Gunesekera, Romesh;
Reef
Granta books 1994 / Riverhead Books 1996, 190 pages
ISBN 0140140301
topics: | fiction | sri-lanka | booker-sl-1994
The Reef interweaves the history of Sri Lanka and the gradual upsurge of racial tension into an intimate and lyrical narrative about a servant boy's coming of age. There are no abrupt twists in plot, no large breaks in the rhythm: ths story undulates in like gentle ocean waves, and ripples to a stop with the main characters washed ashore in an alien land, which provides the frame for the story. The servant boy is Triton, who turns out to be a smart lad and is mentored by his employer, the bachelror Mr. Salgado, and he educates himself for life by observing Mr. Salgado's example. Early on, Mr. Salgado, tells Triton, in a dialogue that must echo across millions of master-servant relations across time: "You are a smart kolla. Really, you should go to school..." "No, Sir." I was sure, at that time, that there was nothing a crowded, bewildering school could offer me that I could not find in his gracious house. "All I have to do is watch you, Sir. Watch what you do. That way I can really learn." ... So I watched him, I watched him unendingly, all the time, and learned to become what I am. 53 Of course, it also helps that Triton works his way through all the books in Mr Salgado's substantial library. The servant's point of view is unusual in literature written in South Asia, where we grow up to view servants as a part of the landscape almost. Another brilliant portrayal of the servant psyche is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Ugwu in Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). Preethi Samarasan also focuses on the servants girl Chellam in ''Evening is the whole day'', and Ketan Desai has Gyan in Inheritance of loss but none of these authors can capture the servant's world as well as Triton.
The novel is unusual for a coming of age story in that the protagonist does not even experience love - yet after the last page is over, you feel strangely drained, like at the end of a long luxurious journey. The metaphor of a journey came to me with force as I was reading it during a three-hour drive near Baroda, and when I looked up suddenly, I found open fields with a colonial warehouse-like building beyond, and for a moment I was bewildered thinking myself to be somewhere in Sri Lanka; indeed it took me quite a few conscious moments to drag my thoughts back to Gujarat. [Of course, that is also because Gujarat is not familiar grounds for me, perhaps it would not have happened on the Kanpur-Lucknow drive. ] The main narrative story opens with Triton, the servant boy, being dropped off to Ranjan Salgado's colonial mansion, where he is to be house boy. (This scene is also effectively adopted by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Half of a Yellow Sun where the book opens with the servant boy Ugwu entering the household. She lists Reef as one of her influences. ) He is put under the manservant Joseph, and his tensions during this period are described beautifully - at one stage he plans to attack Joseph with onion juice, because that's a smell Joseph loathes. Also described beautifully are his delusions in the large old house: In the middle of the night I woke up in a sweat... a demon had entered the house. Hours later, or minutes later, when there had been no sound inside the room, I began to feel brave again. I rolled off the mat and jumped to my feet. Nothing happened. No dagger flashed down, no demon pounced... only my shadow from the half-moon and the scuttle of a startled gecko. I crouched and waited. Slowly as I realized that there really was no one there I began to play a game where all kinds of marauders had entered the house and I, alone, repelled them. 21 Triton proves himself to be a fast learner, and eventually, when Joseph is sacked, he takes over. After Lucy-Amma retires as cook, he takes on that role as well, eventually becoming an expert chef. His inner thoughts reveal his philosophical nature, as he goes around tidying house and cleaning kitchen. Personally, I have always felt that there was a soothing tranquilizing quality about doing dishes, which is echoed in these thoughts about boning a half-eaten turkey: Boning in itself is a kind of rest: soothing. An after-hours affair. One can lose all sense of one's surroundings and become as one with the knife teasing out little scraps of flesh from cartilage and soft bone. The whole point of being alive becomes simplified: consciousness concentrated into doing this one thing. It is different from washing-up where there are so many different tasks. You have to think then, make decisions, discriminate: what to throw away, what to soak, what to clean. Only drying has anything like the simplicity and ritualistic beauty that boning has... 105 As an aside, I don't think I agree with the last - I think in washing dishes, as in any other repetitive task, an unthinking competence sets in, where the decisions mentioned - which to clean now and which to soak - become autonomous, and one runs through them while the brain is whirring through other idylls. The prose is luminous with the colourful juxtaposition of the unusual; Triton sets a match to an empty arrack bottle and, "a whistle of blue flame" shoots out.
The political events of Sri Lanka run like a refrain - the story opens in
1962: "the year of the bungled coup" (15), Bandernaike loses her election
(55), the left-oriented coalition win a landslide (173), the ultra-marxists
are growing in strength, a revolt is gaining momentum, including Wijetunga,
the attendant Salgado employs at his private coral observation station.
