
“Unmarriageable’, is it a word? Is it in the dictionary, I mean.” I asked my interviewee. “I think so,” replied novelist Ashok Ferrey, adding “I haven’t checked. I’m sure it is,” surmised this year’s Gratiaen Prize winner, who on the 22nd of June clinched the highly coveted Sri Lankan literary prize for his novel ‘The Unmarriageable Man’, Published by Penguin Random House India.
Ashok touched on how Jane Austen novels roll out ‘marriageable’ as a term of character description, and playing on that he put a spin to it, turning the idea on its head, adding the prefix that creates the negativism, since he sees how Sri Lankans tend to dwell on and get drawn to, ‘the negative’.
The crux of the conversation
Ashok Ferrey’s fiction is widely known in urban Sri Lanka, and enjoys a readership internationally. His works are generally characterised by wit, sarcasm and an overall vein for comicality; or one could say his best know works thus far, are of such facets.
After no less than four short listings for the Gratiaen Prize, in the course of his fiction writing career up to 2020, which includes two volumes of short stories, and three novels, ‘The Unmarriageable Man’, published in 2021, his fourth novel, delivered Colqombo’s most celebrated popular fiction writer, the much coveted Gratiaen laurels. What characterises his craft as a fiction writer, and what characterised ‘The Unmarriageable Man’ as the one to win the Gratiaen?
That was the crux of the conversation I had with Ashok on Tuesday 28th June, at his residence, which is the basis of this article.
Factors forming (the) ‘Ferrey form’
Every writer is also a reader, I said, to which proposition Ashok readily acceded and further agreed that writers are influenced by their favourite authors.
“Yes, I did try to emulate, if that’s what you mean.” He said and explained how English writer Evelyn Waugh’s novels especially had an impact on how his own craft and narrative found (its) ‘Ferrey form’.
Along with the works of Waugh, English novelist Graham Greene, and Indian author R. K. Narayan were also formidable forces influencing Ashok’s writing.
“They are superbly witty,” commented this year’s Gratiaen winner about his favourite writers, adding, “Wit has gone out of fashion. And they deftly deal with morals through their wit.
Being a humourist is not easy. It needs a deft touch. To me humour is god given. And I think it is much more difficult to make a person laugh than cry. One comma out of place and you lose the joke.
If you have to explain the joke to someone, it’s no longer a joke.”
Deviating from typical ‘Ferrey fiction’
Touching on the fact that ‘The Unmarriageable Man’ doesn’t come off as the typical wit and comedy driven ‘Ferrey fiction’, Ashok went onto speak of his craft cultivated over the years as a writer of humourous fiction, for which he is admittedly best known.
“I love comedy and much of my earlier fiction has been in that direction. I guess that’s the shallow in me,” said Ashok, indicating, I believe, through the unspoken binary opposition to that line, that within him is a ‘depth’ which is less revealed, and perhaps less explored; until, I suppose, ‘The Unmarriageable Man’ came along.
After all, no one is two dimensional or a character composed of a single layer. Perhaps his new novel has thrust him to explore new depths within.
Playing for laughs and unboxed sorrows
Ashok explained how he views the engagements of writing humourous fiction that seems to please many readers as opposed to tragic and profound novels, “To me comedy is more technically difficult. ‘Colpetty People’ was played for laughs. Evelyn Waugh’s style had an effect on ‘Serendipity’, and I suppose at a subconscious level I was trying to emulate Waugh’s art deco style. But Waugh wrote hugely emotional novels as well.” Ashok pointed out that his favourite writers mentioned afore do alternate, as their works are not always humourous.
He said Waugh’s famous novel ‘Brideshead Revisited’ is a profound novel about tragedy that is introspective and deals with emotions of loss and coming to terms with the past. “Evelyn Waugh was able to write funny, shallow stuff, and profound novels.
To me each of the two types is equally valid. I too alternate. For me it’s a technical skill of working across a range of emotions.” Remarked Ashok stating regardless of which category a work of fiction is classified in, he sincerely believes ‘it must come from the heart’. “The Unmarriageable Man is introspective,” he stated quite decidedly and said a literary agent in the UK had remarked that “it reads too much like a memoir”.
A life experience transformed into fiction
“How much of it is autobiographical?” I asked my interviewee point blank. “It’s not completely autobiographical.” Was Ashok’s instant and definitive answer, and went on to explain what was behind the birth of ‘The Unmarriageable Man’. It was a book born out of his dealing with tragedy, he explained, and went into detail how his Gratiaen winner was born out of his reflections on and introspection of, how he feels about his own father’s passing, which happened about two decades ago.
A departure that happened after a recovery from cancer that then paved the way to an end that could be called, after being looked at from many angles, a ‘clinical killing’ by the ‘medical industry’. An industry which is practically in perpetual experiments with pharmaceuticals.
