miho is from, and that was the initial attraction. I didn't think the story was remarkable. In fact, a former colleague who was a Shakespeare scholar said that the writing was like that of Mickey Spillane, but Murakami's short stories regularly appeared in The New Yorker (as many as four within some years) and I began to enjoy them. In my view, Kafka on the Shore, which was translated into English in 2005, is his best work.

The story revolves around Satoru Nakata, a mentally defective sexagenarian with supernatural powers, a 15-year old runaway named Kafka Tamura, a generous truck driver named Hoshino, and an androgynous librarian, Oshima. Colonel Sanders, of KFC fame, appears as a jolly pimp. As John Updike said in his review, "there is violence, comedy, sex—deep, transcendental, anatomically correct sex, oral and otherwise—and a bewildering overflow of possible meanings" in the novel. This was one book I couldn't put down.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/24/050124crbo_books1?currentPage=1

In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (2008), another of my favorite writers, Paul Theroux, describes a visit to Japan where he is shown around by Murakami and Pico Iyer, another writer I enjoy. For me, to have these three writers meeting, talking, and walking around was a rare treat.


Murakami's blending of the real and surreal is again seen in "Town of Cats", a short story carried by The New Yorker on September 5. Tengo, a loner who was brought up by his father, is the protagonist. The father, known only as Mr. Kawana, was a poor and hungry peasant in Japan's hardscrabble Tohaku region when he decided to settle in Manchuria, where he thought life would be better. It wasn't. Sometimes, stray dogs were all they had to eat. Mr. Kawana barely manages to escape the advancing Soviet troops. Back in Japan, he makes a good living as a collection agent for NHK. He never lets Tengo forget the hard times he had, and takes him along on his collection rounds on Sundays, much to Tengo's dislike.


Mr. Kawana claims that Tengo's mother died a few months after he was born. Tengo does not believe this. He has a memory of his mother from the time he was one and a half years old. She is in the arms of another man. She takes off her blouse, drops the straps of her slip, and allows the man to suck her breasts.


One Sunday, on an impulse, Tengo decides to visit his father who is now in a sanitarium. On the way, Tengo reads a short story titled "Town of Cats" by a German writer. This is where the surreal enters his story.  A young man travelling by train gets off at a station where he finds a deserted town. At night, the cats arrive. If that has aroused your curiosity, read the story at 
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/09/05/110905fi_fiction_murakami

In and around Kandy

Ever since I discovered the Garrison Cemetery about 10 years ago, I have been dropping by and taking friends there on every visit to Kandy. While the adjoining Temple of the Tooth is swarming with visitors, the Garrison Cemetery remains an oasis of tranquility. Perhaps the main attraction is the caretaker Charles Carmichael, who knows the background of most graves and will provide a guided tour by request. His commentary is in impeccable English. He will show and describe the grave where five children belonging to one family are buried, the grave of the foolish Englishman who was determined ti walk from Trincomalee to Kandy (and reached Kandy only to die, having contracted malaria on the way), and that of the five soldiers who died in the morning and were buried by noon because they had contracted cholera. Every grave speaks of the hardships suffered by the pioneering Englishmen and women in attempting to administer a country that was thoroughly alien to them. Most burials are from the 1980s and the last burial took place in 1950, of a descendant of someone buried here earlier. All the gravestones made of marble were shipped from England.

Charles has a background similar to mine. His grandfather was a Scottish planter (mine was English) and his grandmother was Tamil (of "fair skin"), he says. My grandmother was Sinhalese. Charles works at the cemetery seven days a week.   I worry about him because, on each visit, he looks even more frailer. 

Here's the BBC on Garrison Cemetery: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14984188

Miho at the Kandy Lake.





My cousin Heather and her friend Gabriel were visiting from Brisbane.





The Samaranayake family, engrossed in Charles' commentary.


This was the perahera season in Kandy, during which a long procession consisting of elaborately decorated elephants (they could number up to 100 on some nights), along with dancers and other performers parade the streets of Kandy for seven nights and a day. Heather and Gabriel paid Rs. 7,000/ each  for a ringside seat at the Queen's Hotel to watch the procession. But the 4 hour spectacle left them rather disillusioned, mainly because of the crowds and the kerosene fumes from the torch bearers. 


Elephants are brought from all over Sri Lanka to Kandy to take part in the perahera. Because tuskers are rare in Sri Lanka, they are now imported from India. One such tusker is seen below. 

