Roma Tearne

Child Neglect In The Bicentenary Of Dickens

2012-02-09T02:18:00.000-08:00

In December last year a post on the BBC website asked:

'With the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens quickly approaching, and an entire series of events planned, what is the lasting legacy of his work and his causes?'

What indeed?

Child neglect as a result of emotional & educational impoverishment at the poorest end of British society remain a fact of life. Today, we read that, due to an overworked, underfunded social services, the number of children referred into care has reached a record high.
Why is this? And why are these children being referred in the first place? Neglected children grow into dysfunctional adults. Sooner or later this will affect all of us. So why aren't the 'failing' parents being helped more? We all know that a child's best place is beside its mother. And that a child who is loved, however imperfectly, is all the better for it. Why then is there no money to be found for this shadowy side of society? And why, may one ask, do we seem to have gone back 200 years to the time of Dickens?

When the current Prime Minister first came into power we heard about his love for his family, his late son, his concern for the smallest, the most vulnerable in Britain. Where is that concern now but forgotten in his lip-tightening climb up his personal privileged ladder of fame.

There are children in Britain today who live in the most appalling conditions. Everyone has heard about Baby P. and his soft, curly-haired gaze, now long removed from this world. Everyone knew, once it was too late. And, while we are dished out the platitudes about the recession, while the rich give themselves reward upon unbelievable reward, the poor of course do what they have always done. Get poorer.

Here is a photograph I found on a flea market stall a few weeks ago. It was taken in the 1960s. Look, here is a child, marked by neglect, sitting on a filthy hearth. He or she has the same innocent look of Baby P. An English child, born in this sceptred, green and pleasant isle. A baby, really. Dickens might have written about him 200 years before. If he were here today, Dickens might still be writing about him because he remains amongst us, still.

With all the advertising hype of his approaching bicentenary, should we not be addressing some of the human issues Dickens once cared about? Hasn't the best of literature always highlighted social injustice?

Health & the British Public

2012-01-24T01:35:00.000-08:00

The NHS is about to be overhauled. The government wants it to save £20billion by 2015. What does this mean for us, the ordinary people in this country? What does it mean for the women about to give birth and the young just entering the world? Our children, our grandchildren? And then there is that wonderful phrase 'the ageing population'. What of them? In the cuts ahead how many will fall victims to the government's plans?
The cross-party select committee has said there is
'too much emphasis so far on short-term cuts and 'salami-slicing', instead of re-thinking the way care is delivered.'
The health secretary Andrew Lansley isn't interested. He is a politician and for him, with his wealth and his private health care, the lives of others are not his personal concern.

I came, as a child to this country in the late 1960s, with a mother who had been all but murdered in the country that was our home. She had lost the baby that she carried to full term and a drunken doctor, in charge at the government hospital, had then tried to kill her off with a morphine overdose. She, my mother, arrived on these shores a broken woman, barely able to walk. The first thing we did, fearfully, was register with a GP. We had been told about a wonderful health service in the UK that delivered the same level of care to the whole population. My mother did not really believe this. In the third world country we had just left, good health was for the wealthy, only. But in Britain, so the story went, the rights of every human was respected. The young, the old, the sick, the elderly were all still people. And so, we registered with a doctor in south London.
What followed was astonishing and until the day she died, thirty years later, in St Thomas's hospital, London, this story was one she would repeat.
First she made an appointment that was processed quickly.
The doctor who saw her moved swiftly and with great kindness. She was whisked to a hospital where she was seen, talked to, attended to and subsequently given surgery.
Her wounds healed, she recovered in as far as it was possible.

She went back to that doctor to thank him. He became our family doctor. That is to say he knew us as a family. He understood the dynamics of our family because he had time to do so. Because he wasn't constrained by the '8 minute' rule of consultation that doctors are bound by, today. He had time to practice his considerable skill. He was not a man who was forced to manage his own budget or be an administrator as well. He was, in short, given the space to be efficient. Efficiency and time were not married together but rather quality was the thing that was valued.

Now this wonderful service is being tampered with. It has already had holes knocked in it but what this current government is proposing is much worse. Health experts are lobbying but many of the population remain in the dark. As one health administrator told me recently,
'the rug is being pulled under everyone's feet, but it will be too late before the public realises.'
That's the plan of course! We will not understand the extent of the cuts until it's too late and until that moment when we need to use a service. It will be far too late by then, both for us and for the NHS itself.

For those of us who really love this country, who have spent their working lives here, who wish to put back some of the things that we have taken from it, the time has come for us to stand up for the wonderful service we have so lightly taken for granted. A service that offered an unknown woman the help she could not get any where else in the world.

But for how long?

A Final Story For The Western Sponsors Of The Galle Literary Festival. Extract from the Novel 'Brixton Beach'.

2012-01-21T05:17:00.000-08:00

In another part of the island, in Colombo 10, a womanscreams. It is an old familiar scream, primeval and ancient, travelling downthe corridors of centuries. In this darkening hour, in this brief southerntwilight, the woman screams are more urgently. A child wants to beborn. Nothing can stop this need, this desire to exist. Nothing, not theColombo express rushing past, nor the tissue-paper poya moon gliding across the fine tropical sky. The child is coming before its time;its clothes, lovingly embroidered, are piled inside a shoe-box in the woman’shouse. The clothes are small enough to make this possible. Blue; most of these fine lawn clothes are blue as the sky, for the woman is hoping for a son.She has already decided on a name. For months now she has been saying the nameto herself in a whisper.

‘Ravi,’she says, ‘Ravi.’

Shespeaks softly for fear of the evil eye. But now she is in pain, three weeks tooearly, and here in the government hospital. It is late. Too late to inform hermother. Or her sister. Her husband has been sent home, told to return in themorning. This is woman’s business, the nurse tells him.

‘Don’tworry,’ the nurse says. ‘Three weeks is only a little early. And Doctor will behere shortly.’

So thehusband goes, the sounds of his wife’s whimpers resounding uneasily in hisears.

The doctor is drunk. His breath smells as he squintsat the notes the nurse gives him.

‘What?’he asks in high-pitched Singhalese. ‘You called me in just for this Tamilwoman?’

‘Sheisn’t Tamil, sir,’ the nurse tells him. ‘Just the husband.’

‘Exactly!’the doctor says, trying not to belch but without success. ‘That’s my point. Whyshould we help breed more Tamils? As if this country hasn’t enough already!’

Outside,the trees rustle in the slight breeze. Tonight is quiet, no drums, no policesirens, no sudden violence. A perfect night on which to be born.

‘Allright,’ the doctor says, bored. ‘Take me to her.’

Thewoman lies groaning in a pool of sweat. Moonlight falls on the ripeness of herbelly. Catching sight of the doctor, she begs him for something to relieve thepain. She speaks in perfect, old-fashioned Singhalese. The nurse bends andwipes her face and offers her a sip of water.

‘Giveher some quinine,’ the doctor tells the nurse.

Then heexamines the woman. Because he is drunk, because he has driven here in haste,leaving his dinner guests still at the table, he has forgotten his glasses.Roughly he inserts two fingers into her dilating uterus and the woman screams.The doctor tells her sharply to be quiet, and stepping back half loses hisbalance. The nurse glances at him, alarmed.

‘Sir?’she asks tentatively.

The doctordoes not know that this nurse is still a student. She should not be here alone,but the midwife has been called out on an emergency. The student nurse thinks thisis an emergency too, but she doesn’t know what she could say. She isfrightened. The doctor prods the woman, ignoring her screams, then, havingsatisfied himself that all is well, leans over the bed.

‘Do youunderstand English?’ he asks slowly.

It isimportant he does not slur his speech.

‘Yes,’the woman says faintly, in Singhalese. ‘I do.’

‘Good.Then you will understand when I tell you these pains are perfectly normal. Theyare just called Braxton Hicks contractions. The baby will turn soon and thenyou’ll go into labour. It may take a few hours; you just have to be patient.Nothing to worry about. It’s a perfectly normal process. You Tamil women havebeen doing this for centuries!’

And helaughs, washing his hands.

‘Thenurse will take care of you,’ he says, gesturing to the nurse to give the womanthe quinine. ‘This will calm you down. I’ll be back later.’

Thewoman, feeling another contraction coming towards her in a wave, tries to rideit and begins to cry out again. The nurse holds her head and she drinks thequinine, the bitterness hardly registering on her. The doe-eyed nurse wipes herface again and follows the doctor out.

‘Don’tbother calling me. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. She’ll be fine till then,’he says.

‘But, sir,I think it’s a breach,’ the nurse says tentatively.

She isn’tsure, of course, and doesn’t want to look foolish in front of this famousconsultant.

‘Nonsense,’the doctor tells her. ‘Do you think I don’t know a breach when I see one!’

Againhe laughs peering at this pretty girl’s anxious face.

‘What’sa nice girl like you doing here?’ he asks.

He hasa sudden urge to run his hand across her back and further down. He begins toimagine the places his hand might reach.

‘Youshould be in my nursing home,’ he says, a little unsteadily.

Thenurse, her dark eyes made darker by tiredness, smiles a little.

‘Wemust see what we can do,’ promises the doctor, thinking how good it would be tohave such a lovely face at his private clinic.

Andthen he goes out into the car park and towards his Mercedes, parked sleeklybeside the stephanotis bush, back to his lighted house and his dinner guests.

The woman screams. She is pleading. The baby insideher struggles, it turns and turns again. In the darkness she sees her stomachheave and rise up in another wave. It turns into a shape too grotesque to benormal. The woman is petrified, she doesn’t recognise her own body. It hasbecome something separate from her, dragging her along into an unknown place.She screams, not wanting to go.

‘Please,please,’ she cries.

Even asshe watches, her stomach lurches in a landslide movement to one side of thebed. The nurse who has been holding her is terrified.

‘Wait,I’ll get someone,’ she says. ‘Wait, hold on.’

Theyoung, sweet nurse is crying too in great gasping sobs of panic.

But thewoman is past listening. Her cries have changed. They pierce the air, becomingsomething other than despair, sounding inhuman. They are the cries of an unseenchild. The child she once used to be, the child inside her, maybe. In thedarkness outside, jasmine flowers open, bursting their pouches of scent. Largespiders move haltingly amongst the leaves of the creepers that grow against thewhitewashed wall. This is the tropics; insects and reptilian life flourish. Adrum is beating in the distance, its regular beat out of step with the cries ofthe woman in the hospital bed. The spiders and the snakes move relentlesslythrough the long grass, deaf to the fact that she is pleading for her life now.

In the last hour, the darkest moment of the night,just before dawn breaks, a doctor hurries into the room. He is a different,younger doctor. He too is a Singhalese; a family man, a father. Capable ofhiding his feelings under a mask of professionalism. The woman on the bed hasbled so much she is only semi-conscious, and the doctor knows he has not gotmuch time. The baby, the girl child, he knows, is already dead. Later he willfill out the death certificate. Stillbirth, he will write. And although no one will be watching, his hand willhave the faintest tremor; his jaw will tighten imperceptibly with anger. Thatwill be all. Later, in disgust, he will apply to leave his wretched country,unable to stomach what he has always known. For he, more than anyone, knowsthat life is cheap in this Third World paradise. It comes and goes like waveson its many beaches. But all of this will happens later. On this long, solitarynight the doctor will do his job and deliver another dead child. He will seethe baby’s soft downy hair as it comes out on his hands, as he lifts the bodyout of this woman. The woman, semi-conscious now, far beyond tears, has onelast request.

‘Let mesee her. Please, let me see her,’ she begs.

But thedoctor, his face softened by pity, his heart filled with pain, shakes his head.The woman sees the compassion in his face in the growing light of the new day.

‘Whatthe eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over,’ the doctor says.

It ishis only mistake that night.

This extract from the novel Brixton Beach is based on a real event that occurred in 1963 when discrimination was already under way. It is dedicated to the memory of NMC a woman of great courage, whose story, discarded for many years, is told at last.

The images used here are from the series 'Lest We Forget.' by the author of this blog

A Second Short Story For The Western Sponsors Of The Galle Literary Festival. The Birthday Party.

2012-01-20T01:21:00.000-08:00

Afterwards, because he was in ahurry, he forgot to wash his hands. It was his grandmother’s ninetiethbirthday. His father’s mother. The whole tribe would be there and his fatherhad taken the day off.

‘Don’tbe late, huh,’ he told his son.

Corporal Tosa Niyaka nodded. No, hewouldn’t be late.

‘Iknow you fellows have a lot of work clearing up the mess and all that but the Buddhistpriests are coming, you know. I’d like you to be given a blessing.’

‘Anay,Putha,’ his mother said. ‘Please auh!’

Tosa Niyaka nodded into hiscell phone.

‘Yes,yes. Don’t keep telling me. I’ll be on time.’

He was only twenty-seven butbecause of his parent’s influence he had managed to race up the dizzy heightsof the army ladder. What use were parents unless they had influence? Tosa knewmany people were jealous of his position.

He changed out of his uniform andtook a shirt.

‘Notthat one,’ his wife admonished. ‘Here, have this. It’s ironed.’

His wife, seven months pregnant,was at home now, having stopped working at that damn boutique. Tosa had worried that people would think he was unable to support her when in fact the truth was theywere very comfortably off. But Mirabella had gone on and on about herindependence and how she was not some bloody old housewife. Singhala girls wereall like that these days. Even the really pretty ones. Singhala men had gottensoft in the head, thought Tosa Always giving into their wives and mothers andsisters.

‘Isuppose you want me to come too?’ Mirabella asked

‘What? God, Bel,why can’t you behave like a proper girl?’

He felt a little hurt.

‘Icome to all your parent’s parties, don’t I?’

‘Haveyou had a shower?’ Mirabella asked.

‘Yes,’he lied.

‘Ihate it when you come home from work and don’t shower.’

‘Youknow I shower at work,’ he protested and tried to give her a kiss.

But Mirabella ducked. And wrinkledher nose. This seventh month of pregnancy was hard for them both. Neither sleptwell for different reasons. Every time he tried anything on she pushed him awaysaying she was too hot, or too uncomfortable, or too tired. There was always agood excuse and he was an understanding man, but still.

‘Icome to all your parent’s dos,’ he said again.

Mirabella shrugged. In the strainedafternoon light she looked beautiful, her hair long and black, and sleek. Hermouth wide and generous. Her eyes shining with the good health given to her by thebaby she carried. The child’s blessing. Tosa Niyaka stared. For a moment, theangle of the light and the billowing orange curtain played a trick on his eyes.His wife’s searingly pink sari cast a lovely shadow on her face. She wore hardly any makeup.

‘Well?’he asked, although the fight had gone out of him.

She always won, anyway.

‘OhTosa,’ Mirabella said. ‘Don’t! My mother gives fab parties. Your parent’s aretoo formal.’

‘Wellthat’s because of their position,’ he protested. ‘Obviously.’

He didn’t add, although thetemptation was there, to say her family were just socialites, whereas his wereserious people who were involved in much more serious matters. He didn’t wantto because he had chosen her for her frivolity.

‘Anyway,’Mirabella was saying, hardly listening to him, ‘I want to go to one of thetalks at the festival. There’s this writer, huh, from the UK who I really, really admire.’

She flicked through her programme,frowning. He saw she had marked things out, that there was no chance she wouldchange her mind, that this bloody festival would take precedence over his grandmother.

‘Look,’she said, holding out the booklet. ‘See? He’s fantastic.’

Tosa peered suspiciously at thephotograph of the writer. The man was about his age. But he was white. And alittle podgy. As if he drank too much, or sat at a desk all day. While Tosa…well there was no comparison! Sighing he picked up the gift, carefullywrapped by Mirabella herself, and looked around for the car keys.

‘I’mtaking the Merc, okay.’

‘Whatam I supposed to do then? Walk to the festival?’

‘GetCha-cha to take you. You shouldn’t be driving in your condition.’

He hesitated, not wanting to alarmher.

‘Inany case I’d rather you went in the bullet proof car.’

She looked up at him, then, startled.

‘Justas a precaution,’ Tosa said uneasily.

‘But…’

‘It’sall right. I’m only being careful. Given your condition, given my job. Nothingto worry about. Let me do the worrying, okay.’

Privately he thought he ought tohave a word with his father. Fill him in. Just in case today's event leaked out.The foreigners had a certain holier-than-thou attitude. Even though they got upto all sorts, themselves. Better to be safe, he decided. He kissed his wife whowrinkled her nose again.

‘Yousure you had that shower?’

God, she was becoming like hismother, he thought, grinning indulgently, as he manovered the car out of theclose circuited drive and out into the open streets. Feral noises came to himfaintly, moments before he switched on the air conditioning and turned on somepop music. Mirabel was a deepening mystery to him.

‘Whatno wife?’ his father asked, surprised.

‘Nevermind,’ his mother said. ‘Not long now!’

Long enough for her to go to herliterary event, thought Tosa with a sudden streak of resentment. But he saidnothing just gave his grandmother her present and kissed her. His grandmotherpinched his cheeks. It was a well known fact that this stern woman whocastigated everyone, from her own six children down to the servants, had neverthelessa soft spot of her army grandson.

‘So?Wife and baby relaxing?’ she asked.

Tosa nodded. Only with his grandmother didhe totally drop his guard. She understood him and he her. That was how it hadalways been.

‘Andwhat have you been up to in the meantime, naughtyboy?’

Tosa grinned.

‘You look as ifyou need a good wash,’ his grandmother said shrewdly. ‘Why don’t you goupstairs and cool down? Then you can come and have a piece of cake with me.’

Still grinning, meekly, Tosa did ashe was told.

In the shower, which waswonderfully cool, he closed his eyes. The water slid over him like a woman’shand. He sighed. Outside, through the open window he could see the blur oftropical greenery. A crow cawed in hyphenated sound and he could hear the noiseof a coconut being scraped. Suddenly with no warning an image flashed in frontof his closed eyes.

A hand. Hair, long and silky, amouth wide open, the veins of a slender neck standing out.

‘Please!’the girl was whispering. ‘Please. Spare me! Please, please…’

His own mouth clamped down on thewords. His face obliterated the frightened eyes beneath him. He heard laughter.

‘Comeon, men! Give it to her like her father!’

More laughter.

‘Go,go, go, son!’

Tosa Niyaka’s hard-on wasoverpowering him as he entered the woman amidst more laughter.

‘Whoa!’

‘Ay,ay, ay!’

A shadow fell over him as anotherpair of feet, also clad in army boots, straddled the girls head. A pair offlies was undone.

‘Comeon Tosa get on with it.’

Tosa took his mouth away from thegirl and she screamed. The scream was faint and sounded more like a sob.

‘Can’tyou see she’s begging for it, men! Hurry up!’

