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  INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR

  Funny Boy

  “Moving and beautifully written.… Love, both within and across gender and race, is at the heart of this complex and questioning first novel.”

  — Calgary Herald

  “Shyam Selvadurai writes as sensitively about the emotional intensity of adolescence as he does about the wonder of childhood.”

  — New York Times Book Review

  “A powerful and impressive first book.”

  — Ottawa Citizen

  “He bears eloquent witness for all of us who have grown from secure childhood to clear-eyed uneasy adulthood.”

  — Quill & Quire

  “Exquisitely written … a superb first novel.”

  — The Independent Weekend (U.K.)

  “Funny Boy is more than a colourful, insightful novel; the book is a simple, tender call for tolerance that must not fall on deaf ears.”

  — Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland)

  “His vision is compassionate and mature … a writer of stature, blessed with both a deftness of touch and a seriousness of purpose. An auspicious debut.”

  — Montreal Gazette

  “Selvadurai’s world is delightful, frightening, important.… A graceful and intelligent account of the random nature of growing up.”

  — The Observer (U.K.)

  “The writing is rich, fluent, and exciting; this is a remarkably mature and accomplished book.”

  — Books in Canada

  “Selvadurai writes like an angel.…”

  — Belleville Intelligencer

  “An impressive debut.”

  — Vancouver Sun

  “A readable little gem of a book. It’s not hard to see why it’s captivated critics and ordinary readers alike.”

  — Saint John Telegraph-Journal

  “Funny Boy is a fresh, elegant, joyful delight.”

  — Hamilton Spectator

  “With Funny Boy, Selvadurai has created a coming-of-age novel of the highest order. His six beautifully crafted stories are the first offerings of a gifted young writer, who draws his readers into an exotic world while simultaneously creating an atmosphere of familiarity with his superb characterization. Readers will close the book hoping for more.”

  — Canadian Book Review Annual

  “Selvadurai has added a valuable new voice to Canada’s literary landscape.”

  — Regina Leader-Post

  Copyright © 1994 by Shyam Selvadurai

  First published in trade paperback with flaps 1994

  Trade paperback edition first published 1997

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Selvadurai, Shyam, 1965-

  Funny boy / Shyam Selvadurai.

  eISBN: 978-1-55199-719-3

  I. Title.

  PS8587.E445P85 2003 C813′.54 C2003-903222-1

  PR9199.3.S415P86 2003

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  Lines from “The Best School of All” are from Book of Lively Verse, part 2, compiled by Alan Sauvain (University Tutorial Press, 1937).

  SERIES EDITOR: ELLEN SELIGMAN

  Cover images: (boy) Stephanie Wolff / Millennium Images, UK; (sari fabric) Shutterstock.com

  EMBLEM EDITIONS

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  75 Sherbourne Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5A 2P9

  www.mcclelland.com/emblem

  v3.1

  To my parents,

  Christine and David Selvadurai,

  for believing that pigs can fly

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. Pigs Can’t Fly

  2. Radha Aunty

  3. See No Evil, Hear No Evil

  4. Small Choices

  5. The Best School of All

  6. Riot Journal: An Epilogue

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  PIGS CAN’T FLY

  BESIDES CHRISTMAS and other festive occasions, spend-the-days were the days most looked forward to by all of us, cousins, aunts, and uncles.

  For the adults a spend-the-day was the one Sunday of the month they were free of their progeny. The eagerness with which they anticipated these days could be seen in the way Amma woke my brother, my sister, and me extra early when they came. Unlike on school days, when Amma allowed us to dawdle a little, we were hurried through our morning preparations. Then, after a quick breakfast, we would be driven to the house of our grandparents.

  The first thing that met our eyes on entering our grandparents’ house, after we carefully wiped our feet on the doormat, would be the dark corridor running the length of it, on one side of which were the bedrooms and on the other the drawing and dining rooms. This corridor, with its old photographs on both walls and its ceiling so high that our footsteps echoed, scared me a little. The drawing room into which we would be ushered to pay our respects to our grandparents was also dark and smelled like old clothes that had been locked away in a suitcase for a long time. There my grandparents Ammachi and Appachi sat, enthroned in big reclining chairs. Appachi usually looked up from his paper and said vaguely, “Ah, hello, hello,” before going back behind it, but Ammachi always called us to her with the beckoning movement of her middle and index fingers. With our legs trembling slightly, we would go to her, the thought of the big canes she kept behind her tall clothes almariah strongly imprinted upon our minds. She would grip our faces in her plump hands, and one by one kiss us wetly on both cheeks and say, “God has blessed me with fifteen grandchildren who will look after me in my old age.” She smelled of stale coconut oil, and the diamond mukkuthi in her nose always pressed painfully against my cheek.

  When the aunts and uncles eventually drove away, waving gaily at us children from car windows, we waved back at the retreating cars, with not even a pretence of sorrow. For one glorious day a month we were free of parental control and the ever-watchful eyes and tale-bearing tongues of the house servants.

