THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: “I didn’t want to touch on the political strife in Sri Lanka in the book. I just wanted to write on cricket. But it was difficult to be talking about the past 30 or 40 years in Sri Lanka and not speak of the political turmoil. It would have been very unnatural,” says Shehan Karunatilaka, whose book ‘Chinaman’ is as much about the obsession for the sport as it is about the social scenario in which it is played out. “No, I didn’t feel obliged to be writing about the strife in my country,” clarifies Karunatilaka while speaking to the City Express on the sidelines of the Kovalam Literary Festival held at Kanakakkunnu Palace. “Just as every Indian is not obsessed with cricket, not every Sri Lankan is touched by the war. For instance, those who have lived all their lives in Colombo would not have felt the terror of living in war-torn zones. Only if it was natural to the story have I brought that in”.‘Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew’ had won the 2008 Gratiaen Prize and has been hailed as the most noteworthy literary piece of fiction to have come out of Sri Lanka. The story of a dying alcoholic and retired sportswriter W G Karunasena setting out on the trail of a neglected Sri Lankan cricketer Pradeep Mathew gets intersected at different points by the ugly side of the sport and the tumultuous ethnic conflicts that cannot be escaped. The focus, though, is definitely on the game and its undoing at the hands of conspirators and traitors. Karunatilaka says that it took a whole year of research to shape the cricketing facts and technical details that lend the novel its authenticity. However, he also points out that he wanted those readers who were not familiar with the game to understand and enjoy the book which is why it was written under several subheadings with passages that read like small news reports. “I wanted to take the reader along and introduce them to what a wicket-keeper does or details like that. Besides, I also wanted it to read just like the notes that a sports journalist makes - scribblings made on napkins which are revisited when a report is being filed - that way, you know. So, the short passages were a deliberately chosen format.” For all the cricket written about in the book, Karunatilaka admits that he has not played much of the game himself. “I have played in my younger days, but no, I haven’t played for years.” But he points out that cricket is a unifying spirit in a country like Sri Lanka. “When a match is being aired, everyone comes out to watch it live in a public space. And it is also something that we are proud of, considering that there aren’t many things happening in our country that we could speak of with pride. The 1996 World Cup, which was the only time Sri Lanka won it, made the game everything for many generations.” The other big passion of the author is music. He has also written rock songs and has played the bass with a band for a long time. “I would love to play even now. The rock scene is very good in Colombo and we have good music in Sri Lanka, another thing to be proud of,” he winds up.
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