He did. The girl’s thighs went limp.Her screaming had changed. The noise that came from her throat was soft. Likethe breeze, soft like the sound of the sea. Her eyes, what he could see of them,were open, tearless. It reminded him of the dog his father had shot fearing rabbis.For a moment he hesitated but it was too late. He had only just time to reachhis climax before someone else pushed him aside to take his place. He laughedand wiped his mouth. His hands carried a faint trace of some perfume and itcrossed his mind that it came from the girl’s clothes when he had ripped them. Thegirl’s eyes were still staring at him, glassy as marbles. He heard a sound andturned. One of the soldiers was urinating on the girl’s hair. He had missed hisaim and was laughing. Tosa Niyaka laughed too. Then he went outside for a smokeand some arak. The sun was in his eyes.

In the shower, without warning,Tosa wanted to rape the girl again. Of course it would not be possible. She wasprobably dead by now.

‘Tosa,’his aunt called, knocking on the bathroom door. ‘My God child how long are yougoing to be in there? They’re waiting for you to cut the love cake.’

They were laughing at him when heemerged.

‘He’sa clean baby!’ his mother said, giving him a kiss.

Then his grandmother cut the cake.

Under cover of the conversation hisfather spoke to him.

‘Ihope everything is OK with you fellows, aha?’

‘Fine,’said Tosa

He helped himself to a whisky andthe servant, a Tamil woman, gave him some ice. Tosa stared at her and shelooked away.

‘She’snew, isn’t she?’ he asked his father.

‘Yes,yes.’

‘Tamil?’

‘Ofcourse! It’s part of policy now. Employ the buggers. Give them something to do,stop western criticism, that sort of thing.’

Tosa nodded.

‘Look,Tosa…’ his father said. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from the Chief. Is ittrue?’

‘Hmm,mmm.’

‘Raped?’

‘Hmm..mmm’

‘Youtoo?’

‘Kindof..’

‘Butnot after she was dead, Putha? Before, I don’t mind, but not after?’

‘Noof course not,’ Tosa said truthfully.

His father sighed.

‘Good,good.’

He helped himself to another drink.

‘Anay,you’ve had too much already’ Tosa’s mother said. ‘Think of your heart, Cha!’

‘Yes,yes. Last one!’

Then, just as the telephone rang,Tosa’s father had another thought.

‘Listen,Putha, if you did…you know…after…thenmake sure you disinfect your private parts thoroughly. Okay?’

The telephone call summoned Tosa to the hospital for the premature birth of his daughter. Two monthsearly with serious doubts of her survival. The birthday party had come to an abrupt halt and both families had instantly decidedto give alms to the Buddhist priests and pirith was already being chanted. Mirabel was drugged up and in shock. She blamed herself fortrying to do too much and sitting on a hard chair at the talk given by thefamous foreign writer. The doctor tried to reassure her this wasn’t the case.The placenta had simply given out.

Tosa approached the incubator withcaution. The nurses had a soft look on her face. Not only was Tosa young andhandsome, not only was this a terrible tragedy, but his father was a bloody bigshot. The young nurse in charge, in her nervousness, mispronounced his name.

‘Thereshe is Mr Tosser Niyaka,’ she said pointing to the incubator.

Tosa stared at his daughter throughthe glass. Tiny hands, tiny closed eyes, nose with tubes, feet. He frowned.Something was wrong but what was it? The baby made a slight movement, a barely discernablesound and he saw with a dawning horror that there was something wrong with herlips. They were folded and bent backwards, slit in three places. The lipsweren’t bleeding. They had been just made that way. With a sharp intake ofbreath he covered his face with his hands and through the rising taste of vomithe smelt again the fragrance from earlier on that day.

The final story, dedicated to the Sponsors of the Galle Literary Festival, will be published tomorrow.

The photographs used in this post are taken from an archive of found images of people no longer alive.

A New Short Story For The Western Sponsors Of The Galle Literary Festival. The Blue Scarf. Pt. 2

2012-01-18T23:49:00.000-08:00

The story so far...

It was cool on the beach. And empty.The fishermen had already gone leaving only the marks from their boats in along unbroken line on the sand. We stood, half hidden by a coconut tree andstared out to sea. Stared at the thin blue line that signified eternity. Isensed without hearing that Kirthika was crying but I didn’t turn round. I knewwhat she was thinking.

That on this beach a girl was rapedby the army. That on this beach a man was killed. That blood was spilt in ourname and the names of all the people of this island.

That we loved this place. That nowhereelse on earth would ever be home. Eyes, I thought, look your last.

Further up thecoast a festival was in progress. The rich and the famous from western nationswere in attendance. For a few brief days they too could stand looking at thehorizon line. But they would never see what we saw in that moment. They could notlove this land as passionately as we did. How could the tailorbird’s callsignify anything special to them? For us it is the birdsong of childhood, heraldinga lullaby at twilight, a mother’s hand stroking her son’s head. Part of a younggirl’s dreams. No the tailorbird could not mean all this to the visitors on theisland.

Kirthika was crying in earnest bynow. From the corner of my eye I saw her, head bent, like a young girl. Likethe girl from long ago, whose hand I had so insistantly asked for in marriage.We did not know then the things we know now.

‘We’dbetter go,’ I told her.

The sea moved restlessly andsomewhere in the distance a train rushed past.

‘Come,Kiri,’ I said. ‘Come, come.’

And we went back to the house, ourfootprints in the sand. We were people who had seen too much and must thereforebe killed.

Our son had wanted to drive us tothe airport but I refused in case we were followed. He would have had to makethe return journey back, alone. In my home it is a well known fact that peopleare killed in road ‘accidents’. Best to say our goodbyes in the house. And whenit came to it we were strangely calm.

‘Pleaselie low,’ Kirthika told our son.

She spoke as if she was telling himhis food was in the fridge. As if she would be back after her shift at thehospital. As if this was an ordinary day. Understanding this he joined in thecharade.

‘Yes,’he agreed. ‘Ring when you get there.’

‘Don’tworry if it takes a little while. There might be a problem with the phone.’

He nodded.

‘Andyou mustn’t worry either,’ he told her, ‘I might be out of range. Don’t assumethat anything…’

‘Yes,’his mother and I said in unison.

There followed a pause as first hismother, and then I, embraced him. In all those years of loving him never oncehad we dreamed it would come to this; that we should leave our only child,defenceless and alone, in his own home.

‘We’llget you out as soon as we can,’ I said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

‘Ofcourse, Papa. Of course. You don’t have to say it. I understand.’

We nodded. And then we went.Closing the beloved door for the very last time.

In the car going to the airport Ididn’t tell Kirthika what I had done. She had too many other things to dealwith. It was only later that I told her about the photographs in my suitcase.The ones I had taken when they raped the girl, when they decapitated the men,when they shot the aids worker. The secret photographs that I would smuggle outto the west and send around the world. But going to the airport I said nothing.Sitting in the front with the driver I listened only to the air rushing past.The fingernail moon followed us like a blessing. How bright it seemed. We passeda sign directing traffic to the festival that was taking place in Galle. I hadbeen told that big banks were supporting the event; that money went where moneyexists. That life at the top was marvellous.

We too lived life at the top onceuntil I stooped to listen to other people’s stories, until the pity of what washappening was too much for us. When the phone call came issuing in the firstdeath threat we were unprepared.

‘MaybeI should stop,’ I told Kirthika, belatedly. ‘They are stronger than we are.’

‘Whatuse is the human heart if it cannot feel for others?’ Kirthika replied.

She despised violence. She was awoman who saved lives daily.

‘Themost noble grace the gods can bestow on a man is the gift of empathy,’ shesaid.

In her presence I quaked. She is awonderful woman, my wife.

‘Speak, memory!’

So I spoke. And now we were leaving.Oh hold still my heart.

That day, at the airport we went,numbed, through security. Foreign visitors moved about, talking quietly in English.The overhead address called out an endless list of flights. Dubai, Karachi, Singapore,Bangkok, Adelaide, Melbourne, Calgary. We listened mesmerised feeling small, defenceless.London, Rome, Paris, Frankfurt, the tannoy continued before coming to the namewe dreaded hearing. Stockholm. The smiles of the Sri Lankan girls were for theforeigners, the rich, the famous; those born under a lucky star. Is this howthe Jews had felt? When all in Germany turned their faces against them?

We were asked totake our shoes off, to hold our arms out, to be checked for sharp objects. Theman who stared at our passport had an expressionless face. I still remember.Briefly I wondered what his life was like. Two women passengers went pastswiftly. They were talking of all the wonderful things they hadn’t had time tosee.

‘Nevermind,’ one said. ‘We can always come again.’

We held out our boarding passes. Iremembered how I had been someone important once, a man with a house, in themost beautiful place in the world. Once, people turned to me for help. Now as Istored our luggage in the overhead locker I told myself, I was nobody.

And then, in hardly a moment, withthrust and push of engines, as our plane rose to meet the dawn moon, I held Kirthika’shand tightly in mine. And it was she, my wife, who comforted me.

That had been four years ago. Fouryears of living in this foreign land. Four years of darkness, of intermittentword from our son, of constant worry over him. We grew old, Kirthika and I,belonging nowhere, talking to other refugees, haltingly, sketching our story,listening to theirs, knowing that language was not enough to express all wefelt. Sometimes, in the dead of night, alone in bed, we would speak together inTamil. It is only possible to speak of what is most precious in your mothertongue. A refugee from the Congo told us, a child hears the first words of loveat a woman’s breast. So in those lonely moments together it was in Tamil thatwe spoke of our son. Of his forthcoming marriage.

‘She’sa fine girl, Papa. I love her.’

‘Anddoes she love you too, son?’ his mother had asked.

‘Ohyes! And she sends her love to you, too!’

And then, later, after the weddingwe could not attend, nine months later, another late night phone call.

‘It’sa boy!’

‘Healthy?’

‘Yes,yes.’

‘Andhis mother?’

‘Alldoing fine!’

‘Congratulations!’

He did not want to spoil the momentby telling us that the threats had begun again. That one of his colleagues hadbeen mysteriously cut down on his way to work, that a Russian girl had beenraped in the South and an innocent man working for the Red Cross had been shotdefending her. What he told us instead was how the tailorbird had sung its lullabyto the newborn child.

‘RememberMama,’ he said. ‘You told me how that bird sang when I was born!’

Sitting on the train this morning, staring at the bleaklandscape these are the thoughts I had. Our son is flying out of a dawn,leaving paradise, joining the great migration of our century.

‘Willthey be over France by now?’ Kirthika had asked.

‘No,no. Not yet. The Ukraine, perhaps.’

She nodded and went back to staringout of the window.

‘Imeant to ask him to pack some milk rice,’ she murmured but then she gave me aquick apologetic look.

Old habits die hard, her look said.Kirthika misses many things. Her unspoken longings are so great that I canhardly bear them. She knows, as I do that our son, though safe at last, willnot be happy. That his wife will be thinking of those she has had to leavebehind. A mother, a father, a younger brother who is constantly harassed by thearmy. A younger sister who lives in fear. An older sister who was raped, simply because she was toobeautiful not to be. So no; our son will not be happy. Our gain is his wife’sloss.

At the airport we had gone to the arrivalslounge immediately and I bought a newspaper. When I handed over the change Isaw my hand was shaking. Kirthika saw this too and decided to go off on her ownfor a bit. I sat down. That’s when I saw her trying on the scarf. It is sixforty-five in the morning, now. The eighteenth of January. Four years, threemonths and seventeen days since we last saw our son.

The palms of my hands aresweating. Kirthika is a long time at the coffee shop. The seconds hand on mywatch moves jerkily. Six forty six. Their plane is due at any moment. Where isKirthika, I think, irritated. I glance up at the arrivals board. Nothing there,of course.

‘I’mhere,’ she says, suddenly from behind me.

To my amazement I see she hasbought a scarf after all. It is bright blue, like the sea we left behind. Blue,for the little boy who is arriving.

‘Ishall wear it for him,’ Kirthika says, casually. ‘Not everyday we have agrandchild visiting.’

I nod. I want to hug her, thisbrave, beautiful wife of mine.

‘Itwas reduced,’ she admits. ‘That’s why I bought it.’

Like our circumstances. I get mymobile phone out.

‘It’scharged up?’

‘Yes,yes.’

We wait. People come and are met.There are cries of welcome in Swedish. Lone men in grey suits walk hurriedlyout to waiting taxies, a black man sweeps the floor, another stands holding upa sign. A family comes out, a mother, a father, two children. One of thechildren is crying and the father bends down and speaks to her. He catches myeye and smiles faintly then shrugs.

‘Longflight!’ he says, in Swedish.

I smile back just as the telephonerings.

‘Answerit, answer it,’ Kirthika says.

I press all the wrong buttons butthen we connect and I hear my son’s voice.

‘Papa,’he says, his voice tired. ‘We are here. Our connecting flight is in half anhour.’

‘Areyou okay?’

‘We’reall fine. You know we can’t come out, don’t you?’

‘Weknow, don’t worry. We just wanted to…you know…be in the same building…oh here’syou mother…’

Kirthika is talking. I hear hertell our daughter-in-law she is wearing a new scarf in honour of the littleboy. I hear her laugh, a high, tense laugh. I hear her ask our daughter-in-lawif she is all right, and I hear her blow a kiss into the phone. Then sheswitches it off.

‘Theyhave to hurry,’ she tells me, her eyes shining. ‘Or they’ll miss theirconnecting flight. But they’ll ring when they get to London.’

I nod once more. And in the traingoing back Kirthika tells me,

‘Annay,I heard the little one’s voice, faintly. Just like a small bird!’

A new story for the Western Sponsors will be published tomorrow to celebrate Day 2 of the Galle Literary Festival.
The photographs used in this and the earlier posts are from an archive of found images of people no longer alive.

A New Short Story For The Western Sponsors Of The Galle Literary Festival. The Blue Scarf. Pt.1

2012-01-18T02:48:00.000-08:00

Kirthika is in the shop. I can seeher from where I’m sitting, picking up a scarf and looking at herself in themirror. By the way she holds the thing up I know she isn’t interested in it.She puts the scarf down and picks up another. This one is a dirty sludgy brown,like the melting snow outside. I stare. Kirthika likes bright colours. She is alone magpie in that respect. The brown scarf is a clear indication of her mood.The shop assistant must have sensed her lack of seriousness too because I see herwalk towards Kirthika. I see Kirthika shake her head and imagine she would besmiling slightly. I look down at the newspaper I’m pretending to read and thewords blur. I need an eye test, I think. When I look up again Kirthika has gone.I see her figure hurrying off in the direction of the coffee shop.

We are in the airport. We arrivedat six. It isn’t an easy journey from where we live. First you take a bus tothe town of Yur. Then you walk to the train station. Then you take the expresstrain to the airport. This bit is the most comfortable part of the trip. It is warm,swift and allows you a little time to dream. The train today was empty.Kirthika and I sat staring out of the window at the frozen, flat landscape backlitby a dull bluish light. This is all the light we are permitted at this time ofyear although the snow sometimes gives a boost to it. There wasn’t much snowthis morning, just a little rain melting and distorting the view from the train.Once or twice Kirkitha had run her hand across the window in order to see thename of the station we were passing. Otherwise she didn’t move. We did nottalk. The plane we were due to meet was currently flying somewhere over thePole.

Kirthika is wearing a sari I don’tremember having seen before. I first noticed it on the train and wondered if itwas new. Where did she get the money from to buy it? My wife is avery careful woman where money is concerned. I can’t imagine her going out andbuying clothes at this juncture. Perhaps my memory was failing and I had seenit but just can’t remember. In any case, I thought, staring out at the hardwhite landscape, where would she get a sari from, in this part of the world!

‘Whyare you smiling?’ she asked.

I shook my head not knowing how toexplain the irony of my thoughts.

‘Lillianwill bring saris for you,’ I had said instead.

Lillian is our daughter-in-law. Atthis moment, if my calculations are right she will be staring down at a placeunmarked on any map, sitting next to our son, holding onto the baby who would,hopefully, be asleep. The baby, our only grandson, is one year old. We have notmet him yet. Sitting on the train I saw that Kirthika had the same thought. Isaw it flit across her mind like a flash of blue light. Like lightening, goneas swiftly as it surfaced. Suppressed. Earthed. Kirthika has an expressiveface. She can’t fool me. But all she said was,

‘Ihope not. They have much more important things to bring in their luggage.’

Than a sari for the mother-in-lawthat Lillian has never met, she means.

It is four years since we last sawour son. A lot has happened in that time. For a start he met his future wifeone month after we left. Perhaps it was grief that left him open to thepossibilities of love. Our departure was brutal enough to make this happen.Until then no girl had really interested him. It was all work, until then.

Out train had passed the town of Aavigas I was thinking this, with its the small empty railway station. I caught aglimpse of a man walking a dog, a postman riding his bicycle, a truck. Behindthe shorn trees there was a glint of a frozen river. And then we left the townand the church spires and the houses all huddled together. In summer this is aplace of scenic beauty. Now it goes in a moment, swallowed up by the speed ofthe train.

When we left our home on the islandit had been dawn with a light not dissimilar to this. Only it was hot, andthere was a tropical breeze lifting thankfully off the sea. The moon, like afingernail paring had been faintly in the sky watching us move softly, backwardsand forwards from the house to the car. We had kept only one light on at thetime for fear of alerting the neighbours. Or anyone in the pay of the army thugs.My throat had been dry, my mind alternating with thought of what I should notforget and other, irrelevant things. Even today, four years later I canreproduce that dry, uncrying feeling.

‘Whereare the passports,’ Kirthika had murmured. ‘Have you got them?’

‘Yes,in my bag. In the folder.’ I murmured back.

Our son walked outside with one ofthe suitcases. The soft crunch of his feet on the gravel made me wince. Walking wasdangerous. Talking was dangerous. A cigarette glowing could be the death ofyou. Four forty-five, I remember thinking. And that was when I had looked up atthe sky and seen the fingernail of a moon. The catamarans would be coming infrom the sea, the sarongs of the fishermen slapping against their legs, wetfrom the water; the air smelling sweetly of wind, the sand soft and unmarked,and empty. There were three boats that came in regularly to this little inlet.I knew all of them. I knew the names of the fishermen, I knew their wives.Kirthika, the local doctor, had been present when the babies were born. Two ofthem had been named after her. And now we were leaving.

‘Giveme the other bag,’ Kirthika said. ‘I want to check something.’

‘Mama,you can’t take the goraka,’ our son told her. ‘They won’t let you and you don’twant to create a fuss at the airport.’

‘No,’Kirthika agreed.

And she put the jar on the diningtable. I stared at it. Normally she would not have given in so easily. Normallyshe would not have put anything on the table either, without so much as a matunder it. The dining table was made of soft satin wood and was her pride andjoy. We had bought it many years before on an impulse. Everyone had advised usnot to.

‘Satinwoodmarks easily,’ they said.

‘It’stoo expensive,’ they said.

‘Itis a sacred tree. Used for coffins. It brings its own bad luck with it,’ theyhad said.

