By Shyam Selvadurai
Review By: Tushar M.
Funny Boy is not a book about homosexuality alone; in fact that’s just one chapter of it.
It is no doubt one of the most powerful portrayals of Sri Lanka of the 70s and 80s that one can come across. The way the writer describes Sri Lanka, the people, and the places is, to say the least, lucid. The way Arjie’s mother puts flowers in her hair, the way the beach looks at sunset, the way Arjie stands there waiting for Shehan, breathing slowly, anticipating, unsure…every single sentence in the book makes you live the novel vicariously.
Funny Boy is the story of Arjie, a Tamilian boy in Colombo, and his family. The book is split into 6 chapters, each covering a part of his life, following him from age 7 to his early teens at a time when the Sinhala-Tamil situation was at its worst in Sri Lanka.
The book starts off with descriptions of his playtimes with his sisters, playing ‘Bride Bride’, classic portrayals of a patriarchal society such as concepts about what play activities were considered ‘manly’. A headstrong Aunt and her love affair with a Sinhala boy, her mother’s long lost love and his father’s new employee – all of them ending up intensely intertwined with Sri Lankan Sinhala-Tamil politics; the book keeps the reader involved emotionally with each and every sentence that Shyam has so deftly written.
One chapter in specific deals with him discovering his sexuality, as he comes in contact with Shehan, a bright-eyed Sinhala classmate, and how Arjie reacts and responds to his new feelings, and to the taunts and disdainful looks of his elder brother, who figures out what is going on. Life in a strict all-boys school, mixed feelings, dilemmas, and courage; parts of growing up and little first steps towards discovering his sexuality are very vividly portrayed in this chapter.
The bitterness of the Sinhala crowd, and of the Tamils, and how the family copes with it becoming a part of their day to day life, suffering, surviving, and finally fleeing the country at the end of the book; a very powerful message is sent across in Selvadurai’s book. At times the reader feels intensely emotional and sympathetic reading about the helplessness of the family, the people, and the kids when faced with events and situations that clearly no one could have predicted, or maybe never imagined could be true. Horrific images of torture and cruelty, though not mentioned, conjure up in the reader’s mind as they read about Uncle Daryl going missing, the attacks on trains in Jaffna, and the merciless burning down of Tamil homes in Colombo in 1983. It’s in the description of these events that Shyam certainly appeals to the reader’s psyche, as he describes how Arjie’s Ammachi and Appachi were burnt alive in their car in the middle of the road.
As you close the book, the image of Arjie standing there in the rain, in front of his burnt down house, and the tears running down his cheeks as he bids a final farewell to Sri Lanka and to his childhood, stays in your mind.
