The Good Little Ceylonese Girl is Ashok Ferrey’s second collection of darkly humorous tales about Sri Lankans at home and abroad.
Our Sri Lankan narrator visits his friend Joe in Italy where Joe attends a course in higher (or, shall we say, lower) studies in women. But Italians—much like today’s residents of Colombo—live at home till marriage, death, and sometimes even beyond. A hen and chicken affair of fake fiancés and phony engagements ensues. Long years and many miles away, Colombo’s Father Cruz attempts to rescue a church from parishioners who like to put their donations where others can see them—with plaques to announce their charity. On the coast, a retired Admiral escapes the tsunami on an antique Dutch cabinet. A broken mother—with neither Dutch cabinet nor navy helicopter to rescue her—feels her son slip away, and watches him go giving her looks of mild reproach. Two childhood sweethearts, in time-honoured Sri Lankan tradition, are married off to strangers. Nineteen years of clandestine meetings culminate in another chance of marriage. Perhaps time does separate.
Ashok Ferrey writes about Sri Lanka and its people, wherever they roam. He writes of the Sri Lankan diaspora, who seem not to notice that their country has changed in their absence. He writes of the West’s effect on Sri Lankans, of its ‘turning them into caricatures, unmistakably genuine but not at all the real thing’. As you laugh, you are left with nostalgia for a bygone Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans who might have been.
Archives: Books
Serendipity
Piyumi Segarajasingham is a young barrister in eighties London, half Tamil and half Sinhalese, and newly responsible for her family’s share of an inheritance in Sri Lanka. The servants’ quarters of a house called Serendipity in Colombo’s colonial quarter, Cinnamon Gardens, is now her charge-she wants to keep it, her relatives are keen to sell. So begins Piyumi’s journey home, full of a host of memorable characters and the hilarious happenstance of daily life in Colombo, haunted by the memory of a stranger she met back in London-will they ever get together? Set in a more innocent time- Sri Lanka’s civil war had only just begun-Serendipity is satire, thriller and comedy of manners all in one, told with Ferrey’s trademark wit.
Colpetty People
In this extraordinary debut, Ashok Ferry chronicles, in a gently probing voice, the journeys of characters seeking something beyond the barriers of nations and generations. His tales of social-climbing Sri Lankans, of the pathos of immigration, of rich people with poor taste, of icecream karma, of innocent love, eternity, and more take us to Colombo’s nouveau riche, hoity-toity returnees, ladies with buttery skin and square fingernails, old-fashioned aristocrats, and the poor mortals trapped between them. Ferry’s stories comprise characters that are ‘serious and fine and upstanding, and infinitely dull’, but also others like young John-John, who loses his childhood somewhere ‘high up in the air between Asmara and Rome’; the maid, Agnes of God whose mango-sucking teeth ‘fly out at you like bats out of the mouth of a cave’; Ashoka, the immigrant who embodies his Sri Lankan identity only on the bus-ride between home and work; and Professor Jayaweera who finds sterile freedoms caged in the ‘unbending, straight lines of Western Justice’. Absurd, sad, scathing and generous, but mostly wickedly funny, Colpetty People presents modern Sri Lankans as they navigate worlds between Ceylon and the West.
Love In The Tsunami
Love in the Tsunami brings together a selection of Ashok Ferrey’s short fiction and includes four brand-new stories. The title story, set against the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 describes Veena Patel’s all-too-brief encounter with forbidden love. ‘But Did I Tell You I Can’t Dance?’ is a hilarious fable about the occasional humiliations and the many heart-warming victories of old age. And in ‘Maleeshya’ Ashok himself makes a cameo appearance as a dead author who has embarrassingly come back to life.
Endlessly inventive and crackling with energy, Love in the Tsunami represents the very best writing in English from contemporary Sri Lanka.
Rabindranath Tagore
Pakistan at the Crossroads
In Pakistan at the Crossroads, top international scholars assess Pakistan’s politics, economics and the challenges faced by its civil and military leaders domestically and diplomatically. Contributors examine the state’s handling of internal threats, tensions between civilians and the military, strategies of political parties, police and law enforcement reform, trends in judicial activism, the rise of border conflicts, economic challenges, financial entanglements with foreign powers, and diplomatic relations with India, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and the United States.