‘Theservants will ruin it,’ they said.

‘Don’tdo it!’ Kirthika’s mother said.

But we did. Before I could stop myselfI wondered, was this the reason we were having to leave, now. Nonsense walkedthe night, grinning at me, ghoulishly. I am a rational man, but still, I amcapable of ridiculous moments.

Instead of packing my last bag Iwent into the kitchen and filled a clay jug with cold water. Then I watered theplants in my study. I was aware that my son was watching me, helplessly.

‘Papa,’he said at last. ‘Don’t worry about the plants.’

But I was worried about them. Theywere my plants, still. They belonged here. And because of this, they weresacred. Like the fishermen, like the white bleached sand on the beach, soft asthe hair of a newborn. Like the horizon line between sea and sky and thejasmine flowers that bloomed no matter what violent thing was going on acrossthe veranda. It all belonged to this land. I put my hand out and touched thesmall statue of Lord Buddha that Kirthika had placed beside that of Lord Krishna.I could hear my heart beating. I thought it might be breaking.

Havewe time for a walk?’ Kirthika asked.

She had come up silently behind meand has seen me touch the statue. She refrained from comment. In the past she toldme not to be an unbeliever. In the past I told her that Buddhism was not areligion but a philosophy. And anyway religion was a toy played with by peoplewho were full of fear. These days neither of us have such conversations. Thatsort of discussion was an indulgence. Now both of us compress and fold ourspeech. Leaving many things unsaid. Now less is irrevocably more.

‘No,’I said, finally.

‘Please,’Kirthika asked. “I want one last walk.’

In all the years of our marriage Ihave never refused her anything.

‘Allright,’ I said.

‘Areyou crazy?’ our son asked, his eyes wide.

I had heard my heart beating againand again had wondered if it would break. But the human heart is stronger thanthat, I think now, remembering.

‘Someonewill see you,’ our son said. ‘Then all this will have been for nothing.’

His face was on the edge of grief.

‘Allright then,’ his mother agreed but I had made up my mind.

It was our last chance. Our onlymoment. We would have to live off it forever.

‘Let’sgo,’ I said, adding, for our son’s benefit, ‘ we’ll go out through the back. Noone will see us.’

I didn’t wait for his reply buttook Kirthika’s hand and we left through the back door.

Part 2. tomorrow....

Unimpressive. A Fairy Story For The Galle Literary Festival By Popular Demand.

2012-01-13T02:11:00.000-08:00

The festival was in full swing. Allthe great writers from around the world were present, topping up their tan bythe pool. Sorry I mean all the great whitewriters. The UK-returned natives were keen to stay out of the sun. Listen, youmust understand, on this island paradise, the darker you were the harder it wasto find a spouse and the more likely you were to be killed. It’s true. In Paradisethe lighter shades of brown were what the natives loved. Why? Don’t ask me, perhapsit’s leftover from a slave mentality. So no, there weren’t any damnfool local fellowsby the pool, turning black.

S.S. Ranasingha was there, all flowing white robe and pale…ish brown skin. He wasan island-born artist, for those of you who’ve never read the earlier storyabout him, and he had made some beautiful paintings of his island home floatingin its own azure cesspit of violence. The paintings were in soft watercoloursand they spoke of wistful things. I’ve no idea what these things might be, I’mjust telling you what I’ve heard. SS was here with his wife Sue from Basingstokeand his daughter, Sallybaby. Sallybaby was no longer a baby of course but in paradiseonce a baby always a baby.

Everyone fromthe extended family came to greet them at the swanking airport.

‘Smile,for God’s sake,’ Sue told her daughter.

Sallybaby scowled. She was boiling hot.And angry. And seventeen. It had been a long flight. Everyone from school wasat Toby’s eighteenth birthday party and where was she?

‘Hello,Putha,’ someone said (perhaps it was an aunt).

Sallybaby’s scowl deepened. Anymoment now her father’s accent would begin to change, go back to being more island-ish.Any moment now he would start waggling his head and talking on subjects aboutwhich he knew nothing. Telling it like it wasn’t, impressing the authorities,closing his eyes against reality as he spoke of art, and music and politics(British/European). Boring,thought Sallybaby, sulkily. She wondered if there were any decent boys she mightshag, who perhaps liked the kind of music she did. Unknown to her father Sallybabywas keen on people like Kelis and Queen Ifrica. In fact, and this was the trickypart, Sallybaby had a boyfriend who was black! He played in a band at theBrixton Jamm and wore dreadlocks.

‘Yously minx,’ Sue said when she accidently found out while checking her daughter’sfacebook page. ‘Your father will be livid!’

To Sallybaby’s surprise Sue hadlaughed.

‘Nowwhat will your island grandmother do about arranging an Introduction?’

‘Whatkind of Introduction?’ Sallybaby asked, suspiciously.

‘Yourgrandmother wants to find you a husband!’ Sue admitted, eyeing her daughter,waiting for the explosion.

It came soon enough; the explosion,I mean. Worse than a land mine going off in the North of paradise, making morenoise than the army soldiers in the South as they raped the young girls fromthe Other Side.

‘Theycan forget it!’ Sallybaby shouted. ‘I’m not marrying any island bloke. They’reall stupid.’

Honestly, what a generalisation! Don’tthey give these kids an education in the UK? Sue Ranasinghasighed. She had married her swarthy prince against her father’s wishes. Thisheadstrong daughter of theirs was the result. Both sides blamed the other in a ‘situationnormal’ kind of way.

‘She’s a damnthrowback with British genes,’ SS’s father shouted in private, forgetting abouthis own behaviour with the servant woman.

‘Whatd’you expect?’ Sue’s Dad had sniffed. ‘I’ve always thought SS was a bloodyfunny name.’

Even after twenty years Sue’s Dadwas still moaning about his son-in-law’s name. Christ, how long does it take toforget a war? Couldn’t he let bygones be bygones?

‘Let’sjust have a nice time,’ Sue told her babygirl. ‘It’s only for a fortnight andyour Dad is exhibiting his art at the Festival.’

In the elder Ranasingha’s house, inthe place with the number seven in the address, the servant woman was in shock.Everything had been going so well. The sex she’d been having with her employer hadgiven her a hold over him. But now, with the return of his UK family, she knewhe would stop visiting her quarters. It wouldn’t do.

The woman askedfor a day off. She wanted to attend the next devil-dancing session. To getadvice on how to get rid of undesirables. The devil-dancing session was aroundthe time of the full moon; the next day, in fact.

‘Alleluia!’cried the servant woman, forgetting she wasn’t a Christian.

You don’t know about these events,do you? Well stick to the beach, have fun, eat the curries, and go home. Don’tstart messing with paradise charms. These are the names given to the evil spells locals use on one another.Charming, innit? Haven’t you seen the roadside offerings? Do you think they’reput there as decoration? Out of a love of flowers? No stupid, these are offeringsfor the devil! You sun worshipers live on another planet.

Anyway theservant woman went off to cast her spell. Having forgotten she was Buddhist shefelt capable of a little destruction. Jealousy was in the air, shining throughthe sunlight, Discrimination was the batsman and Ignorance the bowler. All wasas usual then, here in paradise, with the war over and everything fine, fine,fine.

In the Festival tent Festivaldiscussions rose in the hot air. Famine in Africa, Torture in South America, Terroristsin Afghanistan, Killer Whales in the Sea; these were the subjects that weredebated. The Festival sponsors strutted about and got lots of exposure. Theorganisers played at blind-man’s bluff. And the tan-toppers drank a lot. I’mtelling you, all was as it should be.

The foreignvisitors liked the serious nature of the programme. England was in a mess;there were all sorts of problems with the NHS. Pensions were being cut, Londonhad riot mobs and the police were having a dreadful time of it. So of coursethe foreigners were glad to take a break here on this perfect island. Wouldn’tyou be?

One or two people were a bitworried about security.

‘Didyou hear a Russian girl was raped?’

‘No,no,’ SS told them, waggling his head. ‘That didn’t really happen! It was a play put on for the purpose of the Festival.It wasn’t the real thing!’

‘Whatabout that Red Cross guy who was killed?’

‘Thatwas in the play, too. Remember your Hamlet?The play’s the thing and all that…’

‘Ohokay,’ said the foreigners and off they went for a swim thinking, gosh, thesepeople are incredibly friendly. They just smile and smile…. wasn’t theresomething like that in Hamlet, too?

In the tent theaudience admired SS’s paintings. The one with the strutting peacock could havebeen sold several times over and the pastoral scenes of Britain were simply stunning.People started milling around him asking questions.

‘Howlong did it take you to paint it?’ was the usual one.

‘Couldyou look at one of my paintings, Sir?’ was another.

‘Youhave such a fine understanding of colour. Where did you learn it?’

An old man came up. He was wearinga sarong.

‘Isay, they say the British are the best water colourists in the world but you’veproved them wrong, hah!’

SS smiled. He went on smiling for twofull minutes. Until a woman approached him. She was a funny colour, neitherdark nor white with very long hair and a nasty sort of confidence.

‘Haveyou heard of Angelina Petipa?’ the woman asked.

‘No,’lied SS.

‘Shelives in the UK. And she’s a painter as well.’

‘Neverheard of her,’ SS said, coldly.

‘She’sa friend of mine,’ the woman told him, bold as brass.

Of course SS knew of her. He wasn’tdumb. Angelina Petipa was a mixed race, half Tamil, half Singhalese bitch whobanged on about ridiculous subjects like Injustice and Truth, and The War.According to big-mouth Ms Petipa there had been a few civilians taken away in whitevans at some point. Still were according to her. Well, what d’you expect aftera war?

‘You should lookher up,’ the brassy woman continued. ‘She’s just had an exhibition at theSerpentine. It’s about the situationhere.’

Situation, thought SS nastily. Thereis no situation in paradise. His head was beginning to ache.

‘The exhibition was called Stop TheHuman Abuse in Paradise,’ the woman persisted.

‘Ihave no idea what you’re talking about,’ SS muttered.

And off he went in search of Sue.

‘Thesefestivals always attract some undesirables,’ he said later that night.

‘I just want to go home,’ whinedSallybaby who was having diarrhoea from all the spicy food.

‘Oh shut up both of you,’ snapped Suewho was being bitten to death by mozzies and wanted to go home too.

The holiday was nearly over.

Meanwhile deep in a wood near Dondra,not far from where they used to hang men in the 1930s, the servant woman wasbusy. Empires had come and gone like passing ships with holes in them, but theservant woman and others like her had been doing this sort of thing for athousand years. What was she doing? Why, making a crime-against-humanity charm.From the bones of two lizards and a chicken’s beak.

Stephen Lawrence. Forever young.

2012-01-04T13:36:00.000-08:00

For his mother and father, and all those close to him, Stephen Lawrence will remain forever young. Time will not change that nor custom take from him his youthfulness. Listening to Doreen Lawrence's quiet speech on the steps of the Old Bailey, yesterday, and then again today, one knows she will live for ever with her son in her sight, loving him and the things he once loved. Just as she always has, from the moment he was born.
Yesterday, when she quietly stated that, 'I miss him with a passion' unimaginable emotions lay glistening beneath the fabric of those simple words.

Six words to describe how the knife smote, not just Stephen, but his entire family.
Six words to describe the long dark years of a sentence they would themselves endure in their fight for justice.
Six words to describe the pain the family would bear for an event not of their making. What can anyone say that hasn't already been said, except to wish them all the peace they surely deserves?

Doreen wishes her son be remembered for the bright young teenager he was, not merely a black youth killed in racial hatred. She wishes for him to be stored in the world's memory as just a boy. For it was as a boy he had lived, carefree, young, laughing, joking with his family, as he waited for his future to begin.
And begin it did but not in the way any of them could foresee.

And, when all is said and done, and Stephen's murderers are returned to their cells, and the inches of comments have been written, and read, and begin to fade from our thoughts, Doreen Lawrence's latest wish will, in the strangest of ways, be granted.
For Stephen her son will remain forever young.
That much is certain.
While Dobson and Norris grow old in their prison cells, while their skin coarsens and sags and their swagger loses certainty, the memory of Stephen Lawrence will continue to shine down through the years. He will not be forgotten. Those who are loved are not, and so, in some, undefinable way one hopes, this will give the Lawrence family comfort.

But what of the criminals, those men who have stared out at us, on and off, for nigh on eighteen years? What of them? Were they born bad? Did their parents make them so? Is the society they lived in to blame? Someone must take that blame. Where was their remorse, their pity? Do any of them know how to love? While that ragbag of a mother tried to give her soon-to-be-found-guilty son an alibi, saying he was at home with her, was it because of a belated sense of loyalty? Maybe even love, perhaps? If this is so, if it was love that drove her to hinder the law, then can we sympathise with her?
If she had, in years gone by, ever cradled her son when he was a child, sung him to sleep, nursed him when ill, really, really loved him, then she will understand what Doreen Lawrence has and continues to feel. How does one woman feel witnessing the grief of another?

If she feels anything then the least she can do is visit her criminal child. Not once, not twice but again and again, week after week, year after year until she can no longer walk, until her last breath is drawn. To try to do her duty and make her aging son understand what he so carelessly took. It requires no great wealth to do this, no middle class social standing, no education, just a simply desire to do what is right as a mother. And however belatedly, she should try to talk to him of that most noble of human characteristics, the gift of empathy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16348304

Tulips In December

2011-12-22T13:33:00.000-08:00

A Few Christmas Tulips In Anticipation Of Spring.

A Happy Christmas To One & All.

And A Peaceful New Year.

STOP PRESS!

The Brilliant Boris Johnson has just called on all Londoners to

"head down to Gaby's as they are in need of your custom in these dark times".

HURRAH FOR BORIS THE BRILL!

Saving Gaby's. Day 4. The Developers. My Part In Their Downfall...

2011-12-05T12:59:00.000-08:00

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious by eh...a quick blog update...

SAVE GABY’S DELI CAMPAIGN presents

‘CABARET FALAFEL’ at GABY’S DELI

Henry Goodman and Alistair Beaton join other stars including Simon Callow and Kate Fahy in Cabaret Falafel at Gaby’s Deli, Charing Cross Road. The events are organised by the campaign to save Gaby’s Deli from eviction by the Marquess of Salisbury.

The events are free, will last between 10 and 30 minutes and take place in the Deli. Guests are encouraged to tuck into salt beef or falafel while they enjoy the entertainment.

Thursday 8^th December at 5.45pm

Gaby’s Deli, 30 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0DE

The first event in the series sees HENRY GOODMAN (The Producers, Fiddler on the Roof, Duet for One, Yes Prime Minister) performing a specially written song by ALISTAIR BEATON, regarded as Britain’s leading political satirist (Not the Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image, Feelgood, A Very Social Secretary).

Friday 16^thDecember at 5.45pm

Juggling maestro and comedian MAT RICARDO performs his world famous act.

January 2012 - dates to be announced soon

SIMON CALLOW performs a reading celebrating Gaby’s.

KATE FAHY leads the cast of ANTARCTICA, a specially commissioned short play by novelist ROMA TEARNE. Roma’s novel Mosquito was nominated for the Costa Book Award.

Quotes

Simon Callow “Gaby's is everything that a West End snackeria should be - tasty, individual, fast, fun. I have been eating there since it opened. Easy, friendly, lively, sometimes a bit crazy - a great West End institution. Gaby's must not go.”

Mike Leigh “Gaby's is one of the great institutions of the West End. It is both unique and special, providing as it does a standard of food and a quality of service that has no equal. To allow it to be destroyed would be deeply irresponsible.”

Notes to editors

Gaby’s Deli is a London institution and has served Salt Beef and Falafel to actors and theatre-goers, Londoners and visitors since it Gaby Elyahou founded it in 1965. The Landlord, Gascoyne Holdings, owned by the Marquess of Salisbury of Hatfield House, has got planning permission for the site to be redeveloped and taken over by a restaurant chain. They plan to evict Gaby on May 1^st 2012.

The campaign has 4,650 signatures on a petition, 2773 facebook supporters and a is supported by Ken Livingston, Westminster MP Mark Field, Denis McShane MP, Mike Leigh, Mark Thomas, Alex James, Vanessa Redgrave and Miriam Margolyes, Charlie Chaplin and Yehudi Menuhin were frequent visitors.

http://www.facebook.com/save.gabys.deli

http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/save-gaby-s-deli-charing-cross-road-london.html

Twitter: @savegabys

Press enquiries: Please contact Eleanor Lloyd

eleanor@elproductions.co.uk 07970 012525

So take your seats everyone, please. Form a crowd, thank you.

And yes I finished the play! My first, Gaby's first... it's called ANTARCTICA. My father, who introduced me to Gaby's all those years ago, when I was young and seventeen, would be proud of me!
Well come along, then, all you faithful. Support Gaby, be part of the First Ever Developer Downfall Party. Don't let them get away with their greedy, money grabbing ways. Don't let them ruin the Capital city.

And by the way... does anyone know where the lovely Boris is? He's gone awfully silent... isn't this just the sort of campaign the Mayor of London ought to support? No? Oh ra-ra, Boris, on your bike. Not all things in heaven and earth are about money, you know...

Where are you when we need you?

Saving Gaby's. Day 3. The Play's The Thing!

2011-11-09T01:30:00.000-08:00

Well I've finished it. The play, I mean.
After a fashion, that is.
It's still in a raw state...
Very raw.
In fact raw is a good word.
Raw, like the huge carrot being offered to the City Council by the Developers...
Or raw like a piece of silk
Used for making purses. The kind impossible to turn our Developer's mind into.

So I've done my bit. Over to you, the actors. Make it come alive, please, and show our Developer friends, [how much do you think they have in their current account? Go on, hazard a guess?] that there are more things in heaven and earth... that matter.
Other things, things that will live longer than any of them. Oh, and while you're at it, please note, I'm using square brackets...just like a proper playwright.

On another note
you can bank on it that writing even a short play is as hard a business as writing a novel. Added to which the formatting was a nightmare [why did no one tell me? I didn't ask, I suppose.] I wonder how my editor will feel about me using square brackets in future?
Also, writing dialogue focuses the mind on the fact that less is, nearly always, more.
Dear Developers, Sweet Westminster City Council, if you ever read
this blog,
you might like to ponder on the meaning of less versus more. Hmm...difficult concept, I know.

[Pause. I notice Pinter uses lots of these.]

ACT 1. SCENE 2: [Pause]

Anyway, Dear Developers and lovely City Councillors, do come along,
for a laugh,
on the night,
to watch our play. Oh go on! It's free, rather pleasingly. And in any case,
I'm dying to see
just what A-Lack-Of-Imagination looks like.

Saving Gaby's. Day 2. Or How To Mount A Protest That Isn't A Fire Hazard.

