It is not surprising why Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam debut novel, A Story of Brief Marriage, emerged as the best fiction of South Asia at the DSC Literary Prize ($25,000) beating the likes of Arvind Adiga who won the Man Booker Prize in 2008 and few others quite well known in the region.
The novel, told in deft, evocative prose is based on the harrowing ordeal of a young man and a woman stranded on a strip of narrow land lodged between the advancing government security forces and the last few rebels of the decimated LTTE that was once believed to be the most powerful terrorist organization of the world.
Dinesh, the accidental grave digger, gatherer of severed body parts and volunteer help at a clinic which is short in medical supplies, lives in an open camp with several dozens of refugee families taking shelter under upturned boats, tangled canopy of branches and precariously dug bomb shelters with their life’s worth packed into small plastic bags. The most precious things in their possession is little rice and lentil for a hurried meal, cooked when there is a lull between army shells raining down from the skies.
Dinesh is the only able-bodied young man in the crowd facing the threat of being conscripted any moment by the movement which faces a serious manpower crisis or becoming an easy target of the army if seen within their range of fire in the open or out on the nearby beach where he used to go to wash after call of nature.
When a marriage proposal comes from an old Tamil man to marry his pretty daughter things began to change. The action of the novel which lasts only one day revolves around the couple’s brief story of closeness. We feel the countdown clicking in every physical expression of their distant intimacy and its nearness to death, than life. The character of Ganga, which means river, is brilliantly etched in her postures, sparse dialogues, edgy mannerisms and facial expressions which Dinesh tries to interpret as best as he could, while, at the same time, becoming an equally puzzling enigma to Ganga. This, probably, is what happens to a group of close-knit people when they get alienated from their culture, and while traditions begin to disintegrate.
The only hope their marriage offer them is the vague expectation that a married woman sometimes can be spared of abuse by the approaching army and a husband is unlikely to be recruited by the movement. This seems to be the only reason that the girl’s father marries them though the marriage should have been properly done by a Hindu priest. The only holy man in the camp died of shrapnel wounds. At least, what Mr. Somasundaram, girl’s father, expected out of the marriage is to rescue his daughter from the mayhem yet to come.
The only proof of their marriage is a thali gold necklace – which is usually presented to the bride from the groom’s family – and hurried blessings of Ganga’s father to seal the marriage, acting as the ‘poosari’, temple priest.
The 27-year-old writer was directly unaffected in the war as he spent most of his life in Colombo. The characters and incidents have true-to-life resonance as the author, who writes in English and Tamil, has said in an interview that he had the chance of listening to people who survived the siege speaking about their harrowing ordeal to phsychiatrists.
While Dinesh’s newly-married wife is sleeping, he goes to the jungle after hearing a noise and finds it to be an injured crow. The bird sums up the life of the humans in the book. Dinesh tells Ganga about the crow that he left for the dead: “Its time would come soon…and it might as well have a little more time to experience and remember what living was like before it died.”
Sri Lankan-born England based author Romesh Gunesekera says the book is a closely-focused hypnotic novel of serious intensity while The Globe and Mail says Arudpragasam’s touching, evocative prose and original premise make for an unforgettable addition to the war novel. A new classic.
The writer who has a degree from Princeton University is presently reading for his doctorate at Columbia University. The novel was named as a Best Book of 2016 by The Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, The Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, and Entropy Magazine.
Some parts of the book are difficult to read. Truth always hurts us particularly when we are unhelpful listeners of tragedies happening in places like Syria, Myanmar and countless other countries. Sri Lankan war is over but its aftermath remains as bitter as the battle. Reading this book for me was like trying to have a nice dinner at the end of the day and switching the TV which is airing news about hungry innocent children being maimed or killed in bomb attacks. We have the remote control in hand, but reality is not that simple!
By Somasiri Munasinghe
(Toronto Public Library has 26 copies of A Story of Brief Marriage in addition to ebooks and audio books)
