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Anil's
Ghost
by
Michael Ondaatje
Review by Aparita Bhandari
Can a book be so beautiful and
so sad? Michael Ondaatje seems to effortlessly fuse the
two together in his latest book, Anil's Ghost, with the
same deceptive ease that he blurs the boundaries between
poetry and prose. There is instance after instance when
the lines just hit you, with an indescribable force - an
image here, a metaphor there, or a turn of phrase, all sprinkled
liberally throughout the book so that as you turn another
page, your mind is blown away, one more time.
As per the recent trend in his fiction and poetry, Ondaatje
once again returns to Sri Lanka with this book that has
the present times of political turmoil as it's backdrop.
The choice of such a setting proves to be both the strength
and the drawback of this book, which nevertheless deserves
every single line of praise that have been accorded to it
by various reviews. For people who have a firsthand awareness
of the context that Ondaatje writes about, reading the book
too 'literally' could pose a problem. They might accuse
Ondaatje of aesthetizing brutal realties of the political
unrest in Sri Lanka. For such people, statements such as
those uttered by Sarath Diyasena, "Now we all have blood
on our clothes", become too facile, reflecting, perhaps,
a bourgeois attitude towards the stark realities of a nation
torn by warring parties.
However, such reactions fail to recognize the artifice that
surrounds the book. Ondaatje is not out to write a 'realistic'
novel about the political machinations of Sri Lanka. That
he can do so is obviously apparent from the brilliantly
short description of the murder of an official on a train.
But Ondaatje refuses to write such a novel. That he writes
the book with such poetic virtuosity, then, should immediately
caution the reader to desist from seeking a realistic novel,
as does his penchant for creating a strong thematic line
and characters linked with a recurrent pattern of themes.
Ondaatje constantly shifts the focus away from politics,
choosing to center the novel on the Anil Tissera's search
- the search for the identity of a skeleton. Unraveling
the mystery of the skeleton, with a forensic anthropologist
(Anil), an archaeologist (Sarath), a historian (Palipana),
one cannot escape a theme that is vintage Ondaatje - history.
Just as Palipana's research at the end of his career is
dismissed, his truth thus becoming a fiction, Ondaatje seems
to pointing to the failure of people to 'see' beyond politically
motivated issues. (In such a context, it is also interesting
to note that Palipana is the 'blind' seer, someone with
an access to a 'truth' that is invisible to all else.) Ondaatje
juxtaposes the contemporary setting with various histories,
the short historical tracts that appear at regular intervals,
the history of the skeleton and the various histories of
the characters. This refusal to be trapped by politics can
also be seen in the way characters are associated recurrent
patterns of themes, Anil with water (the swimmer) and Sarath
with earth, emphasizing the artifice that pervades Anil's
Ghost.
The part that I personally loved in the book, if one had
to choose, was the way Ondaatje has characterized the drug-popping
doctor, Gamini. Ondaatje is brilliant in the way he portrays
these characters who do not seem to be fully aware of themselves,
with some unanswered questions always surrounding them.
There is a certain poignancy about Gamini and his relationship
with family and society. This poignancy, as well as the
poetry that suffuses the text, only heightens the senselessness
of the violence that the characters find themselves faced
with.
Meticulously researched, beautifully written, and full of
themes, images and issues that require a twenty-page essay,
Ondaatje latest work is worth the seven year wait. For all
the literary geeks out there, like me, as well as Ondaatje
fans, or both, this is a must buy.
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