2011-11-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

We were in the middle of a meeting having decided to continue with our protest against the greedy developers of central London. It was time to stand up for the memories that still exist in this beautiful city. It was time to show this insensitive, unimaginative, short sighted tribe that there are some things more important than money. This was a protest that didn't need tents, so no one could say we were causing a fire risk.
This was a protest with a difference.
It was one that was straight from the heart.
Four out of six of us were present and Gaby insisted on feeding us. Two of us were on permanent diets but Gaby wasn't taking any notice.
'Have some falafels,' he said and then brought out a dazzling array of fresh, mouth-watering dishes.
Tabouleh with parsley.
Hummus with a delicious smear of olive oil.
Chopped gherkins with red peppers and tahini.
The famous falafels, of course.
Warm pitta, naturally.
We sighed.
And tucked in.
'You see,' he said, smiling, happy to see us eat. 'I said you would be hungry!'

Well this was what we were trying to save after all....

It made me angry to see this gentle man being pushed out of his beloved deli in this way. But the list of people signing the petition was growing longer by the day. Today's batch contained more than 400 names. Even though developers aren't interested in people, the public cares.

'Good, good,' said our Chair. 'Now lets get on with the meeting, please.'
'Hmmugh,' I said, my mouth full of hummus

In order to bring this distressing business of Gaby's closure to everyones attention we had decided to perform a series of plays actually taking place in the deli itself. This was, after all an eatery in the heart of theatre land. Streams of actors, many now famous, had passed through Gaby's doors over the last 45 years.

Each of our plays would be about twenty minutes long and the first one would have to be written by November 15th. That was the Plan. I should know, I had proposed it.
'OK?' asked the Chair, looking at me, expectantly.
I gulped.
'Erh...yes. Absolutely...Sure.'

I'd never written a play before, of course, but where was the problem? Two weeks? Oh plenty of time.

'How much of it have you written, already?' asked the Producer, briskly, writing furiously in her notebook.

I decided to stick to the truth.

'Erh...not much actually. I've...I've got the title,' I said enunciating the last word in a High Resolution Tone, or HRT as they call it at the local mental hospital.

'Good!' she said encouragingly, continuing to scribble, not looking at me. 'I'll try and get you some really famous names. How many actors do you need?'

I swallowed. I didn't much like the way she emphasised the words 'really famous'.
But I kept my thoughts to myself.
'Three,' I said, hazarding a guess. 'A mother and a daughter. And a grandfather. Oh, and I might need a sound system.'
Stop it! I told myself. Stop digging an even bigger hole.
'Why aren't you eating?' Gaby asked, coming over. 'Don't you like the food, today?'

'My daughter read your book, by the way,' he added. 'She loved it.'
Fat lot of good that's going to do me, with this play, I thought, darkly.
'Right then,' said the Chair. 'I'll circulate the minutes of the meeting to you all and copy in those who are absent.'
'Great,' said the Producer. 'I must go but I'll start thinking of the actors and the sound system. So see you all on the 15th,' she beamed. 'Don't worry Gaby, we're all behind you.'
'With the play.'
'Of course, course...the play's the thing, wherein...'

Oh shut-up, I told myself, changing trains at Piccadilly and heading towards Paddington.
Just get on with it. Of course you'll do it in time.
Stop fussing, you've got a brilliant idea haven't you? So what's the problem?
Nothing, nothing.
Nothing will come of nothing.
Shut-up.
'Pardon?' asked the woman standing next to me as we swayed our way from Edgware Road to Paddington.
Nothing, absolutely nothing …
Watch this space … or not …

Help!

Roma Tearne is away for the next few days. Writing her play.

http://www.kenlivingstone.com/ken-save-the-west-ends-hidden-gems

Saving Gaby's.

2011-10-13T03:42:00.000-07:00

This is a story of corporate greed and local council stupidity. It is an example of what is happening all over Britain and will soon be on the increase, if predictions of economic gloom are to be believed. It is a story that therefore needs to be aired because of this. And because, if we're not careful, economic gloom and greed will destroy every glimmer of available light for most of us, reducing morale even further.
The story begins in London's Leicester Square. On the Charing Cross Road, near the Wyndham Theatre, close by Cecil Court. And the venue is a small, modest salt beef bar and deli run by a man called Gaby. It has been in this little corner of London since 1965.
I know of this fact, not only because of the date over the door but because I went there soon after it opened. Aged 11. With my father, now dead. I have been going there ever since.

We had arrived in England the year before as immigrants. We came by boat from Sri Lanka, chased by the monsoon winds on a journey that took twenty one days. And we ended up in a place called Brixton. We had never heard of the name before. And we did not know about the West End, either.

It is food from home that the immigrant misses most of all.
Although my mother had brought spices with her on our journey she was rationing them in some vain hope, I suppose, that it would last her lifetime! This was the 1960s, remember. Ethnic food was just beginning. And mostly they were catering for the taste buds of the English, not the immigrant.

It was my father who found Gaby's, in this mysterious place called the West End.
'The bar with the smells of the Mediterranean,' was how he described it.
Elizabeth David once famously said that 'peace and harmony began where garlic and herbs are grown and used.'
In Gaby's, along with the garlic and fresh pungent herbs, there were salads of a spectacular nature, humus to die for, vegetable fritters (my all-time favourite) and of course that famous salt-beef sandwich with gherkins, eaten swiftly during the office lunch hour. Before long Gaby's was the haunt of the hungry office worker, the tourist, the shopper.

I have never stopped going to Gaby's. It was the first place I was allowed to visit alone without parental supervision, jumping on the number 159 bus and walking across Trafalgar Square to buy myself a vegetable fritter in pitta.
I went there to celebrate passing my A levels. I truanted school and went there with my first boyfriend, only to be caught by my father who had been tailing me to see what I was up to.
Then, after I married and moved out of London, I would go to Gaby's every time I visited my parents. Soon I would be visiting the little deli on the corner of Charing Cross Road with a baby buggy and a toddler in tow. (My children, grown up and living in London now, introduce their friends to Gaby's.) When my father died it was to Gaby's that I went. To sit with my shock and drink mint tea and think of the sum of his life.
Years later I would sit in Gaby's and write the first draft of my novel Mosquito.

But Gaby's is due for closure. Westminster City Council in its wisdom are refusing to allow him to stay on after next September. What they want, and what the landlord, Lord Salisbury wants, is to pull down the shop and replace it with an anonymous chain. Another Strada or a Starbucks. Another tasteless, colourless, pointless place, put on a 'valuable site'. By valuable read £££.
If this goes ahead, and with this destruction, another small palimpsests of memory existing within the city of London will be lost forever.
So that the rich planners may rub their hands all the way to the bank.

What has surprised Gaby is how many of his customers are outraged by this possible closure. There have been articles in the Evening Standard, in Time Out and a Facebook page.
Such is the passion for the place. Such is the desire of the ordinary Londoners to save its memories and theirs, too. How dare this unimaginative county council of Westminster destroy such a rich heritage belonging to the people of London? Would this be done in Paris? In Rome?

Over the years countless stars from London's theatre land, have dined there.
Ken Livingstone himself has eaten there regularly before he became famous.

Last night, as we do regularly, my family and I gathered at Gaby's for dinner. It was my husband's birthday.

'Well in that case,' said Gaby smiling, forgetting his worries for the moment, 'the drinks are on me!'

Afterwards, before he went, leaving his staff in charge, to walk home through the park he shook hands with us all and wished my husband a Happy Birthday.

In the heart of Leicester Square, where else is there another such establishment?

If you haven't been to Gaby's and you live in London or are in the Leicester Square area, then please visit him. He would love to see you!

Saving Gaby's

Spread the word!

Cover Story! (In Homage To Steve Jobs)

2011-10-06T05:45:00.000-07:00

Chapter 1. Coming Out From Under.

An interesting thing is happening. People are asking me about my book covers. It started about a year ago at a Literary Festival I went to.
'Do you design your own?' someone asked.
'No,' I told them in a slightly tight-lipped manner.
'Really? But I read somewhere that you're an artist.'
'Listen,' I said, leaning forward so the microphone made a hissing noise, a bit like a snake about to strike. 'They tell me I don't know what sells. The covers are not my business.'
I paused. 'Apparently.'

This was a conversation that was to run again and again. Finally someone popped the question for which I had been waiting. The question that needed asking. The question which, like a marriage proposal, had to be asked first before an answer was required. It came at a lick.
'D'you like your covers?'
'No!' I shouted. 'No! No! No!'
The microphone whined nastily and died. I felt as though I had killed something. A dragon, perhaps? One that was antiquated, and needed slaying?
'I loathe my covers,' I said. 'I loathe them with a passion that is almost as much as my passion for writing. Why,' I continued, pausing only for breath before beginning to bellow again, 'do these people think they can design a cover in three seconds for a book that took at least TWO YEARS to write?'
In the stunned silence that followed a member of the audience stood up and ripped off the cover of the book she had brought for me to sign.
'Thank you!' I told her, speaking with feeling, but without the microphone, and above the applause.

That incident really happened, and more and more I have found myself talking to audiences about the cover stories to which I have been subjected. Why does the British book-buying market have such appalling covers thrown at them?
As an author I have been told that my covers sell books. Really, why am I complaining? My answer is simple. Think how many more books would sell if the cover was tasteful.
The hard back edition of my second novel had the pink palace in Jaipur, India on it. It was a novel about Sri Lanka. When I questioned the wisdom of this I was told,
'Oh no one will notice!' thereby confirming my belief that not only was I being treated like an idiot but so were my readers.
But this sorry state of affairs is not confined to me and my books, alone. Here are a few more ridiculous, old-fashioned cover ideas in circulation, currently.

1. If the author has a foreign sounding name or hails from The East then the cover of his or her book must have gold on it. A couple of mangos would be good too and maybe even a woman with a sari around her HEAD! (because we women from the east always cover our heads, don't you know?)
2. Books for women should have some pink on the cover. Or at least something pinkish. (did our mothers fight for the vote for this sort of stuff?)
3. Books that are meant for men can have a more 'butch'-like font, and splashes of red/black or, (wait for it), unpleasant mustard-gas yellow.
I could go on but before I come out in a heat rash I would like to mention my hero Steve Jobs, that incredible designer, lost now, to the world. What made him his millions was, amongst other things, his fantastic design sense. His attention to detail, his care over the kind of fonts he used on his Apple Macs, his packaging...oh I could go on. In short, his presentation of the object, as much as everything else.

What we need in this ailing market is a similar shake up of all things visual. We, the real book buyers should not be fed those tired old categories, those tasteless, hastily cobbled together bits of card that look as though they have come from the pound shop. We the writers should not be pigeon-holed.
Especially now, with badly designed kindles fighting with the-book-as-an-object, what we need to make us want to buy and to own books are their covers. Hurrah! Yes! So come on, publishers, give us things of beauty, give us something we'd love to touch, to keep on our shelves forever. Till we're old and sightless! It doesn't have to cost more. All it needs is a little talent and some thoughtfulness. It's what I bang on about to my students all the time.

I'm now with a new publisher. They seem sensitive and interested in my latest book and I'm crossing my fingers and holding my breath...

The Dark Side Of The World

2011-09-22T00:49:00.000-07:00

I am writing this in the early hours of the morning.

Last night, just after 11pm in Georgia, an innocent man was killed. He was black, of course. Born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Until the last moment (he was made to wait 20 years, brought close to execution 4 times and yesterday left a whole day before the deed was done) he maintained his innocence. For him at least, 20 years of torture is over. The injection was administered quickly. In the words of the reporter, the executioners were 'professionals'.

And, along with other ghoulish details, we were told that the MacPhail family smiled when it was finished. They think they will now have peace.

How misguided is the advice they have been given. Peace does not come through revenge. Lest we forget, the MacPhail family are victims. They lost a beloved son, a brother, a husband. They lost someone they loved and still love, even in death, even after all these years.
How will this wound be staunched now that revenge is their's?
Perhaps it will come as a surprise to them, as the years roll by and their loss gets greater in the way these things do, that peace becomes even more elusive? No matter. Those who counselled and steered the MacPhail family towards the argument of the death penalty do not have their best interest at heart. For when all the vote chasing and the simplistic rhetoric is over, loss is only healed by love. The murder of an innocent man cannot be equated by the murder of another innocent. All that will be achieved is the sullying of Mark MacPhail's memory, a man who was merely helping a homeless man at the time of his death.

But now it is all over no one will be following his family through the long dark journey that will be the rest of their life. No one will offer them another blueprint for living with the loss that remains their loss only. Because frankly, no one will care about them much, now.
Not the Savannah District Atorney, Larry Chisolm.
Not the local judge Penny Haas Freesemann.
Not Georgia's Governor Nathan Deal, nor anyone who might have stopped this medieval execution.
The MacPhail family, vulnerable statistics and victims themselves, although they do not know it yet, have been betrayed twice by the State of Georgia.

And as for this little tribe, the Georgia State Board, what of them? Yesterday Amnesty International said,
'Should Troy Davis be executed, Georgia may well have executed an innocent man and in so doing discredited the justice system.'

Well, Georgia has achieved its objective and now will withdraw back into its alien way of life. No vigils will be held across the world for any of them. But America what of you? Once known for your charm and your friendliness; once thought of as world liberators, as the first to give us a glimpse of ourselves suspended in space.
What is it like now, for you, living on the dark side of the world?

Sons of the Motherland

'How far that little candle throws his beams!'
(Photograph taken outside the American Embassy in London on the night of Troy Davis's death.)

Happy Feet. Summer 2011's visual project

2011-09-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

As promised here is a small selection, although the summer does seems a long time ago and I have moved on to another project...more of which to follow. But thanks for your witty contributions and I'm sorry, due to my slim grasp of new media, I couldn't access the others.

Goldengrove Unleaving?

2011-09-04T00:21:00.000-07:00

These are the last days of August. The sun, having burned its way across the hillside, is suddenly gentler in early morning and there is mist for the first time in the valley below.

For weeks we have struggled with searing temperatures. Keeping cool has been our main preoccupation and the shuttered bedrooms with their terrazzo marble floors have been wonderfully welcoming at siesta time. Small slivers of light fall on the darkened walls and in the stillness the noise of cicadas become magnified. What can be lovelier than falling asleep to such a sound? Sleep itself is blissful, light, trouble free.

Tonight there is to be a festa in the square and each family has been asked to bring a dish of food. I have been asked to bring a dolce.
'Apple pie,' someone shouts. 'English apple pie!'
Everyone laughs.

In late afternoon we decide to walk down to the river but even at four o' clock the heat remains
impossible and climbing the hill is a painful business. Like walking in the path of a ferocious fan heater. The sky is defiant and cloudless.

'There will be no rain,' is written across it.

At the top of the hill we begin a sideways descent towards the river. The road here is what they call 'strada bianca' rough, and full of stones. On either side are small uncut meadows retaining the light like a muslin strainer.

The olive trees shimmer and one small dusty viper ripples past us, oblivious to or uninterested in our presence. The flat sound of a goat bell out of sight is followed almost instantly by a glint of water far down below.
We enter the copice wood, filled now with the first autumn crocuses, pale and white in the shadows, vulgarly magenta in the sun. It is almost impossible to follow the path without treading on them.

And then, with a last scramble we are down by the water's edge. And the whole place is ours. There are five of us so we spread out, each in search of different things, different rocks, different patches of light and shade. After the fan heater experience of a moment ago the water, when we plunge our feet into it, is breathtakingly cold … for a moment, at least. And then we are in it, even those of us afraid of possible water snakes (of which, of course, there are none!) And the heat and the dust and the struggle of keeping cool all through these weeks are washed away in the bluish light falling on the tumble and rub of wet river stones.

Later on we sit on huge boulders, giant human lizards, drying out in the sun, enjoying it as we have not dared all day. Lemon-green light filters down through holm oak, water boatmen, designed surely by Leonardo da Vinci's hand cross a small pool.

Butterflies, almost exactly the colour of the rocks, stream endlessly through the air. I sit and stare, dazzled. Where has the summer gone? I was one sort of person when we arrived and now I am another. If we had appreciated it more might it have lasted a little longer?

There is a small electronic click as a photograph is taken.
'It isn't over yet,' someone shouts above the roar of water.
'Not yet, not yet,' replies the echo.

Ah! But the signs of autumn are already in the air. Silver coins of leaves flutter down in airy flurry and in any case today there are no longer any children here. On the way down we passed several small lorries delivering wood for the autumn fires ahead.

No, the summer is over, in all but name. We've been told it has been raining and raining in England. Soon the rains will come here, too, and the river will swell and rush dangerously on its journey to the sea. Then the wood itself will become moist and dank, providing that perfect environment for the peculiar scented local mushroom. Pasta al fungi will be served in all the restaurants. And the autumn crocuses will die away leaving only berries.
In this part of the world, time passes visibly. Is this part of the pleasure of living in the countryside? What joy there is in watching the small changes taking place in nature, knowing it will be just as it was, last year, and as it will be, next.
Once, thousands of years before, in the ice age of human imagination, our river would have cut this valley. Our river! Ours for a few short hours of idleness....

I notice clusters of minute black frogs around the water's edge desperately clinging to existence while all around in the golden light, life struggles on, unnoticed. Yes, the summer is almost over and once again, as happens each year, I am changed by it. Isn't that why we come to this lovely valley? To remind ourselves once more what Hopkin's Margaret, discovered?

'Margaret are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?....
It is the blight man was born for
It is Margaret you mourn for.'

Overhead a plane glides across the smooth-blue sky heading for the Middle East. Libya, perhaps. In two days I too will be on one. Following the North star, home.

Summer's Lease and a Competition

2011-07-15T03:33:00.000-07:00

We are preparing to leave, like the swallows, heading towards the sun. To a place where the breeze when it lifts the leaves is always warm, and the dry earth underfoot is loose and dusty. And even the weeds, so green in spring, now wilt through lack of rain. There are snakes where we are going, so I don't plan to walk barefoot in the long grass. And dark scorpions that click their pincers and thrash their tails like sulky adolescents, looking for all the world as if they have been carved out of some dark molten metal.

This is our annual stint away from almost everything electronic. I say 'almost' because of course I shall have a digital camera with me. I have packed my bags. Tomorrow I go to Southend to take part in the First Literature Festival of the Sea
http://metalcultureshorelines.eventbrite.com/
A small, powerful,intelligent and thought provoking festival celebrating some of the great writing across the ages that has the sea as a central theme.Curated by acclaimed writer, poet and performer, Lemn Sissay and artist and writer, Rachel Lichtenstein.To provoke discussion,re-awaken senses,excite the adventurous spirit and discover new and classic texts about the sea.
Sounds good, doesn't it?

