Romesh’s parents, part of the English speaking middle classes, were of the same generation as Jason and Pearl Ducal of his novel ‘The Sandglass’ – a young couple making their rather heady way up in the world- in the hopeful dawn of immediately post-independent Ceylon. Ironically, it was much later, when long established in England, that he would dive into the soul of his birthplace using his imagination, and weaving stories from its rich paradisiacal warp and weft. Not only because (rather unusually for that particular period) he had been abroad with his father, but also because he was immersed in swashbuckling trashy fiction – spy stories, thrillers, westerns and James Bonds- and films streaming in from the same world.
But as a child he was imaginatively planted in the west. Romesh grew up in nearby Havelock Town and schooled at Royal College. We slipped into a conversation with this highly lyrical practitioner of prose. Romesh was in Colombo last month in connection with the upcoming Fairway Galle Literary Festival- a celebration with which he has an umbilical connection, and where he will next year again participate. His most famous work probably remains ‘Reef’, the book that got shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994. But in his books he also dipped into the lives of many other Sri Lankans, coming from many milieux. Which is sad- because he chronicled these landscapes in his fiction- penetrating hedges and walls and gardens of Colombo Seven.
Few passers-by, if any at all, would recognize his unruly mop of hair, poetic deep black eyes or smooth, boyish face.
You can tell by his appearance, which in a tweedy way spells Oxbridge. Pic by Ranjith PereraĪgainst the backdrop of giant flamboyants and the fashionable bungalows of shady Horton Place, Romesh Gunesekera is obviously a bird of passage.
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