For a fee, the mahouts would escort children as they crept under the belly of the elephant. This is supposed to bring luck. The two samaranayake chikdren, Dinal and Himashi, took the plunge. 

In and around "Pondside"

This wall, more like a dam, which extends all the way from the roadside along the pond to the end of my neighbor's property, was what greeted me when I returned to Pondside in mid-June. The pond is split between my neighbor's property and mine. Long ago, both properties were  owned by my grandmother. She gifted Pondside to my uncle George, and the adjoining property to Aunty Bridget (who now lives in the UK). She sold it to her sister Lucy, who eventually sold it to a local, who in turn divided the property and resold it. What was once a 2 acre property is now owned by about 10 people. I don't even know some of them.


My neighbour, who works in Italy and is apparently flush with money, wants to build a house. So he has first built this wall without even asking for my opinion. What he actually needed was a shorter version of about 30 meters directly supporting his house. Instead, he builds an 80 meter version costing around Rs. 700,000 to 800,000 (US$7,000). What I now see from my home is this endless granite wall, which is about 4 feet above the level of my property. Will it flood Pondside? I can only hope for the best. Meanwhile, all I can do is to plant more foliage to block the view. 


Long ago, the pond (which was dug on my grandfather's orders as a swimming pool for his 8 children) was fed by a near perennial stream which flowed through a large coconut plantation named Galawatte. Successive governments broke up the plantation and distributed plots to landless people. The last plots to be divided are merely 10 perches, barely enough for a house. (One acre consists of 160 percehes.) These settlers have gradually filled up the stream, so there's no water flow now. The pond used to attract the occasional fisherman and small boys who used to swim in it.  I remember seeing a monitor lizard. There were all kinds of  water fowl. All gone now, because the pond is bone dry. Not having a stream to feed it, the pond depends on rain water to fill it, and  
Sri Lanka is now experiencing a severe drought. 




We had a number of visitors at Pondside, and one of the first was Dr. MiMei Kwok from the Chinese University's Health Center. She is Fawzia's doctor and later did a tour of the Cultural Triangle and Trincomalee with Fawzia and some relatives. MiMei loves taking photos, and I think this is a good one of hers prowling with her camera. 



This is Viveka, the 9 year old granddaughter of my relative Ignatius, taken on the day she received her first holy communion. This is a big day, more for her parents and immediate family than for the little girl herself. That evening, they spent an enormous amount of money on a feast for which all neighbours and relatives were invited. The parents clearly could not afford the expense and were soon pawning their gold jewelry. This is not unusual in Igantius' family. Last year, his daughter, who works in Italy, got married in Sri Lanka to a man who also works in Italy. The wedding photos alone cost the equivalent of US$4,000. I heard that they, too, pawned their jewelry before returning to Italy. 




Viveka with her mother Nadika.



Fawzia's niece Shehera, who lives in Belgium, also visited. On a short road trip one day, we stopped at a place that sold toddy, the fresh sap of the coconut palm, which is collected every morning. Located between the Dutch Canal and a rice field, with the breeze blowing constantly, there couldn't have been a better location to enjoy this wonderful drink. The nearby coconut palms are crisscrossed with ropes on which the toddy tappers (collectors) move from tree to tree. This is easier than climbing every tree. 


When I was growing up in Negombo, the toddy tappers came from Kerala, India, and were known as Kochichi, probably because they embarked from the port city of Cochin when they traveled to Sri Lanka. Toddy tappers no longer come from India, and my father was in-charge of a toddy tapper training center that the Coconut Research Institute started in the 1970s. The nearby town Kochchikade (loosely translated into Sinhala as the "shop of the Kochchis") is a reminder of the Keralite toddy tappers.





Boralessa village, where Pondside is located, is about 90% Catholic. The patron saint of the local church is St. Anne, whose feast is celebrated in July. Usually on the feast day afternoon, always a Sunday a statue of St. Anne is paraded around the village. In recent years, hardly any villagers take part in the procession because they are drunk or too tired after a heavy lunch. So the parish priest moved the procession to the Sunday before the feast day, and the photo shows the statue, mounted on a vehicle, passing Pondside. Not all villagers are happy with the change. One blamed the terrible drought that has hit the area to a curse caused by the change.



Pondside has been the location for family gatherings, singsongs followed by a seafood lunch. The family came together once again this year. The photo shows Farah, the daughter of Fawzia's niece Dilshad. She sings with a sweet voice.