But this is all I shall be doing by way of work.
I have packed a suitcase full of the books I intend to read. I have packed my paints and some small gessoed boards. I have packed my sketchbook. And of course I have packed my camera.
Otherwise nothing. No internet, no twitter, nor mobile phones or British newspapers. Rupert Murdoch and his liars and hackers can go to hell. While they fight for their greedy, moneyed lives, pretending to themselves that they will live forever, I shall be cooking meals (my editor has sent me a book on evil cooking!) with fresh local produce and once again I shall smell the sweet, pungent scent of wild thyme underfoot on the hillside.
Later, as I stare at the peregrines, shimmering above the trees at midday, or listen to the owls calling across the valley I will remind myself all over again that happiness is to do with the simple things of life. For are we not, as Ruskin said, like fireflies that flicker briefly in the night sky?
Meanwhile some of my artist friends have come up with an amusing suggestion for the summer break that's too good to be kept to ourselves, I think. So I'm offering it up, in the form of a competition, to any idle reader of this blog.

The name of the project is: Feet 2011.
Yes, feet! Send your digital photos of feet that best describes your summer and I will publish it on my blog at the end of September. Upload it via comments with a caption and I'll add it to the ones I'll be taking....
Any takers?

Well, arrivederci then, and buoni vacanze!

The Voyage Of The Lucky Dragon and other stories.

2011-07-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

This is without doubt a fairy tale.

Once upon a time in the town where I live (a town renowned for its commitment to learning since medieval times) there used to be hundreds (well, lots) of second hand bookshops. The young people who studied at the university and indeed those who simply lived in the town, could often be seen buying their books in these shops. Books used by unknown readers, whose thoughts, scribbled therein, gave an interesting glimpse into other lives. Like strangers, passing in the night, creating a transient and random connection. Thoughts, written all over the pages of say, Madame Bovary, of other lives, other eyes and other hands, that once turned the pages. Yellowing and dog-eared pages with margins underlined, disagreed with, or highlighted as important or irritating even, to some past reader. Memories, not dissimilar to that strange elusiveness of old photographs, was present in that handwriting. The past, one might say, moved invisibly in this way, passing from generation to generation, testifying to a love of a particular book.

And then there was the physicality of the book shops themselves, of course; musty and damp with a touch of ever present Michelmas chill, alive, but subtly so, with the small, intense hum and shuffle of its readers.
Occasionally the bookseller would be heard muttering to himself as he added up a pile of books, subtracting a few copies (if the whole proved too expensive), offering kindly to 'keep them aside sir for a week?'
And then the till would be opened or the telephone ring or the door open and shut with a small sound as the cold air entered this dark Dickensian paradise.
I was brought up on shops like these which allowed me that marvelous thing called The Accidental Find. I loved the presence of a Philip Larkin humour within them, the wealth of old, out-of-print discovery that nearly always followed. The cheapness of it all. Reading, and book buying was something in the nature of a real adventure. One took risks for a couple of pounds, one read obscure poetry, or bought ancient guide books whose tattered maps spoke of ancient wars and obselete boundries that showed the changing nature of our world more clearly than any blood-rushing news report. The imagination was unlocked. What happened to that tratoria that was so recommended in 1968? Where were the relatives of that family, now? What happened to the village described so effusively long ago in an outdated Bed? The answer is that like those old photographs, their secrets will not be given up.

Now, just like the world of Philip Larkin, the shops have gone, vanished without trace, their stocks sold, their sale sign taken down, their mysteriously seductive window displays no more. Overnight. To be replaced by souviner shops selling teddy bears and mugs and cliched sweat shirts. Progress? Or the city council, with their usual lack of imagination putting up the rent?
And so, the face of this beautiful city is changing, growing brasher by the minute as the colleges retreat further and further into their private selves, indifferent to this kind of concept of 'change.'

But still, since this is a fairy tale (the last in the city, I think, and therefore in need of your TLC), there is one place left that has thus far escaped the rise and rise of council rates.

It is a small shop, opened first in 1946 by two brother, John and Brian Clutterbuck, who sold new paperbacks to young students. Years later, Mike and Andrea, sweethearts, meeting at the tearoom next door, saw a notice.
Oxford Bookshop. Owner retiring-looking for specialist bookseller.
It was the summer of 1975, Mike who worked in the theatre was between jobs. With hardly a moment's hesitation he found his vocation.
See, I told you it was a fairy tale!

Today the shop is still there, larger that it was originally, but snug, and, instead of selling new books it offers used paperbacks, often beautiful old Penguins from the the 1930s and 40s, their brilliantly distinctive, sweet shop covers made more seductive by careful, lovely packaging.

What a rare pleasure it is to purchase, yes purchase is the correct, old-fashioned word, a book from Mike and his beloved Andrea.
What pleasure it is, not to be presented with the high street tactics, the tedious little cards pinned onto shelves under the guise of 'Staff Choice'. Choices that offer up adjectival comments but little critical awareness, while leaving no room for the shopper's discovery.
In this shop, your intelligence is not abused and instead you are confronted by Mike's thoughtful array of 'books of the day' (the display changes daily). There is no comment. Like a modern day Shaman his wares are laid silently out, leaving you, the passer by, wondering what the significence of today's selection might possibly be. You are offered up a puzzle, a possible narrative, or simply a random choice … really it's up to you to decide.

Often when I am stuck on some part of my own writing, needing an idea, or simply some fresh air, I find myself wandering towards the narrow street, my footsteps leading to this magical bookshop. And as I pass the little metal shelf outside, a throwback from the shop's earliest days, there sometimes appears mysteriously, a book I have been searching for. Or if not that, then, one that somehow has some relevence to the work in which I am currently engaged. This has happened too many times to be mere coincendence, I think, as I step inside the shop.

Go there, yourself, see if I'm right. You have A Summer To Decide!

Sri Lanka's Killing Field 2: An open letter to Ban Ki-Moon

2011-06-25T04:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Ban Ki-Moon,

Those of us who remain interested have now read the UN report and seen the Channel 4 film about Sri Lanka.

http://www.channel4.com/news/fresh-footage-reveals-new-evidence-of-sri-lanka-executions

And I have been looking at your website. On it there is a quote that reads:

'The role of the United Nations is to lead. Each of us here today shares that heavy responsibility. It is why the UN matters in a different and deeper way than ever before. To lead, we must deliver results. Mere statistics will not do. We need results that people can see and touch - results that change lives - make a difference.'

(Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in remarks to the General Assembly after being elected for a second term, 21 June '11.)

So the question is, what are your plans for achieving 'results that change lives' of the traumatized Tamils of Sri Lanka? Those that are left I mean.

Thus far nothing much has happened. It does not need a qualification in rocket science to see that the regime in Sri Lanka is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some of us have known what has been going on in the country for years. Some of us (the lucky ones) left in the 60s and 70s. Like the Jews who left Germany before the Night of Broken Glass, my Tamil father saw the writing on the wall in the early 60s. I remember his staring out to sea and crying because he understood he would need to leave his home if I were to grow up in safety. He knew, too, that he would die on foreign soil far from the place where he was born. It was a price he was forced to pay in exchange for his family's safety.

In the 1960s there were no Tamil terrorists, no suicide bombers, no demands for a free Tamil state. All that was yet to come. What did exist was a deep-seated hatred for Tamil people. Those Sinhalese (like my mother) who crossed the divide were punished for doing so.

So you see, Ban Ki-Moon, you were a young man when the trouble was being stock-piled in Sri Lanka. Like sand-bags before the shelling.

The question, then, is this:

What is the UN going to do now?

The UN is good at being a bystander, trained, it would appear, not to interfere in the affairs of other countries, even when they are massacring each other. This no-interference policy can also be called indifference.

Cynthia Ozick in her book Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust (1988) wrote:

'Indifference finally grows lethal...the act of turning away, however empty handed and harmlessly, remains nevertheless an act.'

So I have another question.

How much more evidence is needed before the Government of Sri Lanka is recognised as a brutal dictatorship with the blood of crimes against humanity on its hands?

And another:

What is the purpose of the UN if it cannot save a single human life?

And another:

What lessons have been learnt since the slaughter in Rwanda? And all the other places in the world where murder is still being conducted by government forces?

And a fifth question:

Why do we have a UN Security Council?

I have been writing about Sri Lanka for years. To some in Sri Lanka, my novels have been akin to fairy tales, because what continues to go on there is denied and hidden. Now, with this extraordinary film, a wider audience is at last being reached. Yesterday, when I was talking to some Sri Lankans who have been happy to sit on the fence until now, I noticed a sea change.

Dear Ban Ki-Moon, as you know,

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyages of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

And so I ask you, dear Ban Ki-Moon, person of considerable power that you are:

Are you, recently reelected Secetary-General, going to confront the Security Council, the Human Rights Council and all the member states? Will you tell those who have put their trust in you, what sort of lead you plan to give the UN on the evidence against the government of Sri Lanka?

Sri Lanka's Killing Field

2011-06-23T01:25:00.000-07:00

So finally. Hard evidence. Not that there hasn't been any before but this time a whole terrible programme that makes you want to weep.

http://www.channel4.com/news/fresh-footage-reveals-new-evidence-of-sri-lanka-executions

In years to come the displaced and wronged Tamil communities of Sri Lanka will remember and be grateful to Jon Snow and his team for what they have revealed. A programme warning goes out with the film telling you that watching alone will be disturbing. I wasn't going to look at it. I know about the brutality in Sri Lanka. I had used some of the footage in my film The Swimmer: a true story now showing in Venice. Later this film will go to Oxford, to Suffolk, to London, to Delhi. So I am aware of the terror in Sri Lanka. But others continued to urge me to watch and, thinking myself hardened to the facts, I did. And a whole new anger and helplessness overtook me.

There is nothing that I, as an individual, can do about the monstrous events in Sri Lanka or anywhere else in the world. Except write about it and hope others will read. In some sense that is what my novels have been about. In Brixton Beach I wrote about a Singhalese doctor who refused to deliver my (Singhalese) mother's baby because my mother was married to my father, a Tamil man. The baby died.
I had not meant to re-tell that story but it somehow slipped into the book. And with the book (fifty years too late to save my mother), the story travels around the world. So there is hope in words.

What does the affluent Sri Lankan community at home and abroad think of the documentary The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka? I am curious.Do they know about it? Have they watched it? Do they feel shame, as I do to admit they are Sri Lankans? Shame that, for all their designer hotels, their booming economy, their gloss, underneath lies a barbaric world?
One Singhalese I spoke to about the film admitted that no, 'it isn't cool!'
Another, some months before asked me,
'What is wrong with Channel 4? Do they think they own Sri Lanka?'

I have been reading a book by someone called Barbara Coloroso called Extraordinary Evil: A Short Walk To Genocide. In it she talks about the 20th century and how 'crimes against humanity-have killed an estimated 60 million men, women and children - more than were killed in battlefields in all the wars from 1900 to 2000. And the 21st century is not off to such a great start …'

We know that evil of this kind lives amongst us, that man's inhumanity continues regardless of intervention. All we can do is uncover the crime. Sri Lanka has had the ability to hide its terrible secrets for years and years under its blue sky. The succession of governments that have perpetrated this evil cannot, alone, be blamed. For who votes governments into power?
As for the rest of us, saturated with our own problems, why should we be bothered by crimes against humanity going on in a place so far off? Perhaps because, as N.D. Kristof once wrote in the New York Times, 'the only way to assert our own humanity is to stand up to it.'

Perhaps next year, the Galle Literary Festival might think of putting on a play that speaks of what is happening in Sri Lanka. A play about greed and a desire for power and the need to kill for it. It is an ancient play, one written long ago. I believe they call it Macbeth.

Le Train du Livre

2011-06-17T04:04:00.000-07:00

Actually it was not a very promising start. Having woken at 6 am and caught the fast train to London I thought foolishly that nothing could go wrong. The train was on time, I got a seat, my bag was not too heavy, I hadn't forgotten anything and the day itself looked set fair. Then, as our train manager told us to read the safety leaflet, we pulled out of the station. And stopped. And stayed there for the next two hours.
Something about brakes I believe, or was it the signal? There certainly weren't any leaves on the line on this occasion. My Eurostar to Paris was at 10.

Paris, when I finally get there some seven hours later, is bathed in sunlight and my hotel looks out onto the trees and a cafe below. Another world, civilized and very serene, yet so close to home. I decide to forget about Britain's third world incompetence and its woes for a few days. I am here to launch the French translation of my novel Brixton Beach. Or Retour à Brixton Beach, as they are calling it. Dinner at eight is to be at my editor's beautiful flat where she has invited a few journalists and friends.
Naturally we drink champagne...

Earlier in the week I had been writing an article about my first trip to the city. Paris in the 1970s. On that visit my mother had waved me off at the station and today I find there are faint traces of my excited adolescent self walking beside me. Forty years have passed. How could I have known that one day I would return to promote a book I had written?
Retour à Brixton Beach is in part about her life and what it was like for her to be an immigrant from Sri Lanka. After she died someone remarked that her life had had 'too many longings' in it.
Time shifts momentarily allowing me glimpses of a past I cannot bring back before closing in on the present.

Saturday, and it's a dawn dash to Montparnasse in a taxi to catch "Le Train du Livre": a whole train dedicated to the book festival at St Malo! Albin Michel has reserved us seats, there are coffee, croissants and orange juice as the countryside rolls down towards the sea. There is gossip and laughter and more laughter. And always we return to the topic of books, that abiding passion linking everyone on that train.

Asking my French publisher about the dreaded Kindle her answer surprised me.
'You must not fear it, Roma,' she said, 'especially someone like you who has visual art as well. Think of what you can do with illustrations and text?'
She is right I think, now, staring at David Hockney's iPhone drawings which grace the cover of the current New Yorker. Hockney is a great one for New Media. One has to move with the times. Reinvent. Search.
'Of course books will not totally disappear,' the publisher had said. 'Maybe in this current form they will be fewer but they will not disappear.'
She spoke softly, a string of pearls wound around her neck, her hair beautifully cut. An image of ease and elegance.

At Saint-Malo the sea is waiting for us. It has swept the beach clean and far away on the horizon the sun glimmers in a thin line.

I meet Lydia.

'My book is about oral legends,' she tells me. 'It is a book about someone who has never seen the sea.'

'One of my characters in The Swimmer,' I reply, 'is called Lydia.'

We both laugh.

Now we are sitting in a cafe watching the rain. Which is grey but filled with light. How can this be so? It is another day and we are planning writing a play together. Lydia's day job is in a theatre in Paris but she has always loved the sea. Me too. Language difficulties hardly matter. I already know who will play the part of one my French character, I tell Lydia.
Later on I meet Marie, a young interpreter, whose English is so perfect that I am stunned when she tells me she is French. I want her to stay with me for all the panel discussions in which I participate because she makes me feel safe. Talking through someone else is like looking through a sheet of glass. It is the interpreter's skill that make the glass clear.
Our events come and go and the sea changes colour. The tide, they tell me, comes in and goes out at six hourly intervals.

'Tell us about the war in Sri Lanka,' I am asked at one event.
I nod. Then I ask the audience to look at their programme. Look I say, there's a map on the back. A map of India. But Sri Lanka is nowhere on it.
'You see the problem I have,' I say, and everyone laughs.

At the book signing a little girl hands me a drawing of my book. Her mother is reading it and enjoying it. People talk shyly to me, buy the book, hesitate, and ask me a question or two. Sometimes I see from their eyes and the way they look at me that they are moved by my mother's story. And I wonder again and again what on earth she would have made of it all.

And then it is over and the house of books by the sea folds up like a fairground tent and we are bussed back to the station. Just as we are leaving a man hurries towards me.

'Are you Roma?' he asks.
He is Jaspreet Singh, author of Chef but more interestingly, someone mad about W.G. Sebald. As a Sebald fan myself there is much to talk about. On the four hour train journey back to Paris we force everyone who passes through our compartment to tell us whether or not they have ever stolen a book.
The noise of laughter is so great that there are complaints.

Time is running out with only two day left in Paris, and Marie the interpreter invites me to her house for supper. To be invited into a home brings the country and its people into sharp focus. Nothing quite beats such a privilege, I think, as I taste the variety of cheeses in front of me.

Then, lunch with my son who lives in the 10th arrondissement, a quick trip to a shop that sells old photos, and one engagement with France 24. The beautiful Joelle is with me making sure everything runs smoothly. On the way we look at the gallery where I plan to have an exhibition in the spring - my first in Paris. At the television studio I look at myself on the TV monitor and think, hmm, not the greatest of hair days.

But then it is time for the train to London.
English voices everywhere. The newspapers write about NHS shakeups, unemployment, problems over teen drinking, problems, problems....ah well! I must be going home!

Venice: The True Story

2011-06-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

And then it begins... Paul arrives with his assistant Mike. They seem deeply involved with a shelf and a wall. And a measurement that's not quite right.

I follow shortly after with the Paracetamols. Agnes is shopping for food with the dregs of the budget. It is hot, humid. There is thunder both in the air and our voices.

The film isn't ready. Something to do with encoding. I've no idea what they are talking about but the colour doesn't look right to me.
Don't worry, says Paul. 'Don't worry,' says Agnes. 'Don't worry,' says everyone back in England. But I do.
Deeply disturbed I cannot sleep. I hear mysterious footsteps outside my window in the narrow calle that echo into the night. A church clock chimes the hour. 3 am
I'm going home, I think. This is crazy, an exercise in humiliation
'I've arrived!' texts the first guest, a few hours later.'Shall we meet for a drink, tonight?'
There is no going back.
'My family's gone to the wrong airport,' Paul tells me. Unusually, he's, scowling. 'Maybe I'll have to drive back and collect them.'
The barometer climbs to 25, then 26, 27 and rising...The sun has thrown its jewels across the lagoon but the crowds shuffle endlessly on, disinterested.

Lunch is liquid, so is dinner. None of us can face eating.
'It's good, Roma,' says Paul, finally after two days, beaming, his good humour restored. His family having managed to catch the plane, appear.

'It'll be all right on the night,' texts Jane Basham as she boards her plane.
'And then he came,' I text back, 'and he ruined, everything!'
The actress gives me a wry look. She's tired of us quoting her lines. Nor is she looking forward to seeing herself projected on the wall.

Friday morning. Not a cloud in the sky. But what if no one comes?

Our dancer who came on the last flight into Venice the night before arrives for a last minute rehearsal and sees herself on the facade of the palazzo for the first time.

Yes, I think, it is indeed you! Hounded out from the place where you were born, rejected by your own people, but still your spirit remains unbroken.
We rehearse and the onlookers are visibly moved. Our dancer is very, very good.

Three o clock. Time to rush back to our hotel across the city and change for the evening. Paul gathers his family together and disappears. I catch sight of them ambling across the square, pizza in hand. They don't seem in a hurry. We will return in style by water taxi.

Eighteen months of planning and worrying and working is finally over. Our audience sits in darkness and bear witness. Here then are Suffolk's famous skies, wide and beautiful, here too, a brutal tropical sea, and the last moments of a young man's life as he is beaten to death by Sri Lankans.