The unease of the servant boy with the attitudes of the educated class come
out during a despondent tea party towards the end:
"That's what we need!" [Tippy] said to me in a loud voice. "Pour the
tea, kolla." He didn't even look at me when I served him his cup.
[later after Triton escapes to the garden: ]
I heard Tippy call me, "Triton, kolla, beer!" But I didn't go. If he
wanted it so much he could fetch it himself. In any case it was high time
they all left. I waited in the shadows. Tippy called out for me again
tapping a glass against a bottle.
"Where the hell is that bugger, Triton?" I shoved my arm in the air and
swore at them under my breath. "Kiss the sky!" Something in the night
air infected me too. Too much was going on. Wijetunga on the beach had
worked it all out.
The story ends with Triton and Salgado immigrating to England, thus brining
it full circle to a sharply drawn opening vignette showing Triton as a
successful businessman in UK.
"Of his bones are coral made." The Tempest It was 1962: the year of the bungled coup. 15 (opening page; throughout the political events run on in the background; see 55, 173.) the cane tats painted in mildewy green... were skew-whiff. 15 a whistle of blue flame shot out. 17 The sad expression of a hurt heron would struggle in his face. 17 [many bird references]
In the middle of the night I woke up in a sweat... a demon had entered the
house. Hours later, or minutes later, when there had been no sound inside
the room, I began to feel brave again. I rolled off the mat and jumped to my
feet. Nothing happened. No dagger flashed down, no demon pounced... only my
shadow from the half-moon and the scuttle of a startled gecko. I crouched
and waited. Slowly as I realized that there really was no one there I began
to play a game where all kinds of marauders had entered the house and I,
alone, repelled them. 21
[Lucy-Amma, old cook:] Culinary taste was not fickle, she would say, and the
way you swallow food, like the way you make babies, has not changed
throughout the history of mankind. 25
[The coming of the haberdasher with his bell] The whole place echoed with
the crow's cawing, his tinkling and the cooing of our neighbour's brainless
doves. 28
[Like the Brainless doves that nest on ledges at IITK and are eaten up by
cats... AC]
What I disliked most about Joseph was the power he had over me, the power to
make me feel powerless. He was not a big man but he had a long rectangular
head shaped like a devil-mask... He had big hands that would appear out of
nowhere. And as I was tring to avoid him and never looked up at him, the
sight of his hands suddenly on a doorknob or reaching for a cloth was
terrifying. The hands, like the head, always seemed disembodied. 36
[Salgado to Triton, on EDUCATION:]
"You will have no problem learning. I can see that. You are a smart
kolla. Really, you should go to school..."
"No, Sir." I was sure, at that time, that there was nothing a crowded,
bewildering school could offer me that I could not find in his gracious
house. "All I have to do is watch you, Sir. Watch what you do. That way I
can really learn."
... So I watched him, I watched him unendingly, all the time, and learned
to become what I am. 52-53
the world's first woman prime minister, Mrs. Bandaranaike - lost her
spectacular premiership. 55
[reading books] I liked to sit unfettered in a room of my own, emptied of all
the past, nothing inside, nothing around, nothing but a voice bundled in
paper. 61
On a journey, Triton jumps out of the car and puts ten cents in the box on a big temple]. ... but I was not a believer. In my own way I am a rationalist, same as Mister Salgado, but perhaps less of a gambler; I believe in tactical obeisance, that's all. If there is a possibility that the temple exerts some influence, that there is some force or creature or deity or whatever that is appeased by ten cents in a tin box, why take a chance? 65 Either you choose to observe and classify, or you choose to imagine and classify. It is a real dilemma. 69 [Pascal's argument: if God doesn't exist, it doesn't matter. But if he does, then it matters a lot. Why take the risk?]
'[The patties] were good' They were more than good. I knew, because I can feel it inside me when I get it right. It's a kind of energy that revitalizes every cell in my body. Suddenly everything becomes possible and the whole world, that before seemed slowly to be coming apart at the seams, pulls together. 76 There would be no sign of her visit save an impression of her: a mark on the furniture, her fingerprints on the curtain, her shape moving through the air, the imprint of her words. 82 [Mr. Salgado, at Dinner table conversation] You could say Africa, the whole of the rest of the world, was part of us. It was all one place: Gondwanaland. The great land-mass in the age of innocence. But then the earth was corrupted and the sea flooded in. The land was divided. Bits broke of and drifted away and we were left with this spoiled paradise of yakkhas - demons - and the history of mankind spoken on stone. 84 [for basting a turkey] The stuffing of raisins and liver, Taufik's ganja and our own jamanaran mandarins were enough to moisten a desert. 87 [for the party, Triton is ready with the food, the settings, everything] At times of intense pleasure I sometimes suddenly feel there is nothing more I can do; everything will take its own course, I can leg to. I stay still and become blissfully calm for a moment, and my thought stretches endlessly. 92 the mood, I am convinced, is th emost essential ingredient for any taste to develop. Taste is not a product of the mouth; it lies entirely in the mind. I prepare each dish to reach the mind through every possible channel. 97 [The mouth I only need to tickle, get to salivate, and that I can do even by the picture I present, the smell -- perfume rubbed on to the skin, or even the plate, uncooked -- the sizzle of a hot dish or some aromatic tenderizing herb.]