Ashok greatly regrets the decision to concede to administer the prescribed course of medication to his father who had actually recovered from cancer only to be made to decline due to the drugs imposed upon him. I cannot help but feel by what was said, that Ashok felt he had unwittingly colluded with the medical experts in his father’s demise. It took him twenty years to get started on this book he said, and once he was half way through, what further intensified the emotional currents at work, as revealed by Ashok, was that his mother went into decline.
‘Exhausting grief’ put to rest
He found himself revisiting emotions of the past, of issues not fully dealt with, while being made to grapple with a new ‘inevitable’. Another irreplaceable loss began looming. And what made it worse was that he had to deal with it without ‘sibling support’ at ‘ground level’, so to say. Both his sister and brother live overseas, and that left Ashok without the comfort of having their physical presence by his side during that time of considerable emotional distress. Her passing happened in 2019. ‘The Unmarriageable Man’ is dedicated to her memory; Tilly Mudalnayake. Grief was thus undeniably at the heart of ‘The Unmarriageable Man’. A book which its author said was owed to ‘the exhausting grief’ he underwent. Writing ‘The Unmarriageable Man’ was thus to a great extent a cathartic engagement.
I asked Ashok if Sanjay de Silva, the protagonist in ‘The Unmarriageable Man’, was made to ‘carry’ Ashok’s grief? “A perceptive comment,” my interviewee remarked, and answered, “Yes, I gave him my grief. I outsourced my grief. I literally gave him a gunny sack. I passed on my grief.” The whole engagement with the creative process of conceptualising the premise of ‘The Unmarriageable Man’ and they writing it was like “exorcising a demon”, said the author of ‘The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons’ (Ashok’s previous novel), and added “You feel you don’t need to visit it again.”
Do not over egg the pudding
What merits and traits characterise ‘The Unmarriageable Man’ in comparison to his previous works of fiction, to the extent it had an impact to being adjudged the winner of the Gratiaen? “Could it have been the plot or setting?” I asked. Ashok answered with a firm “No”, and proceeded, with explanatory enthusiasm “There are words in this book that I wouldn’t have used otherwise. The Gratiaen citation says the book shows ‘technical and linguistic brilliance’, and that language came out of the emotions that characterise this work. Not the plot or setting. It were the emotions that demanded certain words in this book.” Ashok explained that he believes in writing that provides accessibility, and not a formulated text that displays authorial prowess for grandiose vocabulary.
“I don’t”, he said, “Write with a thesaurus on my table, like some writers do.” What richness of linguistic expression found in this book is the result of what came from the heart once he had conceived the story in his head, he said. The emotions at work dictated the language for the narrative. “You owe it to yourself not to over egg the pudding.
qAt some point you get sick of it.”, he said, explicating his pudding metaphor as what happens when a writer, in order to achieve a contrived richness of language, keeps adding words and builds a plethora of flowery words to create a narrative that bombards the reader with grandiose vocabulary for the sake of it. “There is after all, only so many eggs you can add when making a watalappan.” Ashok remarked, and noted, “Exceed the limit and it makes you feel sick.”
A decision and a free handed heart
An Oxford graduate in Mathematics, Ashok’s belief and practice of ‘writing from the heart’ doesn’t translate to a craft to do with writing that is an unbridled spontaneous emotional outpour completely bereft of any preconceived direction. The mathematician in him too has a hand in how his work as an author of fiction pans out. “I structure it in my head. What do I want to write about? I ask myself.
That is a technical decision,” he said. Thus the mathematician in him sets the initial groundwork. “And then,” he added, “I put that aside, and I write from the heart.” The structure, as per Ashok’s craft, gets cast into the subconscious I believe; ‘put aside’ doesn’t mean discarded. Thus the technical and the artistic work at varying levels to deliver a story that unveils its author’s vision.
A mission for expression...
From what I gathered, ‘The Unmarriageable Man’ has been, for its author, a mission for expression. A mission that reaped considerable results. But it also perhaps marks a divergence from the ‘Ferrey fiction’ urban Sri Lanka is so familiar and fond of. As I draw towards the conclusion of this article, I am reminded of what I read in the novel ‘Immortality’ by Milan Kundera, a novelist I much revere. Kundera believes that once the act of writing a novel has been completed, the writer undergoes a change within.
Every experience of writing a new novel changes something within the writer, and he doesn’t come out of that process the same man. The creator, is invariably, affected by the creation. How much did ‘The Unmarriageable Man’ change Ashok Ferrey? I did not ask. Has he decided on what to write next? Has he started his next book? I did not ask. In what direction will his heart course his writing hand in days ahead? Time, will surely tell.