I have seen these images so many times as we edited and reedited the film, but still, every time they affects me, afresh. I feel ashamed to be Sri Lankan, I think; ashamed at the inhumanity of my countrymen towards their own people. In the flickering light from the screen I notice one of my friends in tears. And then it is over and the image fades into piano music. A small silence and, in the darkness, a burst of applause.

I look over to Paul and we grin at each other. We did it!

Later as we prepare to leave the palazzo there is one last thing that happens; one last poignant moment on this most magical of Venetian nights. It is an image that will stay with me forever. A stranger from some other, distant part of the world, walks up to the barbed wire fence we have erected in the room and places a single rose on it. Before bowing and leaving silently.

The Swimmer: a true story.
VENICE 2011. June 3ed-August 8th.
Catch it at Palazzo Zenobio. Dorsoduro. 2596

With thanks to all our friends & supporters.

The Venice Biennale 2011. Making Work 8

2011-05-25T01:40:00.000-07:00

We're done! The catalogues have arrived at last, all 1200 of them, blocking the hallway, and I am in the middle of assembling and packing my installation. Paul leaves for Venice late on Friday evening. The rest of us will be taking our chances with the ash cloud.

Adnams have sent their complimentary gift of champagne and beer. Most importantly the film, The Swimmer: a true story is edited, rendered, and ready to go. The colours are finally and exactly what I have been searching for in all these months; hand tinted by the editor. A lowering greeny-blue. I am speechless with anxiety but there is excitement too, buried in there. Finally it looks as though this event is really going to happen.

'Of course!' Paul says, surprised. 'Did you doubt it would?'

I have been rehearsing with my Tamil dancer who will be performing live on June 3rd. For reasons of safety we will not divulge her name on the credits. We have been watching the Royal Ballet's version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet together. Lady Capulet's lament at Tybalt's death. A powerful piece of theatre.

I want my dancer to listen to the Prokofiev music very carefully even though she won't be dancing to it. I want her to look at the western gesture and expression of mime. I want her to absorb it into her limbs and let it affect the way she moves. Then, I want her to forget all of it and concentrate on the dance we are creating together. This way East and West will meet unconsciously and with originality. The Prokofiev music is harsh, full of unexpected rhythm and violence. A sawing of violin strings, the thud of drums. In Sri Lanka drums play a part in many ritualistic dances. The devil dance, for instance. Our dancer will understand, but on this occasion she will dance to the soft gasp of the sea overlaid by the sound of faint crying. She will dance a lament.

'What is a lament?' she asks me

And then she looks it up, both in her German, and Tamil dictionary.
I plan to have her dance behind barbed wire, shredding flowers, carrying a winding sheet. I notice she is interested in the open palm gesture of Lady Capulet, tucking it into her own movements. I say nothing and watch, entranced. She is a beautiful dancer with expressive eyes.
Then I remember something else.
'Paul,' I ask, 'have you bought the barbed wire?'
'Of course,' he says without taking his eyes off the dancer.

I get a phone call from Jane Basham, the CEO of ISCRE. She has found me a solicitor who might be able to help with the container lorry we need for the Suffolk launch. I ring the contact.
'How many do you want?' asks Jonathan Ripman from Gotelee's law firm in Ipswich.
'Just the one!'
It's not a problem, he tells me.
We will park it beside the Martello tower in Aldeburgh and the film will be shown inside it.
Now all we need is a generator.
And erhhm..a grand piano to park on the beach?
Andy Wright from Suffolk coastal is on the case. This is truly a Suffolk production.

Paul's has imported his sound on the film. The Venezuelan waltz played through the speakers of an old radio, the deconstructed Schubert, falling, drop by drop, along the water's edge, the call of the curlew across the marshes. All these things saturate and breath new life into my images. Elsewhere in the catalogue he has written:

I read The Swimmer as a listener immediately fascinated by the intense quiet of Eel House …I can hear an oystercatcher a long way off just as if was pacing the mudflats at my feet. …The light is fading from the sky but I have to follow my ears. I move closer to the source of the sound taking several steps forward and sinking slightly into the mud-mu feet are wet but I'm at the source. I stand still for five, ten fifteen minutes, listening.

We watch the film together seeing, and hearing all the months of hard work as it knits together. Only now, at this late hour, does the true power of the whole emerge. For both of us it is a moment like no other, ephemeral but permanent. Paul would call it a moment of stillness.

Tomorrow when the sun is once more briefly in the wintry sky
for a few short daylight hours
the river will flow again like a ribbon of mercury.

The Swimmer.

The Venice Biennale 2011. Making work: 7

2011-05-09T00:42:00.000-07:00

Time is running out on our biennale project and certain worrying things have been happening.

For a start, several of our friends have booked to come to Venice and mysteriously, the number is growing. A few weeks ago we were worried no one was interested but now we have another, equally worrying question? What if the film isn't any good? In a panic, I insist we redo some of the scenes.
'What, the sound as well?' asks Paul.
He sounds offended.
'Yes,' I snap. 'The sound as well!'
The actress is trying to sell a drum kit to him for a good price, the dancer has gone on holiday, and the editor is ill with flu. Meanwhile, our catalogue designer has sent me seventy emails from Paris with various requests for material. I open his last one.

UNLESS YOU SENT ME THIS INFORMATION I CANNOT CONTINUE. YOUR CATALOGUE WILL NOT GO TO THE PINTER IN TIME.
I correct his spelling mistake and turn to my family for proof-reading help.

'Chill out, Roma,' says Paul when I finally get hold of him. 'So what needs doing?'
Some of the contributors are not happy with their texts being cut and reedited.
'Why wasn't I shown the copy at proof stage?' demands the curator, Agnes, reasonably enough.
'I'm not sure I'll be able to finish your film,' says the editor, faintly, over the 'phone. 'You've not given me enough time. Perhaps you'll have to go for option B.'
I am silent. I don't want to go for option B, I tell Paul.

'You know what, Roma,' Paul says, not looking at me, a little tentatively, I think, 'I know you don't want to hear this, but we can always finish it off in Venice. In the two days before we open.'
'No!' I scream. "we are not doing that. We're finishing it before we go.'

Meanwhile, back in Venice trouble seems to be brewing. One of the other exhibitors is kicking up rough about a shared exhibition banner.
'Oh man!' says Paul, when I tell him. 'What is he on about? It's just a banner, for God's sake.'
'Never in my whole career has anyone messed with my text,' declares Agnes. 'Is this how they do things in England?'
'Do you want my drum kit or not?' asks the actress.

The press photographer wants to meet up to discuss the photos he'll be taking on the night.
'I'm still waiting for my replacement tooth,' I tell him. 'So I won't be smiling.'
E-mails bat backwards and forwards. This is art, at one remove; remote-controlled art, art without a face or voice, I think. My inbox is clogged with instructions and counter instructions.
'Wouldn't it have been easier if you'd all stayed in the same room?' asks my husband, mildly. And then steps out of the way.
The designer has put Agnes's photo under the sponsor's name. Good job I spotted it. Paul sends his text in.
'Doesn't he use punctuation?' the proof-reader ask.
'Blue. I want more blue, in it.' I tell the editor. 'Lots of it.'
He's the best film editor I know. I really want him to finish the job. I really don't want to go to someone else. But he's still got 'flu. I can't push him.
'Oh and..eh... Agnes's name is misspelled on the credits,' I say.

And then the catalogue scatter proofs arrive. And they are beautiful. And after that, the rough cut of the film arrives, and this too, is stunning. We are silent with surprise, heartened. A small knot of anxiety begins to unravel itself, slowly. There's still a long way to go, of course, but cautiously, very cautiously, I feel optimistic.
'It's beautiful, Roma,' Paul says, beaming. 'No really. It's really, really good.'
I nod. Then I remember.
'When are you putting your sound on it, Paul?'
'Oh no problem. Don't worry...I'm going to Aldeburgh on Sunday to do some more recording...'
He waves goodbye. Cheerily. To the sound of my screams...

Perhaps it's time for my fair weather walk, after all?

A Fairweather Walker

2011-04-18T01:27:00.000-07:00

I am coming to the end of a period of intense work. My new novel is almost ready for copy-editing. I have been polishing it for days, changing words around to make the sentences read better, then changing them back again and worrying that I am just fiddling with the text in an unnecessary way. At this stage there is a reluctance to let go. I have, after all, lived with these characters for years, shared their triumph and their pain, understood their dillemas, forgiven them for their mistakes. In short I've been a pretty good mother and as all mothers know, letting go isn't easy. Someday soon I will have to watch them take their first steps in an indifferent world where to be misunderstood is the norm, and judgment is a harsh, commercial business. So of course I'm reluctant to deliver them into the hands of others. But spring is here, the bluebells planted in my garden last year have turned out pink, and the two tiny kittens we brought home in the snow are persecuting the birds outside. In six weeks I shall be flying to Venice for the Biennale. Summer demands a new rhythm. Closing my computer I decide I shall go walking everyday with my camera.

'Really?' asks my family. 'Every day? Even when it rains?'
Ignoring them I head towards the tow-path and the river where the willows have changed from pollarded stumps to great brushes of tender green and the earth smells fresh and full of life. It is early morning.

The canal is unruffled and full of reflections, the moorhens walk ahead of me on unsteady legs, and in the distance I hear the sound of a train rushing past. I cross the bridge and go into the meadow. Apart from a few joggers there is no one about. Even the allotments are locked up and silent, tidied away and cutback in the ways of good gardeners. I sigh. I am not a good gardener, I think. My gardening, like my walking, seems to have been restricted to fair weather. The cold defeats me as do some of the characters in my new book. Walking briskly across Fiddler's Island I resolve to change all that, and to show my family the magnificent set of images I will take throughout this year. That's the plan anyway. We've all heard of the New Year's resolution. Well, this is the spring resolution.

As I continue along the path I pass another bank of willows and recall another morning, many years before when I passed a group of rowers, their coach shouting instructions. It must have been early autumn because the willow trees were already turning yellow as they bent gracefully towards the water's edge and a black-and-white cow was munching peacefully in the field beyond. An idyllic English country scene where you might be forgiven for expecting Mole and Ratty to appear at any moment. Instead what I saw was a small Afghanistani boy in a long white kaftan and a white hat walk hurriedly along the path and disappear through the trees and onto the railway bridge. The combination of images was startling, a magical meeting of East and West amongst the willows. Magical realism before breakfast. I cursed the fact that I didn't have my camera that day.

The Venice Biennale. Making Work: 6.

2011-04-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

It's all part of the same thing. The Jaffna tamil dancer we used for this project has just rung me. She wants to go back to Sri Lanka, to see her lost home one last time. She is frightened that after The Swimmer is released going back will be impossible. It is difficult to know how to advise her. On the one hand, none of the team think she will be recognized in the film. We have been careful not to name her or even show her face too clearly on screen. On the other hand, there remains a steady leak of reports still emerging from Sri Lanka. Human rights issues have still not been addressed, the truth is still being doctored, and those who speak out against the government are still in danger of being silenced, or of disappearing. And the tamil dancer has two children, and a husband. She is young, with her whole life ahead of her. Were anything to happen to her we would feel morally responsible. So we tell her: 'Don't go, give up. Your life is here, now. Why risk it?'

I look at the film footage of the silvery Aldeburgh coastline at dawn, but in reality I am thinking of our dancer, this thing we call home and the strength that exists in the concept of it. In my last film, at some point, an old woman recalls:
They thought there could be nothing worse, that it would never happen again. To leave your hearth and all its warmth. Hearth is like heart. It is the centre of everything.

I made that particular film in 2008. It was about the Highland Clearances but the words could just as easily apply to our dancer's feeling. She longs to see her home again, to see the red dusty road that leads back to her childhood and her heart. She wants to smell again the fragrance of the air and hear the sound of another, brighter sea. Why cannot she do this simple thing, without fear?

An astronomer calls this our last century. There are shadows all over the world, some caused by natural disasters, but most created by men. In Lampedusa, off the coast of Italy, people are arriving everyday by boat, and the Italians are frightened, as are the French. In the Middle East there comes an Arab Spring and all the consequences these changes will bring. While on the Ivory Coast, darkness has been drawing in for some time. And then of course there are all the old oppressions, which like radiation, look set for a thousand years. So Sri Lanka and what it has done to its human minority does not feature very high in the scale of things. A few hundred thousand people dead and buried, forgotten amongst the ashes, cannot be allowed to stand in the way of economic growth.

'Forget it,' we tell our dancer.
There is a whole generation of young Sri Lankans growing up at home and abroad that has managed to do so. Why can't you? But even as I think it, I know the answer. Because our dancer is a different sort of person from those who wish to erase all unpleasant memory. Because she has a first-hand memory of her very own. Because she possesses a rare and old fashioned ingredient, embedded in her character. Empathy, I think it's called, isn't it? That most sacred of human characteristics. Empathy for the dispossessed. Those that have it are blessed by the Gods.

At last! I have found the film clip I had been looking for and I watch it now on my computer screen. An endless turning and sighing of the North Sea.

The Venice Biennale 2011. Making Work: 5.

2011-04-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

I'm making a lightning visit to Ipswich. And what feels peculiar is that today for the first time in ages, I've come without my camera. The filming is over, we are in edit mode, nervously waiting to see what magic can be wrought from the months of work. So, even though my instinct is to frame every image before my eyes, this visit isn't for filming. I am traveling alone to meet with potential sponsors. For we have still a shortfall of cash without which there can be no catalogue. As I head east, I wish this were a longer trip. I miss the sea: I miss the laughs we had when we were working. Once again I marvel at the process of making a film versus that of writing. Apart from the obvious difference, the end product, the entire experience of film making,(and of this film in particular), has been hugely entertaining. I have loved the atmosphere of team work, the light-hearted banter, the support we gave to each other when things wouldn't quite work, the endless cups of coffee we drank together not to mention the location trips; so badly managed that, having eaten like kings on the first day, we only had enough money left for a packet of Bran flakes on the last morning. Whose fault was that, eh?

And now, here I am again on a train pulling into the station.
Ipswich crumbles.. I think, quoting the now familiar script to myself.
There are chimneys and rooftops. There is a church no one visits; there are fishing boats bobbing on mudflats. Now there are open spaces, cold, very cold...

Except it is no longer that cold and spring is finally in the air. The person I am meeting is the head of Suffolk County Council. Someone called Andrea Hill. I knew nothing of her until she

asked me, 'have you googled me, yet?' So I did and came across a sheaf of unpleasant, aggressive articles.They bore no resemblance to the warm, empathetic and elegant woman who greets me, today. She has read my book The Swimmer and loved it, she tells me. Now she wants to introduce me to a potential sponsor. Andy Wood is the CE of Adnams a famous, old fashioned Suffolk brewery who pride themselves with their commitment to all things Suffolk. They have been named Brewery of the Year, 2011, they have a charity of their own, are beginning to put together an archive of old photographs of the brewery, and now they are interested in what I have to say about our event in Venice.

'The book is set in Suffolk and is as much about a sense of place as anything,' Andrea says and Andy nods.
He too has read the first section on a long-haul flight back to the UK and seems to like it.
'Tell me,' he asks,'how will you use the sponsorship money?'
So I tell him, the catalogue that will accompany the film will be made up of text and images of all those places we filmed. The mudflats in Aldeburgh, the wreck of a boat that rises in ghostly detail at low tide and the accidental junk shop finds of photographs of an unknown suffolk family, a poignant reminder that the ghost of W.G Sebald still walks this landscape. Could any book ever replace The Rings of Saturn in Suffolk?

I tell Andy that Paul is making a CD to accompany the catalogue and this too will bring the sounds of Suffolk to the notice of those who buy the catalogue. Andy nods and I look worriedly at him. What more can we offer except our work, I think? But he is smiling.

'So the catalogue is a book about the land and seascapes of the area?' Andrea asks, making notes.
A sort of song to Suffolk? Yes, that's exactly what it will be. Suffolk, with its wide open skies, its birds, its fragile coastline, its old country crafts as practiced by Eric in the novel, suddenly, with the support of Adnams, will travel to other parts of the world.

Before he arrived to disturb my life,
I carved out a haven of peace,
quite close to the water's edge
here, beneath the bowl of sea and sky.
Here, where the winter winds blow
and the river foam leaks
spoonful by spoonful underfoot
on the marshland bed.

We smiled as we shake hands on it, united in our love of this small beautiful county. See you in Venice!

The Venice Biennale 2011. Making Work: 4

2011-03-25T05:11:00.000-07:00

Spring has arrived in Venice. I feel it brushing against me as I step off the train.

I am here to look at Palazzo Zenobio and the space in which we will be showing The Swimmer. Our curator, Agnes Kohlmeyer, has arranged to meet us for dinner and has also set up a series of meetings for tomorrow morning. But there is no sign of Paul Whitty the sound artist and composer.

'Get the number two vaporetto to the Rialto and follow signs to Santa Maria Formosa,' I text.
There is a longish pause during which I wonder if he has missed the plane. Then comes the reply.
'Splendid-have set off down an alley...where a shouts are you?'

Dinner with Agnes is as usual an elegant affair and begins with Aldo greeting us at the front door.

'Aldo is not a cat,' Agnes tells Paul who had not met him before. 'He is human. Now tonight we have some fish soup, which Aldo loves, and then, we have octopus. What's the matter Roma, you don't look happy. You don't like octopus? Is it the shape of the animal you don't like? Shall I cut it up on your plate? Although he would look magnificent on the table, no? I see you are not happy. Why don't you have a drink, instead. And some cheese? And then, we talk?'

Agnes does not pause for breath. She has the energy of sixty curators, we tell her. In the morning, after we had seen the space we tell each other, we'll make a list of all the things left to do.

'But tonight,' declares Agnes, 'we relax!'
Not easy with an octopus on the table and Aldo pawing me for attention.

The following morning we set off, walking, at a great pace to the meeting with the organizers at Palazzo Zenobio. Agnes wears her orchid earrings, and Paul and I, our hangovers.

'Come along,' Agnes said, briskly, 'we only have ten minutes.'
The sun had flung jewels of light across the lagoon and the air sparkles with a blueness that confirms, yes, winter is finally over. Ahead, in the distance, clear and beautiful, are the Alps.

I have been working on my new novel for weeks and weeks, glued to my desk, ignoring the grey skies. Now the manuscript is with my editor and suddenly, I feel free.

'First we need to sit quietly in the space,' says Agnes. 'We need to think how the work will look in it. Then we talk about the party. Are we joining with the other pavilions? Can our budget stretch to food, do we also want a banner?'

'Yes,' I say faintly, hurrying behind her. 'We need to discuss the catalogue, too …'
Paul seems to have vanished again. Perhaps he's having a sleep on a pavement somewhere. Above us in the narrow calle washing hang like flocks of white birds. A seagull is crying.