More photos from the family gathering. Gihan, a fine guitarist and also a vocalist, leads the singing at these events.









My brother Roy, who passed way in 1963 at the age of 12, is buried at the Boralessa. His grave needs some cleaning, a task I have reserved for my next visit. Roy was my mother's favorite child. he lived for 40 years after his passing and I know that she never got over his death. During her last days, as she lay in bed, she claimed that he visited her.

Visit to Bellwood Farm

I drove from Kandy to Galaha, taking the road that runs thru Hantana and Uduwela. I last took this road about three years ago by van. The road was in very bad shape but, because the lower parts of the road had been repaired and carpeted, I expected some improvement all the way to Galaha. For about 5 kms, up to Uduwela, the winding drive that goes thru Hantana Group (a tea plantation) was a treat, the road carpeted and the surroundings opening to some lovely views. Beyond Uduwela, the road deteriorated alarmingly, turning into rubble or deep potholes.  The forest closed in, barely opening a path fore car to go thru. Beyond Uduwela, I did not meet a single vehicle heading in the opposite direction. Pedestrians stared in wonder at the the car and the foolish driver (me), perhaps because no other car would have ventured this way in months. Fearing a breakdown, I called Sarath, the caretaker of Bellwood Farm, to drive down on his motorcycle. His appearance gave me the confidence to drive on, although there was no chance of turning back.

I later dwelled on the the plight of Kandyan peasants and estate labourers (the latter group mainly Tamils) who no doubt suffer hard lives and seem to have been forgotten by the politicians who have the power to build roads, hospitals, and schools. The road passes thru beautiful scenery, pine forests and sweeping valleys, but the scenery is only for the occasional visitor and not for the peasants who have to scratch a living here. Because most of the road passes thru Hantana group, the plantation also has a responsibility to improve it, but nothing seems to have been done in years.

The trees at Bellwood Farm appear to have grown since my last visit. Sri Lanka is suffering a severe drought (Pondside is parched, and Hantana has daily water cuts) and Sarath told me that Bellwood, too, hasn't had rains in months. But the greenery hasn't been affected.

Bellwood Farm was bought for Hamlin, my brother-in-law, who wants to become a farmer when he retires from his quantity surveyor job in the Middles East. Hamlin was hit by the downturn in Dubai but he has since moved to Qatar, where the construction industry is doing better. So he has started to plant tea and the photos show what Sarath has been doing recently. About 3 acres have been cleared and planted.  The drought is a problem but that can be solved with pipes leading up to the spring further up the hill. But the bigger challenge comes from the wildlife, wild boar, porcupines, and monkeys. The wild boar roots up the tea seedlings, the porcupines cut them, and the moneys simply pull the seedlings up and throw them around. Sarath is at his wits end and tries all kinds of strategies to keep these animals at bay. He has given up planting vegetables for the same reason.

Seedlings waiting to be planted.

Sarath. He used to be a government agricultural instructor in this region and knows the area well. We are lucky that he agreed to work for us when we bought Bellwood. Sarath loves the soil and puts up with every challenge and inconvenience to keep Bellwood going.

He knows the socio-economics of the surrounding villagers and how the Bellwood area has evolved from a large plantation to a multitude of small holdings and given to villagers by the government. As in Boralessa, where Pondside is located, villagers prefer to live on the monies sent by their family members working abroad (mainly as domestics or labourers). They have no tolerance for physical labor and would rather sit at home, watching TV or sleeping, than earn a wage. Their small plots are not large enough for any agricultural work.

The view from Bellwood Farm. Sarath said that one of the last tea plantations in the area had been forcibly occupied by locals (as usual, supported by politicians). The plantation has since been divided among themselves by the occupiers.


I took the longer route (23 kms) from Galaha to Kandy. A narrow road full of sharp corners, I had some narrow shaves with huge buses that ply this road. Sri Lanka used to have a range of buses that suited narrow road, but the buses I see now appear to be of the same large size.

My granddaughter Nelum

She is 15 months now.

With her dad Roy

Cousins

A rare photo of five cousins from the Braine tribe, taken in August 2011 in Sri Lanka.

From left: me, Marie Bandara, Maureen Muthalib (Nicol), Roy Chelvaratnam, and Heather Nicol.

Maureen and Heather live in Brisbane and Roy in Melbourne.