Boning in itself is a kind of rest: soothing. An after-hours affair. One can lose all sense of one's surroundings and become as one with the knife teasing out little scraps of flesh from cartilage and soft bone. The whole point of being alive becomes simplified: consciousness concentrated into doing this one thing. It is different from washing-up where there are so many different tasks. You have to think then, make decisions, discriminate: what to throw away, what to soak, what to clean. Only drying has anything like the simplicity and ritualistic beauty that boning has, but even that is spoiled by the need eventually to think about putting away what you have done. Boning is baser; like an animal devouring its prey, like eating but without consuming. A return to primal values. A thrifty hunter, a digestive process. A survivor, that's me. A sea-slug. 104-105 [See also reverie over the flow of left-over milk in oily-water, p. 156. [Mr. Salgado always eats later, alone, after the party is over.] There was no security in eating in the company of a lot of people; attention always got divided. Only the intimate could eat together and be happy. It was like making love. It revealed too much. Food was the ultimate seducer. 108
[Visiting the fish market] We almost stepped on a huge mottled ray camouflaged against the gritty wet concrete floor. Nili saw its eye on the floor and started. She pulled me to stop me from treading on it. ... I saw the fat, grey body of a reef shark [thrashing on the ground] as a fishmonger hacked at it with a cleaver. Blood spurted. The creature flapped and writhed. The man brought the cleaver shining down again and again like a hammer. Smart, fat thunks puncutated by the sharper sound of the blade sparking of f the concrete beyond the shark's beady eyes. It did not die until the head had been severed, and the man stood up with its curved slit of teeth smiling in his hand. Thick, black blood pumped out of the body on the floor, forming a pool. 127 [Palitha Aluthgoda, the country's most flamboyant millionaire, is shot, possibly by ultra-marxists, when he stops his Merc on a bridge for ice cream] Palitha Aluthgoda, after all his efforts at making a big name for himself, ended up being remembered only for this manner of his death. The work of his assassin -- some unknown guerrilla -- became the more enduring achievement. 147
"That's what we need!" [Tippy] said to me in a loud voice. "Pour the
tea, kolla." He didn't even look at me when I served him his cup.
[later after Triton escapes to the garden: ]
I heard Tippy call me, "Triton, kolla, beer!" But I didn't go. If he
wanted it so much he could fetch it himself. In any case it was high time
they all left. I waited in the shadows. Tippy called out for me again
tapping a glass against a bottle.
"Where the hell is that bugger, Triton?" I shoved my arm in the air and
swore at them under my breath. "Kiss the sky!" Something in the night air
infected me too. Too much was going on. Wijetunga on the beach had worked
it all out.
I didn't want to clear up. I didn't want to intrude on Miss Nili and Mr
Salgado. After a while I walked down to the main road. I watched the traffic
go from nowhere to nowhere. I could feel the ocean pressing around us. 154
[Island-ness is engulfing Triton. It is now confining him. 594, Tariq Jazeel]
[reverie over the flow of left-over milk in oily-water, eventually] the white
cloud had settled in at the bottom like a jelly. [He wants to share this
special moment with Mr. Dias, but class considerations make it] "almost
impossible - it was something to do with myself, not simply oil and water."
156.