At the palazzo we are met by Mauro who will be our man-on-the-ground, before, and during the exhibition. Then, we go in, and as often happen, the space itself begins to reveal other possibilities. Excited we are all talking together. We open windows, make decisions; which room is best for showing the film, which should have the installation. How will the sound be played. Paul is busy taking photos, I am looking at the marks on the walls. We must paint it a dirty white, we decide.
'I will surpervise the painting,' Agnes says, 'so that it is precisly what we want.
The rooms have a lost feel to them; abandonment and memory lie everywhere.
When the Sri Lankan army take people away they come at night, dragging their victims from their beds, bundling them into white vans, removing them to places that are the stuff of nightmares. Only when daylight comes is it possible to see the scuff marks on the floor, signs of a struggle to escape, evidence of the brutality of what happened. No, I think, we will not paint the rooms too much. We will leave the marks on the floors, we will honour memory.

Time stands still as we sit, half in sunlight, and consider these things. A picture emerges, slowly. This is why it is so important to see the space, Agnes reminds us. The work that has been planned for so long is beginning to become a reality.

It is time to sign the contract and Paul asks about plug sockets and security for the equipment he plans to drive over from Britain. Samuel, the organiser is charming. Agnes asks him if he still has the copy of The Swimmer I gave him last year, when I first visited.
'Of course,' he says, smiling gently. 'I will never give it away.'
There is a feeling of great generosity amongst all these people working on this Biennale. We meet some of the other curators. In total there will be five exhibitions in this building. Iceland, Armenia, Switzerland, another British group and us. The Lebanon seems to have withdrawn which is a pity. It would have been nice to have had them opposite this work about Sri Lanka.
'See you in May!' we say, smiling and shaking hands as we leave.
It is time for lunch.
'Let's move away from the sun towards the shadow,' says Agnes, making the literal translation sound poetic.
I notice a text message from my editor in London. She likes my new book. Phew! I think, and suddenly the day pivots on an axis of airiness and pleasure and other possibilities. In a few hours I have to be at a broadcasting studio by the railway station for the recording of a conversation for Front Row. We will be talking about the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka.
'No wine for lunch, then!' laughs Agnes.

And, two hours after that, we will be flying north, towards home, leaving this beautiful gilded city behind. The only place in the world where pigeons walk and lions fly.

Ci vedemio presto, Venezia!

The Venice Biennale 2011. Making Work: 3

2011-03-14T05:20:00.000-07:00

Used as I am to the solitary business of writing, making this film for the Biennale with a team is a much slower, more enjoyable thing. Last night I had a phone call from the Jaffna Tamil dancer we have been using. She just wanted to talk.We cannot use her real name for fear of problems in Sri Lanka.
‘My husband would like us to come to Venice for the opening,’ she said.
It turns out they had been looking at the prices of flights to Marco Polo and have found a cheap one. You can’t afford it, I tell her but she insists she wants to show support. I am touched and don’t know what to say. My budget for this project is so small as to be almost invisible. We are all having to pay for our own flights and hotel. The catalogue is being done by the skin of our teeth. As someone who probably earns less than the national average I feel the aria from Tosca should be my signature tune. Vissi d’arte, Vissi d’amore, I lived for art, I lived for love, but nothing much else. So, sadly I can’t offer to pay for her flight.
‘I loved dancing in the film,’ the girl says. ‘It all happened so quickly and I was so cold and concentrating on the dance. I wish it had lasted longer.’
You were good, I tell her. Very, very good. And I swallow because I know it will now be all down to the editing and the editor is in the middle of a plumbing crisis and doesn’t want to think of my film. I mustn't panic, I think.
My dancer continues to talk. I have a feeling she hasn’t talked in this way for a long time. Perhaps, never. She tells me a little about her life, her family, her passionate involvement with her own people in the north of the island-the forgotten people of Sri Lanka.
‘Even if all I earn is £40 in a day I would like to send some money to help them,’ she says.
This girl is not a terrorist, not a Tamil Tiger. She is a gentle, artistic young woman. She does not want to harm anyone, yet, she tells me, Sri Lankan Tamils everywhere are branded as troublemakers. Sometimes it is difficult to get a visa to travel abroad. All visa applications have to go via the Sri Lankan government and this can be tricky. Meanwhile she longs to see her home again. That longing does not go away but only gets bigger with each year that passes. We live in different worlds, she and I, but I understand how she feels. It is many years since I have seen my home, too.
Yesterday, while watching the horrific images of the tsunami in Japan, I heard a reporter mention Colombo and just for a moment I waited, hoping I would catch a glimpse of the beach where I once played, and the rocks where I carved my name before I left it, forever. The sense of home is like that, powerful and present, always. Unerasable.
‘I don’t belong anywhere,’ the girl tells me sadly, but I tell her she is wrong.
For had she forgotten how she danced at he edge of the north sea? In the biting cold? Had she forgotten how everyone clapped and cheered? You have roots here, too, I tell her. Small ones, it is true, but still you are adding to the cultural mix along the Suffolk coastline. Like the migrating birds who grace the marshes each year so too did your dance change the landscape if only for a moment.
‘My son wants to talk to me in English at home,’ she says. ‘But I tell him, you are a Tamil boy, you must speak to your mother in Tamil.’
She laughs, embarrassed that she is telling someone she hardly knows a secret anxiety. How else, she asks me, can she keep the place where she and her mother and father were born, alive for the boy?
Language is the obvious way. Love and grief and longing are expressed best in your mother tongue. But her son has been born into two different worlds and he will need to make sense of them both before he can fuse them successfully together. As a writer I don't have any answers. We talk for a moment longer. Then she asks me about the film. I tell her she is on the front of the invitation. We have printed a thousand copies. Again she laughs. She has never been to Aldeburgh before that day and had no idea it was a shingle beach. I tell her about the salt marshes and the birds. I tell her that I hope she will go back there when the sun shines. Already I can see that she is curious about this bleak and beautiful landscape, so different from her homeland, so different from Ipswich where she lives, now. A part of Britain as fragile and as lovely as she is.

The Endless Capacity of Good Prose

2011-03-07T00:04:00.000-08:00

I have started to read Joyce Carol Oates’ memoir. There is a little space in my head having finished the edit of my new novel. Soon I will need to begin the difficult task of editing my film for the Venice Biennale. Then, there is the catalogue to prepare and another trip to Venice. But during this week I’m going to take a proper break. And catch up on some reading. Memoir is not something I normally read but this one was sent to me by my publisher, at my request. The book is large, divided into many sections and I sigh. It looks daunting and is called A Widow’s Tale. The title makes me think of Chaucer even though I know the subject can only be unpleasant. Section one is called ‘The Message’. After having delivered her husband to the hospital (he has caught pneumonia) Oates returns to her car to find a message stuck on the windscreen.
LEARN TO PARK BITCH she reads.
It is just the start of her tale.
I stop reading for a memory has been triggered. Twenty-two years ago, when a close friend was killed in a car accident, I too received a message, this time through the post.
GO HOME PAKI BITCH was what I received, and although we gave the letter to the police the writer remained one of life’s mysteries. Oates puts such events in their proper place.
‘In this way as in that parable of Franz Kafka in which the most profound and devastating truth of the individual’s life is revealed to him by a passer-by in the street, as if accidently, casually, so…her situation however unhappy, despairing or fraught with anxiety, doesn’t give her the right to overstep the boundaries of others, especially strangers who know nothing of her…’
I read on. It is a Saturday afternoon, I need to go shopping, there are some books I want to pick up at the second-hand bookshop, but I am mesmerised by Oates’s prose. Time passes; the cats jump on me demanding food as I read about Oates husband, Ray Smith, the gardener and editor. I have been thinking of my own editor a lot this week. Her scribbled notes on my manuscript have been hard to decipher.
‘You should have been a doctor,” I told her, laughing. ‘You’d write a great prescription!’
But, as an editor, she is very clever; never condescending, always honest, steering me with a light hand through those patches that are still a little opaque. Because of this and because of my own notes I have made discoveries I might not have otherwise made. This is the beauty of the process, I think.
In her book Joyce Carol Oates has something to say about editing and gardening.
‘Like editing, gardening requires infinite patience; it requires an essential selflessness, and optimism.’
And a little later on,
‘The gardener is the quintessential optimist: not only does he believe that the future will bear out the fruits of his effort, he believes in the future.’
I had begun reading this book with one hand ready to close it, the subject matter frightens me so much, but now I take it with me into the kitchen to read while making lunch. The sunlight outside makes me want to believe winter is almost over. I read what Oates has to say about creativity,
‘There are those –a blessed lot-who can experience life without the slightest glimmer of a need to add anything to it-and sort of ‘creative’ effort; and there are those-an accursed lot?- for whom the activities of their own brain and imaginations are paramount. The world for these individuals may be infinitely rich, rewarding and seductive-but it is not paramount. The world may be interpreted as a gift, earned only if one has created something over and above the world.’
But when she said this to her husband he had given her a bemused look. Doing what all good husbands do; bringing her back to earth, telling her not to take herself so seriously.
I am hooked. The book, painful though it is in the details of widowhood, nevertheless works on many other levels; as one would expect with Oates.
‘You do not see a self without a body to contain it, yet you do not see a body without a self to activate it,’ she writes.
She writes about the way in which people shy away from the thought of too much emotion. Most particularly death. A woman invites her to a dinner but instead of it being a small intimate gathering the woman wants a large number of guests. The numbers go up and up.
‘C-is erecting obstacles to our dinner as in an equestrian trial in which each jump must be higher than its predecessor…I envision a thirty-foot dining room table and at the far end the widow placed like a leper…’writes Oates.
In the end, the dinner party does not happen and the woman herself disappears for a while. Easier perhaps than tackling a conversation with Oates on her new state.
Outside, as I read, the day turns on its axis. It really is spring, there are small bulbs peeping up through the ground. A bird sings long and piercingly and reminds me of other days, in other springs. The prose I am reading is as beautiful as the day outside. The writer is using words as though they are engraver’s tools, probing the surface of the soft wood block, considering the chiaroscuro of the whole, building a strong, dark picture; layer by layer. What comes out is a controlled image; cleanly pressed, preserved forever.
In the news the stories of Libya go on and on. Civil war hovers in the air. There are only so many stories, I think. It is the telling of the tale that matters.

The Venice Biennale 2011. Making Work: 2.

2011-03-03T01:45:00.000-08:00

So now we must begin. The headache of funding is almost resolved. Someone, she will remain nameless, has come to our rescue and is helping us with the money. Our fairy godmother. The list of people who want to write in the catalogue is growing even though the designer warns me that space is tight. We have a great design team at http://www.importedletters.com/ sensitive to materials and clients alike. But a budget is a budget, they tell me.
‘Don’t get carried away, Roma.’
‘OK,’ I promise. ‘I won’t.’

I am juggling a large number of things at the moment. With the finance almost taken care of there is the guest list. We have invited some important people to the event on June 4th but will they come? Both Paul Whitty and I want as many people as possible on the night. The invitation is almost designed. All we are waiting for is the postcode for the palazzo in Venice. Without a proper address, in the heaving crowds and confusion, how will people find us? Perhaps we need a little map on the back of the invitation? I will phone the designer who is in Paris, with the question. No doubt I will be told,
‘Don’t over do it. Less is more!’
But I am worried nonetheless. Will our budget stretch to a banner? Iceland and Switzerland share the palazzo with us. Undoubtedly they will have a huge budget.

Some things are falling into place though. Paul comes on Friday and we will spend time looking at the clips and listening to his sound track. Calmly. Carolyn our actress was incredible last week. The recording of her voice is near perfect, just a few changes in the text, but she will take that in her stride.

Late last night someone sent me a piece of film footage that I desperately need. It is a piece of reportage of a real event and I have been given permission to use it. Watching it late at night leaves me close to tears. And angry. This project must work. I go to bed to dream of the nightmare of editing! Everything hinges on the edit. Everything. Less is more, Roma. I have a very good editor.
I owe it to the story to get it right.

The Temple of the Tooth.

2011-03-02T00:07:00.000-08:00

This is a true story. Yesterday I had a tooth out. And while this can be of no possible interest to anyone other than myself, what I felt when anticipating the event, might be. It isn’t everyone who needs to lose a tooth in their lifetime, dentistry being a marvellous though expensive thing these days. So why write about it?

Well, for a start I had been going about my daily business for some weeks now, grieving over the very idea of losing something that was mine by right. Rotten though it had become the tooth was my own; one that had grown and been part of my face, forever. The smile I used at every important moment of my life; when I won the school prize or got the grades I wanted after an important exam. On my wedding day, when each of my children were born, when I got the contract for my first novel, and so on.

And now I was going to lose that part of me that had first started life with calcium from my mother, from all those distant aeons ago. My mother, like me, had been born in the tropics. We had lived in a third world paradise where fresh milk and calcium were in short supply for people as poor as us. She was a small woman, my mother, but physically and mentally courageous in the hostile and narrow-minded world of 1950’s Sri Lanka. I am proud of her. My body and her memory are strangely tied up together. So losing this tooth was nothing short of an amputation, or so I declared to my family.
‘No it’s not,’ said my youngest. ‘You’re being over-dramatic, again.’
True. Probably I was. And yet, as Tooth Day drew closer I could not shake off the feeling of sadness, that something which had taken so long to make, should vanish in a moment. Like life. Like the violence being done in places around the world, to people, and to their bodies. Suddenly, losing what is theirs, and changing them forever.

The thought conjured up a gruesome image, one that I have written repeatedly about in my books. In Brixton Beach, for instance, the character of Kunal has his leg amputated to prevent gangrene. There is no other option available to him. But, for one small moment, when he is told the news, Kunal is unable to hide his anguish. And later on, after the deed is done, he wakes up and feels the absence of the phantom limb. Only then does he remember with sorrow, all that he once took for granted, things connected with the leg he has just lost. Things he will never do again.
‘Hang on a minute,’ said the youngest in our house, watching me intently, ‘are you comparing your tooth extraction to a leg being amputated?’
She was looking at me with interest. Clearly madness had set in via the tooth and she was on hand to witness it.
‘No,’ I told her. ‘I’m not. Losing a tooth is nothing by comparison. And in any case there are anaesthetics and antibiotics and a sterile situation to deal with my tooth. There will be kindly consultations and pain killers and very soon, all being well, an implant.’
‘So?’ she asked, hoping for a battle of wills, a chance to deal with her mother’s irrationality, to win at family argument time.
It is insignificant, of course it is. But nevertheless the feeling of impending loss makes me empathise with those who are less fortunate. You know, people are losing bits of themselves all over the world, every single day. And not because they need to, either. Think of the land mines in places like the north of Sri Lanka. So just for a moment it’s necessary to stop and think…..
‘Hmm,’ pronounced the young one, narrowing her eyes. ‘You’re just scared. And with too large an imagination.’
Possibly, I agreed.

The Venice Biennale 2011. Making work: 1

2011-02-25T00:31:00.000-08:00

I am spending a few days in Aldeburgh with a small film crew, making the film we plan to show at this year's Venice Biennale. The budget is small, smaller than the crew itself, but our ambitions are huge and this makes me anxious. For a start, why on earth have we decided to shoot the whole of it on an iPhone?
‘Stop worrying,’ says Paul Whitty, sonic artist and composer, appearing through the rain with a soggy microphone that is reminiscent of a dead rat. ‘We’ll make a plan, later.’
He’s dripping wet and squelching the mud that will soon be all over the carpet of our rented house. We are soaking from head to foot and the hail has frozen our ungloved hands. Still, we stand for a moment, shivering on the causeway with the waves lashing behind us as Paul reports that he has collected some excellent sounds of rain dripping. What he’d really like to do is drop his hydrophone into the sea and record the sound from underneath the water. Right, I think, off you go then.
‘I’m soaked,’ says Carolyn, our actress.
As she hasn’t grumbled once all day I take the hint. Time to dry out.
The rain that began as predicted, on this morning of our second day, is relentless, the sky is a soft charcoal grey, echoing the sea itself. Only the mad whisk of white foam affords a little lightness in an otherwise impossible landscape.

‘When I went into the off-licence,’ Paul says cheerily, ‘the guy in there thought my microphone was a dog.’
Whatever, I think.

Overhead a curlew pierces the air with a hesitant, tender cry and then flies in a steady line across the rain-drenched marshes towards the Martello Tower.
‘And a fishermen came up to me just now,' Paul continues, 'and he said, that’s not fishing you’re doing is it? That's something else.'
‘We’re going back,’ I say, ignoring him. ‘Before we get pneumonia.’
The light is being strangled by mist and the scene feels straight out of a Tarkovsky film.
‘Look,’ cries Caroline, ‘it’s snowing!’

It has been an extraordinary few days; all week I have been uncertain as to the direction in which I was going, until suddenly, in a flash, I understood the pattern that had been quietly evolving. It’s called a breakthrough, isn’t it?

The film we are making is a mockumentary, a fake documentary, based on an idea from my novel The Swimmer, a story about a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee fleeing from the terrors of Jaffna. The Swimmer: The True Story, was what we had decided to call it.
At dinner the night before, someone I was talking to, remarked she disliked those film-of-the-book, kind of films. But this isn’t that kind of film, I told her. This is a parallel text, another way of seeing, a space between the events that lie within the novel; a different reality, if you like. My companion had looked at me quizzically. Really, did I know what I was talking about?
How do you explain that making work is a tricky business and that although you might have the questions, only rarely do the answers appear. You set out to do one thing, to make that magnificent piece of work, only to have your hopes dashed and for disappointment to descend (really what a sham you are after all, perhaps you should give up and do something more useful). Until, just at that moment of giving up, some magic enters the arena and lifts you like an acrobat, up, above the sawdust, high onto the wire, into the dazzle of the lights. There you balance, not posing as a maker of fine work, but somehow, forgetting all anxiety, immersed in the work itself. It is a moment like no other.

And yesterday it happened again, reminding us that this is why we do what we do, for so little money, in wind and biting rain. For it is the thing that makes us happy.
That moment came when the Tamil dancer who had offered to come up from Ipswich, threw off her coat and boots and ran into the wind on Aldeburgh beach to dance on the shore of the North Sea in front of my camera. I was so excited my hands shook, but our dancer, triumphant and free as a kite, cold but not diminished, was unaware of how we held our breath.
Here, then, was the essence of what I was making. Here, on the wet shingles, in the slash of a crimson sari and with a shake of ankle bells against the surf, was the thing I had been groping blindly for.
The whole beach stood still, and the fisherman watched, and the children playing ball stood with open mouths and the men walking their dogs paused before throwing their sticks into the waves, and the sea kept turning and turning as the Tamil girl danced. On and on she went, speaking of connections and integrations, of belonging and longing and a whole myriad of other things. Wordlessly.
And time stood still. And Paul let fall his hydrophone. And even the cold went away, such was the magic on the beach.
For in that moment of pure unaffected theatre I saw with sharp clarity what had been missing in this delicate Suffolk landscape. It was present in the flash of colour, appearing and disappearing and appearing again; insistent and lasting. That which governments denied and communities misunderstood. A mixing of a wider palette. East, meeting West.

