The 16th edition of The Bengal Club’s Book Club meet was all things marvellous as the book being discussed was Booker prize-nominated author Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef. However, what made the session so very special was the Sri Lankan-British author joining in himself, in conversation with Julie Banerjee. The author has books like Monkfish Moon, The Sandglass, Heaven’s Edge and the more recent Suncatcher to his credit. It was in the Booker prize-nominated Reef in 1994 that his maritime heart had predicted the tsunami and the erosion in the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean. Banerjee who was a culture and books reviewer for The Straits Times in Singapore, remembered her interaction with Gunesekara for his first book Monkfish Moon, many moons back at a Singapore Book event. In her inimitable way with words, she began the session summarising the plethora of well-deserved awards that line the author’s shelves.
On being asked about his childhood, which began in Sri Lanka and then took him to the Philippines and later London, the author confessed to having spent the last 27 years writing the books he did, to really be able to answer that huge question. The genial author graciously wished he could be in Kolkata, a city he likes a lot, to be a part of this session but joining online was a close second, especially because he tested positive for Covid-19 three days prior. “Looking back, I suppose I was very lucky as a child. Reef is a book largely set in the 1960s and refers to the era when I was growing up. Suncatcher is very much set in that period and gives a glimpse of my childhood as it is a story of two young boys growing up around a fragile friendship. The reason I am lucky I suppose is that I am indebted to my parents, especially for their wide-ranging outlook. In Kolkata as well, I sensed a similar sense of openness,” the author said. He spoke of Ceylon and his good fortune of being able to travel around the world with his father, a task rendered difficult for people there due to foreign exchange issues. The author lamented the haunting of similar issues in the country right now and how all of these things added to his sense of the world and his writing.
On his integration into the culture of London upon his move there, there were similarities and differences he found between his experiences and that of another famed author, Michael Ondaatje. While Ondaatje had felt stifled by the weight of cultural history and had found solace in jazz music upon his move to London, Gunesekera’s experience was quite the opposite. “Before I came to England, I went to the Philippines from Ceylon and the cultural shock there was much greater because the Philippines was and is such an unusual country in Asia. In the ’60s, it was an almost unimaginable country in Asia. It was hugely Americanised, a catholic country and its colonial history was Spanish. All of these are distinctive in Asia. The disparity of wealth was immense too, a factor that is now recognised worldwide,” he said.
However, England allowed him to write to his heart’s content and the similarity with Ondaatje lay in their common love for music. There is Beatles found in the pages of Suncatcher and the author admitted to being excited to discover the popular music of the times upon his move. He spoke of the historical connections between Ceylon and England and the fact that they were oddly old-fashioned.
The formative childhood years repeatedly find space in Gunesekera’s books, which are bildungsroman in their approach. Deeply moved and inspired by his own formative years, he said, “I find writing about that time very exciting and valuable. Those years are when your senses are their freshest and I need to use those senses to look at the world now. There are two perspectives that fascinate me –– the young eye looking at the world and the other is a much older eye doing the same”. Memory is at the heart of the author’s writing and it helps him make sense of himself. “I also think it’s the relationship between memory and any kind of writing is elemental. The way I see it, writing has been invited so that it can negotiate with memory so that we can have some sort of access to something that has passed. For a writer it’s the fundamental material,” he said decisively.
Gunesekera had a fascinating response to the question of identity. “How do you see yourself?” Banerjee asked the author. “I don’t see identity as something reductive. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to reduce our sense of ourselves so that we become a mono-identity. I think that’s not the natural state of affairs and that naturally we are very pluralistic. You are never just a mother, you are also a daughter and these identities sometimes overlap, complement each other or do the reverse. If I am reduced to just one label then it becomes a writer. But other than that, I can be a Sri Lankan writer or an English writer or a Filipino writer,” he said. Citing examples of Tolstoy and Beethoven he highlighted how the former’s Russian identity maybe imperative at certain times while the latter’s global identity was more important than his German one. He stressed on his need to keep his identity wide open.
Towards the last leg of his conversation with Banerjee, the author remembered his stay at The Bengal Club, back in 2014, with pictures to boot that he had taken that time. To mark the 25th anniversary of Reef, he had spent some time at the club and he shared a fond anecdote from his time there. Due to some technical issues, the author had to change rooms halfway through his stay. Rather disgruntled at the new adjustments awaiting him in the newly allotted room, the author opened the door to realise that the room was exactly the same as his previous one and the team at the club had meticulously placed every item of the author in the exact same place as his last one. So amused and happy was he that he still fondly remembers this experience. The Bengal Club Book Club event is slowly evolving into a fascinating exchange of thoughts and ideas and they continue to grow in leaps and bounds.