A message to parents in his common story rarely narrated
Continuing our series on the Gratiaen Prize short-listed writers, Yomal Senerath-Yapa talks to Upali Mahaliyana
Roald Dahl once said he does not envy the lot of those authors who write full time for a living. The desperate clawing for inspiration, daily, seemed to him to trap you within your imagination. Dahl knew his happy success as a writer came from having taken up the pen after hanging up his working boots- with a treasure trove of experience around the world at the back of his mind from which he could draw freely.
Upali Mahaliyana is that same blessed kind of an autumnal writer. An electrical engineer with a long career across the globe, he stumbled into writing partly to allay the boredom of retirement and partly to oblige urging friends- and found his imagination to be something of an eternal spring. Youthful Escapades is his second novel and the Gratiaen judges were enthusiastic about a work that had an ‘incredibly affective grasp of the adult legacies of the abuse of under-aged men, and its impact on the lives they endeavour to build.’
He has the pick of a bounty of experiences- having led a rich, fulfilling life. He was born in the southern town of Baddegama, left for Galle for his secondary educationand entered the Peradeniya University at 17 as an engineering student- followed by a long career in Colombo, Zambia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia.
The first work Upali produced was Different Worlds- written somewhere around the mid-2010s- a family saga straddling four generations reminiscent of Martin Wickremesinghe’s Gamperaliya and its sequels- beginning in a crumbling ‘Arachchi Gedara’- home to a family of village gentry. But rather unlike Gamperaliya, the third generation of this family moves out to contemporary Australia, and their progeny have to grapple with different issues- like the complications inherent in open gay relationships, for example.
Youthful Escapades, the shortlisted work, begins with the murder of Samadara, a fashion designer who seems to possess all that a woman could wish for: beauty, a thriving haute couture business, a family home in Cinnamon Gardens, a loving husband and children.
As the murder trial unravels, however, evidence gathers of a dark, illicit and poisonous desire that had eaten at the heart of this glamorous woman: her attraction to young boys. Through retrospection we see three of her young paramours or victims (it is a shadowy region there)- now grown up- out of whom Suneth, now a successful engineer, plays protagonist.
The three boys concerned react to their first sexual experience, at too young an age, in three different ways. Their emotional scars run very deep, and they find themselves trapped in guilt and remorse.
The three boys are in their midteen years- which Upali says is “the most vulnerable age- because they get to it knowingly- and that causes immense guilt. They do not know that they are at an age when they are not mature enough to make decisions”.
Although the novel does not draw from personal experience, it is highly sensitive in the way it looks at the later, adult lives of the three victims- how one of them was on the brink of committing suicide but would later achieve success in life, how another completely disintegrates, traumatized, and is almost ruined, while the protagonist, Suneth, though he seemed to emerge square-shouldered and unscathed, is really lacerated in the soul. All the boys’ adult relationships are affected by that illicit sexual bonding.
The major reason why he wrote the story, apart from the fact that it is a common story rarely narratedhidden in plain sight- is that Upali wanted to alert parents to this murky danger.
Yet Samadara is not cast as the villainess in spite of her predilections (which seem more unfortunate than predatory). She is in fact a benevolent, generous and even a kind, open hearted woman, helping even those who hurt her.
The novel is thus quite complex and rich, also exploring the expanding horizons of a boy on the passage to manhood and maturity in Sri Lanka and Australia. One of the most delightful things about the work is that it leaves the reader to read between lines- following clues embedded in conversations and passages. It also celebrates love in manifold forms: “lust, passion, platonic love and brotherly love and (always existent but rarely displayed) parental love.”
Youthful Escapades, submitted as a manuscript, will be published soon, while there are two other novels in the pipeline for Upali- TomTom Boy and Just One Slip.
Tom-Tom Boy is the story of two young Buddhist monks who are best friends- one of whom has taken robes because his mother died prematurely. His sole ambition has been to collect merit to save her from an untimely death in later lives.
It is only later as an undergraduate that the monk is hit by the immensity of the sacrifice he had made when a boy. The book explores the inner workings of a Buddhist temple and such elements of that society as the caste system.
Just One Slip, the fourth novel, is the story of two brothers- whose relationship is closely akin to one between father and son given the 20 year gap between them. The younger sibling enters university, but fails at love and then at the exams. He then suddenly disappears, and the narration is by the paternal older brother who looks back poignantly at shared memories.
With its drama both human and emotional, many reviewers have seen in Youthful Escapades the makings of a brilliant art film. Upali would love to see an emerging young Lester James Peries take on the challenge of breathing life to this story- a bildungsroman in retrospect- of lives damaged by passion, but with a new dawn of hope and resilience at the end as Suneth and his wife plan to conquer new peaks (literally and metaphorically), and the others too look to a sunny future leaving the gloom behind.