The Galle Literary Festival: A Cultural boycott?

2011-02-19T04:47:00.000-08:00

I wasn’t going to say anything. The news from the place where I was born is old news. What I feel about the civil war in Sri Lanka is an old story, too. And anyway, here, in Britain we have enough problems of our own to bother about some pretty island in the Indian Ocean. But then, I read a sentimental little piece about the Galle Literary Festival written by a Sri Lankan writer and it became impossible to stay silent. The writer is Tamil, not born in Sri Lanka but living in the US and her inability to think either clearly or analytically is disturbing. Her article, written with ‘swimming eyes’, in gushing prose, and her reasons for attending the Galle literary festival, are as thin as rice paper.
http://www.themillions.com/2011/02/in-the-room-against-a-cultural-boycott-of-the-galle-literary-festival.html

Sri Lanka is a country with an appalling human rights record. For those who do not know this already, it is a country that has been at war with itself for decades. As far back as the late 1950s Tamils were being persecuted, set fire to and denied jobs. I know, for as a four year old I watched a Tamil man being burnt to death. The civil war that followed was made even more difficult to understand because of the formation of the Tamil terrorists. The world lost patience and the human shield of ordinary Tamil civilians was forgotten in the mayhem that followed. Stuff happened; the public library in Jaffna was burnt down, not once but twice by Sri Lankan soldiers but the then government couldn’t care less. Precious manuscripts were lost and the morale of Jaffna Tamils sunk further. Eventually a dynastic and powerful new government did away with the Tamil Tiger forever and the war was declared finally over. A hundred thousand ordinary Tamils were either dead or in appalling conditions in refugee camps, the north was littered with land mines and there was only rhetoric left to deal with the problems. As the new government cannot tolerate any criticism, those who speak out or write in the newspapers are either shot or continue to disappear, taken away in white unmarked vans. This is going on now, not in some grim past.

Into this situation, with a rising tourist industry (the New York Times described Sri Lanka as the number one holiday destination) comes a new generation of Sri Lankans. People born or living abroad, who understandably want closure to a shameful chapter of Sri Lankan history. But in their haste they confuse the need to forget with the need, first, to remember. The latter has always to preclude the former. South Africa and Ireland are good examples. So that by failing to recognise or understand this basic human requirement, necessary for moving healthily forward, they cause more harm than good.

One of the objectives of the government of Sri Lanka is to staunch criticism in order to give an appearance of normality within the country. The Galle Literary Festival is a perfect opportunity for doing this. It has risen in prominence and become a safe option for writers from abroad who dream of wide tropical beaches against a palm-fringed backdrop of boutique hotels. But these scenes are located far from the terrible mess in the north and north-east of the island. Here, unseen by western eyes, are illiterate Tamil children still living in psychological and physical deprivation. Here you will find the women who have learnt to lament their loss in silence and here, too, are the men who cannot bear the colours of yellow, green and brown; all colours of the land but also that of army uniforms. These people cannot access Sri Lanka’s glamorous literary festival. Nor would the organisers wish to move their event to them.

Earlier this year Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy, amongst others, called for a boycott of this festival and as a result, some writers found their conscience pricking. But others, including the writer of the blog I have just read, went. What is interesting is the reasons given for the trip. Talk of woolly matters, of art, of literature, of creativity, is high on the agenda and predictably comes the claim, that to deny a literary event is to deny freedom of speech.
But I would like to ask these writers, who are the people who will actually benefit from this particular festival? Well, for a start the government of Sri Lanka will be pleased at an excellent whitewashing programme. We know that for sure! As for the organisers, a prestigious international event can only improve their visibility and profile. Next we have the audience, made up of the middle class, English reading public, (with possibly the token orphanage, or Tamil child thrown in, especially those who suffered in the tsunami as this gets Western sympathy) and the foreigners on holiday, of which there are many. But let’s not forget the writers; fêted, well fed and watered and given, as one of them recently told me, ‘frankly a smashing little holiday in the middle of economic winter gloom.’

I am often asked why I do not go to this festival even though I have been invited. Why I chose to attend the Jaipur literary festival but not Galle. Let me make this clear. I long to go. I long to see my home once more. But the terrible injustice that was done to Sri Lanka’s ordinary people on both sides of the ethnic divide needs to be highlighted. Because the dead have no voice, because their memory is still not honoured or talked about. Because those who speak out are still being silenced. Because I am not so misguided as to imagine any real or serious discourse in the manicured atmosphere of Galle is possible under the current government. Of what will these writers actually speak? Thus far no writer going to Sri Lanka has said anything that addresses the real problem.

And even if I have got it completely wrong, even if all those visitors who come to Galle to sit in hallowed silence under ceiling fans, to hear the UK-returned writers speak, are right and the conversations taking place are about life and literature, what good will this do? What has the internationally ‘acclaimed’ Sri Lankan writer got to offer the poor and the displaced, the bereft and the victims of Sri Lanka’s war? Will their discourse give the lost generation of children a different life? Will the government suddenly become transparent and admit to the killing sprees they went on in order to gain power? Will the broken woman who came this year to Galle, in search of her journalist husband, (disappeared on January 28th) have him returned to her? Let us not be so naïve as to believe so. Nothing will change other than perhaps the level of our suntan.

But, still I believe, far, far in the distant future, long after this foolish generation of celebrity seeking writers is forgotten, there will come a rising cluster of different novelists. One has seen this often in the past, coming out of some terrible hurt. Russia is a good example. Writing perhaps in Tamil, or in Singhalese they will bring us a true discourse penetrating all parts of the island. For as W. G. Sebald movingly wrote, individual and collective amnesia needs to fall away in an ‘archaeological excavations of the slag-heaps of our collective existence’ before we can move on. When that moment arrives, when the national consciousness within the country is at last awakened and is truly allowed to speak out, then Sri Lanka will heal itself. Until that time comes it will be better to stop pretending the Galle literary festival is anything more than a damn good holiday.

The Return Of The Crocodile

2011-02-16T04:27:00.000-08:00

What d’you think is causing it? Is it climate change, global warming, or the presence of too many foreigners that's created this new trend? Certainly the crying game has got more challenging, as they say in contemporary parlance. A recent study shows that, apparently, tears have always been available amongst the British but it was WW2 that stopped the flow.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12447950

‘A time of war is no time for weeping’ claims Dr Thomas Dixon, who has done a study on the subject.
Hmm, I thought that a war was precisely the time for weeping. For when your loved ones' lives are threatened, when the children born to you might have no future, when all that is personal and precious (never mind the beauty of your homeland that will be scarred forever) stands on the brink of destruction, isn’t that when you cry?
Hasn’t real grief always been a private thing? Perhaps the mistake I’m making is confusing grief with tears. It doesn’t matter, just good to know on authority that everyone in Britain is crying again. Even if it is only on TV Talent shows.
Meanwhile those of us who have no interest in crocodiles or statistics will continue to lament, albeit in private, ‘man’s inhumanity to man'.

Incidentally, I’ve just read that the best way to fight off a crocodile is to poke its eyes out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12448009

Bigger and Bigger...

2011-02-15T09:04:00.000-08:00

Yes I do see your confusion Jon Snow. On the…ehhem…Big Society subject, I mean.
http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/member-big-society/14699
My question is this. Why go for a Big Society when we can have a Bigger Society? Or if everyone thinks we should use a different word, how about a Majority Society, seeing as there are so many of us?
My view is that our PM should sack every one in central and local government (including himself) and give the jobs to volunteers. Then there’d be plenty of money to spare, which would take care of the question, ‘where’s the money coming from?’
Next, of course you don’t want to run the Police, Jon, but my neighbour does, and is happy to give it a go. Likewise the hospitals, the schools, etc. I’m prepared to run a library or two, filling it with copies of my latest book. I could give 27 of them away to refugees who can’t read in English and create an event called My World Night Of Twenty Seven Books.

As for regulating these little ventures, come, come; don’t worry about that. The banks have managed perfectly well in the past, and so shall we.
Meanwhile David Cameron can have a bit of time off to do what he’s best at. Talking rubbish.

Oh and by the way, my scheme took me only twenty seconds longer than the PM to think up.
Shall we vote on it?

Living like Ghosts: Britain's Untouchables

2011-02-14T00:25:00.000-08:00

In early February, in the midst of the mayhem that was beginning in Egypt and the natural disasters elsewhere, a study conducted by Oxfam and the Centre for Migration Policy Research at Swansea University was quietly published. It painted a depressing picture of daily life amongst asylum seekers in Britain.
http://bit.ly/hOSR46
Described by Kate Wareing, Director for Oxfam, as the lives of ghosts, the limbo, in which those fleeing persecution live is horrific. The system of applying and waiting, of re-applying and hoping against hope for asylum is designed, Oxfam claimed, ‘to make people feel as low as possible’, sending out ‘a message that those who are refused asylum are not even worthy of our compassion’. It would seem from this description that Britain has created a class of sub-humans, a society of outcasts, an order of Untouchables.
How has this happened? At what point did a country that prided itself in its desire to do good with its strong sense of secular responsibility and its model of liberal but traditional stability, lose its decency?
I was not born in the British Isles. I came here as a child from one of the far flung corners of what was then the British Empire. In the place where I was born, amongst the ordinary people scraping a living, the idea of Britishness was synonymous with reason and justice. In contrast to the chaos from which we sought to escape England appeared to us as a country where order prevailed. Where I came from, the accident of birth determined your position on the social ladder. In Britain, we imagined, things were different. Rightly or wrongly, in a tradition that dates back into the 19th century the wretched and the persecuted continued to flock to this country in the hope of asylum. In many places, perhaps because of a faint residue of Empire, a connection between Britishness and decency remains to this day. While it is perfectly clear that the British government cannot solve the world’s ills, and while many will argue that enough is enough (how many more immigrants can this small island hold?), surely there remains an argument for treating those that beg asylum with compassion, before their application is possibly and finally rejected.
According to the Oxfam report: ‘these people… have made heartbreaking decisions to leave their families and flee their homes. They end up living like ghosts on the streets of Britain because of government policy and decision-making that strips them of their rights and dignity.’
In the sub-continent of India Indians find the degradation in their inner city slums so great that often, the only thing possible is to ignore the problem.

Foreigners notice, and are shocked. Now in Britain, in the community of asylum seekers clinging to the twilight edges of our relatively affluent society, we seem to have a new class of Untouchable. Unable to communicate properly in English, often with no access to legal advice, destitute and living a hand to mouth existence, they depend on the kindness of others like themselves. Meanwhile the Government, embarrassed by the scale of the problem, does nothing. For as we know, highlighting the plight of these ghosts does not win votes.
In Suffolk, where I am Patron to ISCRE (Ipswich and Suffolk Council for Racial Equality) I was told appalling stories of unimaginative decision-making by the UK Border Agency which has neither the resources nor the training to process asylum applications in a humane way. And so these people, outcasts of our Big Society, wait, sometimes for years, to discover their fate. Recently, listening, often through an interpreter, to these men and women speak, I was confronted again and again by such lives wasted through negligence. There were children separated from parents, husbands from their wives, speaking quietly. The stories were unbearable.
By suppressing any discourse, by denying these new untouchables the right to a dignified wait for the rejection when it comes, by refusing them one single, decent moment’s respite before their fate engulfs them again, we as a nation, debase both them and ourselves.

World Book Night

2011-02-12T05:15:00.000-08:00

Here we go again. Another insane publicity stunt, this time we’re going to give books of our favourite authors away by the lorry load. Wouldn’t it be easier to keep the libraries due for closure going, instead, allow those who have forgotten how, to re-learn the wonderful art of personal choice? The whole idea of reading is to develop our own taste, form our own opinions, lose that famous sheep mentality. How on earth can we do that if someone is spoon-feeding us all the time?
According to Jamie Byng from Canongate, as quoted in The Guardian: ‘Having 20,000 passionate readers giving out between a million books they love in one night is going to create word of mouth for books on an unprecedented scale’ http://bit.ly/eyWlpW
No it isn’t. This is just another form of chaos that will end up in the Mind shop. I often find books at charity shops, their pristine state declaring they haven’t even been opened. Books bought on a two-for-three deal, perhaps and then dumped.
For not all books suit everyone’s mood or taste and a book that is 'discovered' by yourself has an excitement attached to its discovery that is something else entirely.
The reading public isn’t stupid whatever the global market might say to the contrary. Of course it suits the commercial world to create uniformity and rebrand this uniformity as word-of-mouth but how many times have you heard someone say, ‘I tried to read that but found it boring? What's all the fuss about?’ This Book Night isn't for lovers of books, it isn't for writers or readers. It won't make those who don't love books suddenly see the light. It isn’t as if The Great Night is setting out to educate anyone by providing a reading list, (as for example on a university course), followed by discussion. There will be no real analytical conversations afterwards, no comparisons with other writers, no discourse on plot and language; just a few platitudes that include the word ‘acclaimed!’ And as for the ridiculous idea that only a small minority object to being treated as sheep, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.

Empty Shelves

2011-02-10T12:41:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed? The concept of ‘the library’ is beginning to be eroded. Oh it’s a slow process all right. Lose a library or have some other more important service cut, is what they are telling us. But lose a library and along the way we will lose something much more important than a building with some books in it.

When as a child I came to live in Britain with my parents the first thing I discovered was the public library. Until then all my father could afford to buy me were four books a year. Two for Christmas and two more for my birthday in June. After I had finished reading each book I simply went back to the beginning and read them all over again. By the end of each year I knew the four books by heart and I had drawn up my wish list for the following year. My lists of course were hopeless because they always had more than four books on them.

But then, after a dramatic sea voyage of twenty-one days, chased by monsoons over inky black seas, I landed in this extraordinary place where the unlimited exchange of books was possible. It was the 1960s.

‘See,’ my father said, after I had joined the public library and received my blue library tickets, ‘the English love books and they want everyone to love them too.’

I was ten years old; thrilled to be in the country that had given us Shakespeare.

For the next eight years until I left London to go to university, the public library, off the Brixton Road, was a large and important part of my world. After the struggle and the poverty of Colombo I had finally found my paradise.

It was here, in this place that I met Ratty and Toad and Gerald Durrell’s family and many other animal. There were the Brontës, Charles and Mary Lamb and, Oh a wonderful book called ‘The Little White Horse’, which afterwards, I thought I had only dreamt of, as I could never find it again.

Years went by in this way as I stretched out in the back garden in the summer holidays, or curled up on my bed in winter. With a book and my cat.

I grew older and began to move on to fresh pastures with many untapped classics. By the time I was seventeen I found myself dreaming of Anna Karenina and Natasha, while having nightmares over Raskolnikov in ‘Crime and Punishment’. No one told me what I should read, there was no nanny state in those days, no best-sellers lists, no recommended reading; no abridged versions of Dickens or George Eliot. So that now and again, in between the books I found ‘boring’ came the unexpected discoveries that were to mark me for ever and mould me into a writer. James Baldwin’s, ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’, was one such example, ‘Matilda’s England’, by William Trevor was another, while Jean Rhys’s ‘Quartet’ made me simply long to have an adventure in Paris. These books were my own discoveries and I loved them all the more because of it. And the beauty of the library was, I could make mistakes, take out a book that I ended up disliking only to return it, without losing any money. It was in this way, with a growing spirit of adventure, that I began to develop my own taste in literature. It was a personal thing, one that remains with me today.

Independent reading, that was what that library gave me.To take away even one such institution is to take away the possibility for the individual child to make such magical discoveries. It is as shocking as shutting a museum and putting all the exhibits on line. It just isn’t the thing to do.

A Sense of Home: India and the Jaipur Literary Festival.

2011-02-09T05:49:00.000-08:00

Dawn breaks over Delhi as our train snakes across the outskirts of the city. All over these dust scarred suburbs there are small fires around which groups of figures crouch. Like shadow puppets in waiting. The train gathers speed and I catch a glimpse of a man stretched out on a makeshift bed beside a flickering bonfire. Somewhere in my head a memory is triggered. The lights blink through the trees, sharper than the neon, stronger than the hesitant dawn. Like the fireflies Ruskin saw in Italy, ‘moving like fine-broken starlight through the purple leaves.’ These are the street people, my Indian friend tells me later, who have nothing but bits of wood to keep them warm against the chill January air. My eyes are gritty with tiredness. I cannot keep my camera steady for the long exposure it needs in this uncertain light. So I simply have to look. And remember.

The sky lightens and lightens but a milky mist floats over the ground. It shrouds the laurel and the ‘boom’ trees, knee deep, now, in mile after mile of yellow mustard fields. The land appears as a watercolour painting, softened and remote. And utterly beautiful. For the second time I am reminded of Italy and the countryside of the Bassa, the lower Po plain. A land also laden with dreams and myths; a landscape marked by man and his temporary existence.

It is forty-seven years since I have witnessed an Eastern sunrise but it seems I have not forgotten the sense of it. Perhaps that is why I have always felt at home in Italy.

Jaipur plunges us into a more direct kind of colour. Kingfisher blues and crumbling pinks, marigold-yellow holy trees and crimson pomegranate seeds against a sun-stained hand. For a painter to rediscover colour in this way is enormously thrilling. Years ago, as a child, as the boat carrying me to England headed for Southampton’s docks, I decided to turn my back on colour. I have no idea why. But for now just being in the midst of it all is enough. Ideas flit and swim around and then are lost in an overlay of other thoughts. How many will remain intact when I go back to England, remains to be seen. My sketchbooks bulges with half-finished drawings, labels of a particular searing green, small exquisite matchbox lids and scraps of hand dyed cotton. I am returning home.

At the festival people approach me. Some have flown from Colombo for this largest of literary events in the calendar. I scan their faces, foolishly looking for the place where I was born, knowing I shall not visit it again. Not until the politics within the country changes; until the wrong that was done is redressed. That is another story, too painful to contemplate at this moment. For here in Jaipur all is warmth and friendliness. I meet two wonderful Marathi writers secure in the language in which they write, secure in the place where they were born and have always lived.

On the last night of the festival, on the way back in the taxi, one of them begins to sing a morning raga. Quickly we take out our mobile phones, wanting to capture the moment, telling our singer laughingly, that his voice is that of a much younger man.
‘I know,’ he says, unperturbed, a mischievous glint in his eye.
In the now deserted street an elephant and its keeper returning from a wedding wait patiently for our car to pass before lumbering on, bells tinkling delicately into the night. In the darkness the image is a fleeting one.

Back in Delhi, before I begin the long flight to Heathrow, my new friend says,

‘Come back, Roma, and I will take you to the south where you will feel even closer to the land.’

Brixton Beach

2009-12-20T07:46:00.000-08:00