Of lost opportunities for Sri Lanka

Chinaman a story about a forgotten genius spinner, was a way of exploring his country's wasted potential says Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka. Excerpts from a conversation…

March 05, 2011 06:45 pm | Updated March 06, 2011 03:24 pm IST

Those magical moments: Shehan Karunatilaka

Those magical moments: Shehan Karunatilaka

Shehan Karunatilaka'sChinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathewis the story of an elderly journalist's obsession with a nearly forgotten large bowler, who he believes was Sri Lanka's greatest cricketer. This engaging, expansive novel uses cricket as a prism to examine aspects of the country's history, politics and contemporary life.

How long have you been a cricket fan, and how did the idea for this book come to you?

I watched Sidhath Wettimuny score 190 at Lord's in 1984, watched us get thrashed around the world for a decade and then in my early 20s saw us win a World Cup and change the face of cricket. But after Sri Lanka's dismal exit from the 1999 World Cup, I stopped following the game. I just found better things to do.

It amazed me that no one had written about the one thing that Sri Lanka is truly world-class at. The idea came in bits and pieces over the years and when I realised it had to be about an obsessive cricket fan, I became one for a while. But these days, I'd much rather watch Newcastle United.

To you, as a Lankan and as a writer, what does the fictional Pradeep Mathew represent? Did you see him as a cipher that enables other stories about Sri Lanka to be told, or did you start with the core idea of a tragic, enigmatic hero?

The former. Sri Lanka is a study in wasted potential and lost opportunities. We've all heard stories about mythical Ceylon and how it inspired Lee Kwan Yu to build his capitalist utopia in Singapore. Half a century after independence, we're an underachieving nation. We've spent seven decades squandering all our natural gifts and embracing war, nepotism, corruption and laziness.

The tale of a forgotten genius spinner seemed an interesting way of exploring this without getting too preachy or heavy-handed. Not sure if I succeeded.

The structure of the book is very lively: non-linear, full of little asides. Why did you choose to do it this way? As a reader, do you prefer disjointed narratives?

It certainly didn't happen by design. I just uncovered so many wonderful stories about cricket and Sri Lanka in my research that I couldn't help but chuck everything into the mix. Fortunately, the choice of a drunk as narrator (the journalist W.G. Karunasena) allowed me to ramble and make it seem like a stylistic device!

I read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut, who also intersperses plot with asides and has that beautiful tone that veers between hilarity and horror, something which I wanted to purloin for WG's character. I'm not a big fan of disjointed narratives. I'm still unable to fathom Joyce's Ulysses. But I am in awe of writers like Salman Rushdie or directors like David Lynch, who can fashion a story out of chaos.

Though you're only in your 30s, your depiction of an elderly narrator searching for fulfilment as his life draws to an end is spot on. What observations did you draw on to make WG such a well-rounded character?

My main challenge was to write as a 64-year-old and not as a 32-year-old trying to sound like one. I interviewed countless drunkards, uncles, grandpas and elderly journos to try and capture that voice. Even though I was chatting to most of them about cricket, details from their interior lives seemed to creep into our conversations. I gratefully let them ramble and took detailed notes.

Chinamanintriguingly mixes fact and fiction: you mention actual matches and real-life cricketers and incidents. In a story that touches on match-fixing and other controversies, were you worried that the book would get into trouble?

All the lawyers I spoke to said that getting sued would be great for sales! In the Sri Lankan edition, the names and the references are much more obvious. But I didn't think I'd get in trouble, because I wasn't saying anything that was disputed or untrue. Cricketers like to party and enjoy the company of women who aren't their wives. Some of them fix matches. These are hardly revelations.

Most of the stories in Chinaman are embellished versions of anecdotes shared with me by cricketers and commentators. I've taken care to only use real names if I'm saying something nice. So most of the time it's badly disguised pseudonyms.

What effect did Lanka's 1996 World Cup win have on you at a personal level? Did you find a change in the attitudes of other people (non-Lankans) towards you?

Hell, yes. I was an undergrad in New Zealand at the time. I had dreadlocks then and let everyone assume I was from the Caribbean. It wasn't that I was ashamed of being Sri Lankan, it's just that no one had heard of us. And it wasn't a fact that impressed girls you were trying to pick up. One once asked me if the Tamil Tigers was a basketball team.

But after we won the World Cup, I'd wear a Sri Lankan flag as a bandanna on the streets of Wellington and Palmerston North and get greeted with immediate recognition from strangers. I shaved off my dreadlocks soon afterwards.

1996 was a fairytale even for those outside of Sri Lanka. We were an underdog up against a bully everyone hated and we had tricks up our sleeve and it was a story everyone could get behind.

If nothing else, it helped us all believe that we as Sri Lankans could be as good as everyone else.

At a broader level, what was the importance of that win for your country? Has cricket been a uniting force in a country torn by racial conflicts?

After 1996, cricket in Sri Lanka inevitably became a commodity that attracted politicians and big business. The book, or rather its narrator WG, believes that sport can be a political and poetic force that can transcend reality. I don't actually believe that.

While I can't deny the power of sport in capturing national consciousness, like say in South Africa during the 1995 rugby world cup, I think it would be a bit wet to suggest that 1996 helped us overcome our divisions and prejudices. Having said that, when a cricket match is on, we all use it as an excuse to forget about floods and tsunamis and wars and human rights. During thse 2007 World Cup, the LTTE even declared a temporary ceasefire.

Even if we win another world cup, it'll never be like 1996 again. Now the country expects us to win – back then it was a miracle.

“Unlike life, sport matters,” your narrator says at one point. To you, what is the abiding significance of sports?

I think sport is a harmless distraction and a lot of it can be forgettable. But there are moments that can be truly magical where a sporting event can attain myth. And to a sports fan, a game can represent something far greater than life and that was really what I was trying to capture.

Can you name some of your favourite sports-related books?

I'll have to give you a very condensed list. Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. Simon Barnes' The Meaning of Sport. Marcus Beckmann's charming Rain Men. And the sports writings of C.L.R. James, Ed Smith, Lawrence Booth, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton and Hunter S. Thompson.

If you steal from enough sources, you get to pass it off as research.

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