[many references to birds ]
The oriole came back. It had never come so close to the house before. I could
see it behind Mr. Salgado: tangerine yellow, a bold black head, bright
red-ringed eyes, a red beak. It was small, and yet its voice could fill the
whole garden: its yellow plumage like a lick of paint. 166
The General Election that month resulted in a landslide victory for the opposition parties, an uneasy coalition of old-fashioned leftists and new-style rationalists who promised free rice and a new society 173 Vesak that year came soon after Nili left. 171 Anguli-maala - story of prince Ahimsaka the harmless: was envied by other princes, and was tasked with making and wearing a garland of a thousand human fingers. We are only what we remember, nothing more... all we have is the memory of what we have done or not done, whom we might have touched, even for a moment... 190
Unpicking Sri Lankan `island-ness' in Romesh Gunesekera's Reef Tariq Jazeel, Journal of Historical Geography, 29, 4 (2003) 582±598 doi:10.1006/jhge.2002.0410 [Discusses the notion of Sri Lanka as an archetypal `island-state'. ... Reef maps an imaginative geography which both naturalizes and problematizes Sri Lankan `island-ness'. Through the memory of the novel's main protagonist the author's exploration of modernity fixes geographical knowledge of Sri Lanka. `Island-ness' emerges as a rationalization of modernity, one with its roots in Sri Lanka's colonial experience which the author then unpicks as he proceeds to explore the limits of modernity. ... This is an ambivalent contradiction that fuels a civil war in Sri Lanka which relentlessly and sanguinely contests the integrity of Sri Lankan island-ness. Sri Lanka is a non-secular state, religiously aligning itself to Buddhism. The 1972 constitution declares that it shall be the duty of the state to protect and foster Buddhism, and accord it the foremost place in the cultural development of the nation. The social context is a period in Sri Lanka's recent history, from mid 1950s through to the mid 1960s, when the pro-Sinhala SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party) government, lead by Mrs Srimavo Dias Bandaranaike, had implemented a series of policies that effectively marginalized the rights and opportunities of Tamils in Sri Lanka. For example, the implementation of the Sinhala only language bill in 1961, and the negotiation of the repatriation of over half a million Indian Tamils with India in 1965. Although in 1965 the more liberal and plural UNP (United National Party) were re-elected and prioritized the calming of racial tension, the seeds of divisive ethnic sentiments had been well sown politically. Tamil separatists began to make themselves heard in the light of increasing sentiment against Tamils by a Sinhalese populace swayed by the primacy of Buddhism in a non-secular state.[61] This ethnic friction saw its bloody fruition in 1983 following a series of horrific attacks by the militant Tamil separatist group, the LTTE, on government troops, government workers (from police officers to village post-office workers), Buddhist monks and on various public buildings. Importantly though, this is a social context of which the reader of Reef is unaware. As readers we are made aware of the decaying image of Sri Lanka as remembered by Triton. ... he and Mr Salgado actually move to England in 1971, a good twelve years before the 1983 riots. the brief, but very important, two page introductory prologue, The Breach, is set in London in the present day and provides [the breach in time] to the main protagonist's nostalgic memorializations of Sri Lanka which go on to form the body of the novel. It is an encounter, a meeting, a moment, between Triton and another Sri Lankan [Tamil] immigrant working in the London petrol station where Triton has just re-fuelled his car. 586
Lingering at the back of the book is the history of Sri Lankan politics, ethnic strife and its origins. I found this history illuminating in this connection: from SUBVERSE: Change course in Lanka], by M S S Pandian 23 Oct 2008 [based on the memoirs of Neville Jayaweera], erstwhile head of the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation, who writes about his encounter with N Q Dias, permanent secretary of defence and external affairs, whom Jayaweera describes as "the most powerful public servant around". As Jayaweera recounts, Dias instructed him that his brief in Jaffna was to enforce at any cost the Sinhala Only Act which disenfranchised the minority Tamils of their linguistic rights and handicapped them educationally. Dias knew the consequences of such acts of discrimination against the Tamils. He predicted to Jayaweera in 1963 that within 25 years, there would be armed rebellions by the Tamils against the Sri Lankan state, a prediction which no doubt proved right. Yet he did not want to address the rightful concerns of the Tamil minorities but sought a military solution to the possibility of a future armed rebellion by the Tamils. Jayaweera notes, "The centrepiece of Dias's strategy to contain a future Tamil revolt was to be the establishment of a chain of military camps to encircle the Northern Province..." Dias also laid out a strategy to legitimise his plan for military camps around the Northern Province. That is, to present the military camps as a means to prevent illegal immigrants from India and to contain smuggling from Sri Lanka to India. Remarkably, smuggling and illegal immigration continues to be themes employed both by India and Sri Lanka to legitimise their actions even today. In the 1980s, "it was this iron pincer around Jaffna's neck that served as the Sri Lankan army's bulwark against the Tamil militant groups". The ‘Dias paradigm', which is to deny the minorities their rights and suppress their protests militarily, is sure to warm the hearts of xenophobic militarists everywhere. But it ultimately did not work. The Sri Lankan state's militaristic approach has failed both in finding a solution to the Tamil question and in containing the armed rebellion of the Tamils. The demographic balance of the once Tamil-majority Eastern province has already been altered by state-sponsored colonisation of land by the Sinhala peasants. Going by past record, the Sri Lankan state will pursue its majoritarian goals with new vigour if the LTTE gets defeated. After all, it took away the rights of the Tamils even when they followed peaceful Gandhian forms of protests under the leadership of S V J Chelvanayakam. India's role in all this is dubious. It has been training Sri Lankan military officials. It has also been supplying radars in the name of defensive military hardware. And, now it is clear that Indian technicians are aiding the Sri Lankan army in the very theatre of war. The miserable plight of civilian Tamils in Sri Lanka has already caught the attention of Tamil Nadu.