  We were not, alas, completely abandoned, as we would have so liked to have been. Ammachi and Janaki were supposedly in charge. Janaki, cursed with the task of having to cook for fifteen extra people, had little time for supervision and actually preferred to have nothing to do with us at all. If called upon to come and settle a dispute, she would rush out, her hands red from grinding curry paste, and box the ears of the first person who happened to be in her path. We had learned that Janaki was to be appealed to only in the most dire emergencies. The one we understood, by tacit agreement, never to appeal to was Ammachi. Like the earth-goddess in the folktales, she was not to be disturbed from her tranquillity. To do so would have been the cause of a catastrophic earthquake.

  In order to minimize interference by either Ammachi or Janaki, we had developed and refined a system of handling conflict and settling disputes ourselves. Two things formed the framework of this system: territoriality and leadership.

  Territorially, the area around my grandparents’
house was divided into two. The front garden, the road, and the field that lay in front of the house belonged to the boys, although included in their group was my female cousin Meena. In this territory, two factions struggled for power, one led by Meena, the other by my brother, Varuna, who, because of a prevailing habit, had been renamed Diggy-Nose and then simply Diggy.

  The second territory was called “the girls’,” included in which, however, was myself, a boy. It was to this territory of “the girls,” confined to the back garden and the kitchen porch, that I seemed to have gravitated naturally, my earliest memories of those spend-the-days always belonging in the back garden of my grandparents’ home. The pleasure the boys had standing for hours on a cricket field under the sweltering sun, watching the batsmen run from crease to crease, was incomprehensible to me.

  For me, the primary attraction of the girls’ territory was the potential for the free play of fantasy. Because of the force of my imagination, I was selected as leader. Whatever the game, be it the imitation of adult domestic functions or the enactment of some well-loved fairy story, it was I who discovered some new way to enliven it, some new twist to the plot of a familiar tale. Led by me, the girl cousins would conduct a raid on my grandparents’ dirty-clothes basket, discovering in this odorous treasure trove saris, blouses, sheets, curtains with which we invented costumes to complement our voyages of imagination.

  The reward for my leadership was that I always got to play the main part in the fantasy. If it was cooking-cooking we were playing, I was the chef; if it was Cinderella or Thumbelina, I was the much-beleaguered heroine of these tales.

  Of all our varied and fascinating games, bride-bride was my favourite. In it, I was able to combine many elements of the other games I loved, and with time bride-bride, which had taken a few hours to play initially, became an event that spread out over the whole day and was planned for weeks in advance. For me the culmination of this game, and my ultimate moment of joy, was when I put on the clothes of the bride. In the late afternoon, usually after tea, I, along with the older girl cousins, would enter Janaki’s room. From my sling-bag I would bring out my most prized possession, an old white sari, slightly yellow with age, its border torn and missing most of its sequins. The dressing of the bride would now begin, and then, by the transfiguration I saw taking place in Janaki’s cracked full-length mirror – by the sari being wrapped around my body, the veil being pinned to my head, the rouge put on my cheeks, lipstick on my lips, kohl around my eyes – I was able to leave the constraints of myself and ascend into another, more brilliant, more beautiful self, a self to whom this day was dedicated, and around whom the world, represented by my cousins putting flowers in my hair, draping the palu, seemed to revolve. It was a self magnified, like the goddesses of the Sinhalese and Tamil cinema, larger than life; and like them, like the Malini Fonsekas and the Geetha Kumarasinghes, I was an icon, a graceful, benevolent, perfect being upon whom the adoring eyes of the world rested.

  Those spend-the-days, the remembered innocence of childhood, are now coloured in the hues of the twilight sky. It is a picture made even more sentimental by the loss of all that was associated with them. By all of us having to leave Sri Lanka years later because of communal violence and forge a new home for ourselves in Canada.

  Yet those Sundays, when I was seven, marked the beginning of my exile from the world I loved. Like a ship that leaves a port for the vast expanse of sea, those much looked forward to days took me away from the safe harbour of childhood towards the precarious waters of adult life.

  The visits at my grandparents’ began to change with the return from abroad of Kanthi Aunty, Cyril Uncle, and their daughter, Tanuja, whom we quickly renamed “Her Fatness,” in that cruelly direct way children have.

  At first we had no difficulty with the newcomer in our midst. In fact we found her quite willing to accept that, by reason of her recent arrival, she must necessarily begin at the bottom.

  In the hierarchy of bride-bride, the person with the least importance, less even than the priest and the page boys, was the groom. It was a role we considered stiff and boring, that held no attraction for any of us. Indeed, if we could have dispensed with that role altogether we would have, but alas it was an unfortunate feature of the marriage ceremony. My younger sister, Sonali, with her patient good nature, but also sensing that I might have a mutiny on my hands if I asked anyone else to play that role, always donned the long pants and tattered jacket, borrowed from my grandfather’s clothes chest. It was now deemed fitting that Her Fatness should take over the role and thus leave Sonali free to wrap a bedsheet around her body, in the manner of a sari, and wear araliya flowers in her hair like the other bridesmaids.

