Features
Razeen Sally on himself, his family and people
My article last Sunday was mostly on the places Razeen Sally wrote about in his wide spectrum, scintillating 2019 book. Titled Return to Sri Lanka – Travels in a Paradoxical Island it is a comment on most things in the island, seen after a lapse of 42 years. He returned solo in 2006-2007, 2008, 2011 and then more continuously, often with his mother. He writes: “On my later visits I wanted to probe, learn, understand. But Sri Lanka pulled me back emotionally too, not just intellectually. The emotional tug was my childhood. I yearned for re-connection and to use it as a lens, a point of comparison, to discover Sri Lanka today, the Sri Lanka I so belatedly started to experience as an adult. And ultimately, I suppose, to discover myself.”
He first dedicates the book to his mother in a page long appreciation ending with: “I owe you everything. Without you this book and much else besides, would not have been possible. This is my first ‘non-academic’ book. It is for you.” A fine start. He then follows with his Introduction and the text divided into two parts: A Sri Lankan Childhood and Sri Lanka through Adult Eyes: A travelogue.
The author
As I mentioned last week, Razeen Sally was born in Colombo in 1965 to a Muslim father – Farouk Sally, and Welsh mother – Pat Kneen. When his father who was GM of Mt Lavinia Hotel was imprisoned by Mrs B’s government in the 1970s for exchange control violation, Razeen and his two brothers were home schooled to avoid being subject to teasing in college. Mother and three sons finally left for England and settled down with Pat’s mother in Wales. Razeen attended the Rhyl High School, later a private school in Wales from where he went to the London School of Economics to earn his first and second degrees, and PhD. Brief visits to Sri Lanka to be with his father ended when his father joined the family in Ryle and died soon after in 2002.
He is sympathetic and unprejudiced and in his book criticisms are mild though justified. He never carps in his comments. He seamlessly and skillfully introduces his opinion on people, events, places, and politics down the years, traces the island’s history from colonial days to 2018, touching on earlier historic reigns. Alongside is an account of his childhood in SL, personal snippets and the functioning of an extended Muslim family. Referring to diversity he writes: “You see that expressed in the way people dress and what they eat, where they go to worship, and the languages: Sinhala and Tamil as well as English. That’s all on the surface.” Implying that in the final analysis, though differences exist and tensions arise, we are all the same, whatever our race or religion.
Unity in diversity was practiced and praised; no more at present. My comment here is that our differences continue to be exacerbated by religious leaders and wily politicians leading the country to unnecessary discord and frequent eruptions of racial and/or religious enmity. A recent example is the moniker ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ being thrown around, smacking of majority race and religion, canceling out secularism and parity.
People in the book
Innumerable – ranging from ancient travelers Ibn Batuta and Horace Walpole, through the ages to now. “My Colombo characters are a kaleidoscope of Sinhala, Tamil, Burgher, Buddhist, Christian and Muslim plus an occasional agnostic and atheist for good measure.”
Political change is touched on. Razeen comments thus: DS Senanayake –”He understood people and had practical sense. DS had a liberal and secular vision for independent Ceylon – a multi ethnic state with strict separation of the state from religion. He had no time for drum beating Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and was sensitive to minorities’ anxieties…. One significant blemish was his treatment of Indian Tamils on tea estates …10% of voting population” Then “the shine began to come off this golden age.” “Sinhala Buddhist nationalism became SWRD’s vehicle to political triumph…. Sinhala Only brought SWRD to power with a crushing electoral victory.” And so on to the JVP, ethnic riots, the LTTE, the civil war and political succession thereafter.
Razeen has read widely and he references or quotes a wide gamut of sources and persons ranging from the Mahavamsa to Robert Knox, Sir Ivor Jennings, Michael Ondaatje, Shehan Karunatillake and many others. He also met a wide cross section of Sri Lankans and I appreciated the very human and humane details he provides. One such couple is Dil and Elmo Jayawarden. “Dil and Elmo are the best matched couple I know and they have the most wholesome family I know. They are a study in contrasts but complement each other. Elmo is exuberant, witty, loquacious with a very Sri Lankan way with words.” Razeen writes in detail about their river house where he often stayed, his mother too; and the Candle Aid project they started. All praise so very deserved since hundreds, nay thousands, mostly students, have benefitted from Candle Aid.
I was delighted to find five pages in the Chapter Rajarata, Land of Kings devoted to Laki Senanayake and his home Diyabubula – “L S is probably Sri Lanka’s most famous living artist. He is a protean and prolific solo creator…” Razeen describes his work and his life among villagers, his employing many and helping them and his independence of spirit. He says that even in the late 1950s Laki went about in a sarong, bare-bodied and turned away from city life in 1970. This writing on Laki Senanayake is apt because the artist died in 2021.
Faraz Shauketaly, a relative who migrated to Wales after he suffered a three pronged attack one night of a strangler, suffocater and gunman during the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime of 2009- 2014. He escaped with a minor gunshot injury but returned, intrepid, to continue his investigative journalism for the MTV I Channel. This was info that was new to, at least, me.
He details the civil war, but unlike many born in Sri Lanka or descended, now resident overseas, writing mostly fiction or even fact after perhaps a brief visit and/or second hand info collecting, Razeen visited often and resided here and lived mentally and emotionally, though resident overseas, the conflict and the peace years. He went around Vavuniya and Jaffna and its islands extensively in 2011, 2015 and 2018 with brief visits in between.
He spoke with Christian priests, university students, traders, ordinary people. His writing is first-hand, fact-based and unprejudiced. It is evident he has mulled over what he had seen and discovered, with an academic’s mind. He intended writing it all down, hence his visits had a purpose. He ends the chapter War Scars thus: “The journey back to Colombo was the last and longest road trip for this book. It had been the one with the widest geographical coverage and greatest variety of experience… I saw the pathos of war and its enduring scars and in the East troubling signs of emerging Islamic fundamentalism but also the buoyancy of post-war recovery.”
In the final chapter Envoi, which equates to ‘an author’s concluding words’, Razeen speculates on three scenarios for the future. The first “Drift” is mere proceeding in the same way; the second “Take-off” sees Sri Lanka achieve its potential. The third ‘Relapse” has the country drifting back to autocracy, intolerance and dysfunctional politics. We have, unfortunately, seen in the last months where the country seems to be heading.
However, the book ends on a personally positive and happy note for Razeen. He writes his travels around the country were to discover himself too. He was introduced to meditation and participated in retreats. “I came to find Buddhism’s spiritual core increasingly compelling, the Buddha’s notion of ‘suffering’…..equally significant and joyful… For the first since I was a teenager, Sri Lanka feels more like ‘home’ than anywhere else.”