In addition to ethnic strife in Baluchistan and Karachi, terrorist violence in Pakistan in response to the American-led military intervention in Afghanistan and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by means of drones, has reached an unprecedented level. Growing consensus among state leaders predicts that the nation’s main security threats may come not from India but from its spiraling internal conflicts, though this realization may not sufficiently dissuade the Pakistani army from targeting the country’s largest neighbor.
This volume is critical to grasping the sophisticated interplay of internal and external forces complicating the country’s recent trajectory.
The Secret’s in the Spice Mix
Do you buy overpriced spice mixes off the shelves?
Do you wish to make your own but don’t know how?
Does the alchemy of spices interest you?
People across the length and breadth of the country have their own special blends that they use to add flavour to food.The right combination of spices is crucial to Indian cooking and is the reason why some dishes are so hard to resist. But why buy spice mixes when you can make them yourself!
From traditional blends like veri-the tikki masala from Kashmir-and East Indian bottle masala-the specialty from Mumbai-to more commercial mixes like garam masala, kadhai masala and sambhar powder, India’s first MasterChef Pankaj Bhadouria identifies fifty spice mixes from India and around the world in this one-of-a-kind book, putting the secret to great flavours within any cook’s reach.
Ruckus on the Road
WANTED
A runaway girl, a donkey and a snarky boy travelling together
DO NOT APPROACH THEM. HIGHLY TALKATIVE!
They are said to be in possession of lethal fruit and wily schemes.
If you spot them, call the lawmakers of Put-Put immediately!
(Issued in the interest of the citizens, goats, chicken and other fauna.)
When ten-year-old Inara meets Kian, an overconfident trickster, she knows that they are NOT going to be best friends for life. But with a diabolical villainess close on her heels and an impossible rescue mission to plan, she has no choice but to be part of his motley crew.
Jump aboard if you’re in the mood for a whole lot of mayhem!
India’s Legal System
India has the second-largest legal profession in the world, but the systemic delays and chronic impediments of its judicial system inspire little confidence in the common person. In India’s Legal System, renowned constitutional expert and senior Supreme Court lawyer Fali S. Nariman explores possible reasons. While realistically appraising the criminal justice system and the performance of legal practitioners, he elaborates the different aspects of contemporary practice, such as public interest litigation, judicial review and activism. In lucid, accessible language, Nariman discusses key social issues such as inequality and affirmative action, providing real cases as illustrations of the on-ground situation.
This frank and thought-provoking book offers valuable insights into India’s judicial system and maps a possible road ahead to make justice available to all.
Anna
On 6 March 1967; fifty-eight-year-old Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai became chief minister of Madras state; when his party; the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK); swept to power for the first time. Marking the pinnacle of his public life; it reflected his popularity among ordinary people who revered him as Anna; or elder brother. This rich biography illuminates his many lives-as a charismatic leader of modern India; as a stalwart of the Dravidian movement; as the founder of the DMK; as spokesman for the South-besides documenting his abilities as an acclaimed orator and littérateur in Tamil and English; and as a stage actor.
Born into a weaving caste family in Kanchipuram; Anna was exposed to the non-Brahmin politics of the Justice Party during his college years and this interest led him to become a protégé of the radical thinker Periyar E.V. Ramasamy in 1935. Anna promoted his mentor’s ideas of Self-Respect and Tamil identity but not his atheism. Like him; he attacked Brahminism and ‘Aryan’ values as the cause of Tamil political and cultural decadence and opposed the imposition of Hindi as the official language. In 1962 Anna took his independent Dravida Nadu demand to the Rajya Sabha; threatening the nation’s unity. Importantly; he used public speaking; journalism; theatre; cinema and agit-prop to broaden the base of the party; which drew renowned film actors into its fold; a bond that endures to this day.
The book does not shy away from the controversies that surrounded the Dravidian movement and candidly examines Anna’s complex relationship with Periyar. It records Anna’s move to form the DMK in 1949; his split with Sampath in 1961 over the party’s strategy and course; and his disillusionment with the corruption and power politics he witnessed as chief minister.
Kannan draws on Anna’s considerable body of writing; the memoirs of other leaders and authors in Tamil; including critics like the poet Kannadasan; Jayakanthan and P. Ramamurti; apart from secondary sources. Featuring luminaries like Rajagopalachari and Kamaraj; Kalaignar Karunanidhi and MGR; among many others; Anna offers a warm and rounded portrait of a man who showed the way for the democratic expression of regional aspirations within a united India.