  For two spend-the-days, Her Fatness accepted her role without a murmur and played it with all the skilled unobtrusiveness of a bit player. The third spend-the-day, however, everything changed. That day turned out to be my grandmothers birthday. Instead of dropping the children off and driving away as usual, the aunts and uncles stayed on for lunch, a slight note of peevish displeasure in their voices.

  We had been late, because etiquette (or rather my father) demanded that Amma wear a sari for the grand occasion of her mother-in-law’s sixtieth birthday. Amma’s tardiness and her insistence on getting her palu to fall to exactly above her knees drove us all to distraction (especially Diggy, who quite rightly feared that in his absence Meena would try to persuade the better members of his team to defect to her side). Even I, who usually loved the ritual of watching Amma get dressed, stood in her doorway with the others and fretfully asked if she was ever going to be ready.

  When we finally did arrive at Ramanaygam Road, everyone else had been there almost an hour. We were ushered into the drawing room by Amma to kiss Ammachi and present her with her gift, the three of us clutching the present. All the uncles and aunts were seated. Her Fatness stood in between Kanthi Aunty’s knees, next to Ammachi. When she saw us, she gave me an accusing, hostile look and pressed further between her mother’s legs. Kanthi Aunty turned away from her discussion with Mala Aunty, and, seeing me, she smiled and said in a tone that was as heavily sweetened as undiluted rose-syrup, “So, what is this I hear, aah? Nobody will play with my little daughter.”

  I looked at her and then at Her Fatness, shocked by the lie. All my senses were alert.

  Kanthi Aunty wagged her finger at me and said in a playful, chiding tone, “Now, now, Arjie, you must be nice to my little daughter. After all, she’s just come from abroad and everything.” Fortunately, I was prevented from having to answer. It was my turn to present my cheek to Ammachi, and, for the first time, I did so willingly, preferring the prick of the diamond mukkuthi to Kanthi Aunty’s honeyed admonition.

  Kanthi Aunty was the fourth oldest in my father’s family. First there was my father, then Ravi Uncle, Mala Aunty, Kanthi Aunty, Babu Uncle, Seelan Uncle, and finally Radha Aunty, who was much younger than the others and was away, studying in America. Kanthi Aunty was tall and bony, and we liked her the least, in spite of the fact that she would pat our heads affectionately whenever we walked past or greeted her. We sensed that beneath her benevolence lurked a seething anger, tempered by guile, that could have deadly consequences if unleashed in our direction. I had heard Amma say to her sister, Neliya Aunty, that “Poor Kanthi was bitter because of the humiliations she had suffered abroad. After all, darling, what a thing, forced to work as a servant in a whitey’s house to make ends meet.”

  Once Ammachi had opened the present, a large silver serving tray, and thanked us for it (and insisted on kissing us once again), my brother, my sister, and I were finally allowed to leave the room. Her Fatness had already disappeared. I hurried out the front door and ran around the side of the house.

  When I reached the back garden I found the girl cousins squatting on the porch in a circle. They were so absorbed in what was happening in the centre that none of them even heard my greeting. Lakshmi finally became aware of my presence and beckoned me over excitedly. I reached the
circle and the cause of her excitement became clear. In the middle, in front of Her Fatness, sat a long-legged doll with shiny gold hair. Her dress was like that of a fairy queen, the gauze skirt sprinkled with tiny silver stars. Next to her sat her male counterpart, dressed in a pale-blue suit. I stared in wonder at the marvellous dolls. For us cousins, who had grown up under a government that strictly limited all foreign imports, such toys were unimaginable. Her Fatness turned to the other cousins and asked them if they wanted to hold the dolls for a moment. They nodded eagerly and the dolls passed from hand to hand. I moved closer to get a better look. My gaze involuntarily rested on Her Fatness and she gave me a smug look. Immediately her scheme became evident to me. It was with these dolls that my cousin from abroad hoped to seduce the other cousins away from me.

  Unfortunately for her, she had underestimated the power of bride-bride. When the other cousins had all looked at the dolls, they bestirred themselves and, without so much as a backward glance, hurried down the steps to prepare for the marriage ceremony. As I followed them, I looked triumphantly at Her Fatness, who sat on the porch, clasping her beautiful dolls to her chest.

  When lunch was over, my grandparents retired to their room for a nap. The other adults settled in the drawing room to read the newspaper or doze off in the huge armchairs. We, the bride-to-be and the bridesmaids, retired to Janaki’s room for the long-awaited ritual of dressing the bride.

  We were soon disturbed, however, by the sound of booming laughter. At first we ignored it, but when it persisted, getting louder and more drawn out, my sister, Sonali, went to the door and looked out. Her slight gasp brought us all out onto the porch. There the groom strutted, up and down, head thrown back, stomach stuck out. She sported a huge bristly moustache (torn out of the broom) and a cigarette (of rolled paper and talcum powder), which she held between her fingers and puffed on vigorously. The younger cousins, instead of getting dressed and putting the final touches to the altar, sat along the edge of the porch and watched with great amusement.