After hours with a critic

By Rajpal Abeynayake

Should have guessed it. When the literary aficionados after a fashion, at the recently concluded Galle Literary Festival, wanted to hear a Resident Critic and invited some “constructive criticism’’ by yours truly, they in fact seemed to have wanted a ventriloquist’s doll who would say the same things that the worthies of the festival committee might have said.
Resident critic? No, they seem to have wanted a tenant sweetheart.
Sorry, wrong number.
I was asked to speak as ‘Resident Critic’ at the 2010 Galle Literary Festival and I did hope to underscore the fact that there is no tradition of literary criticism in this country to speak of, and at least some of what was said to me after the session proves it —— all they want there is the sickly-sweet rosewater of effusive praise.
Most chose to go with the Mama’s Cafe affair - - the fact that I pointed out that those who put-on a literary festival should not have a session at a place that practices apartheid against the locals.

No boxing bout

Trust them to forget that the more important point I made was that there is no place for shallow works of ‘literature’ at the festival —- no place for sham glam work whose only function would be to humour some Sri Lankan writers’ literary pretensions.
Besides, a critique is a critique, but most that raised their voices against the session were looking for a boxing bout.
Either I had to demolish the Galle Literary Festival completely or consider myself demolished.
But I had not come to the Festival either to praise it or bury it. The entire effort was to raise some points of argument that would serve in the end, to constructively help address some of the aspects of the Festival that perhaps needs some corrective fine-tuning.
But everybody seems to want to stay on the issue of the Mama’s apartheid Cafe.
Yet, the over the top reactions with regard to that particular issue made my day, I must say. The giggles have given me gastritis.
One fellow comes up to me after the session and says “you sounded like one of those Hela Urumaya guys.’’
This after the audience insisted on giving this topic a full airing with everybody wanting to make their own condemnation of such hotels that practice colour bar against the locals “in the entire southern coast of Sri Lanka’’ as we were told by one audience member. As if I was to blame if the audience wanted to dwell on the subject with their prolonged questions, and the moderator saw no problem with that?
The audience was so concerned about the issue that interlocutors kept this particular subject alive for at least twenty minutes. At the end of it however, most who make any real appraisal of the session know these people who spoke about the issue (“we don’t like this apartheid practice, but..’’) are on denial.
Yes, they say, they do not want to go to places that do not serve locals but bringing it to the attention of the GLF organizers who have events at such places is “going away on a tangent’’ “wasting time’’ and “being Hela urumaya.’’
Sad.
As a friend of mine observed after the session, this is one of the few countries perhaps which encourages locals to look down upon their own. It reminded me of a paragraph from Barack Obama’s autobiography’ Dreams From My Father’.

Neglect to serve

Obama’s half sister Auma and Barack visit a Kenyan Cafe in Nairobi and the waiters neglect to serve these two African Americans, being preoccupied with serving the whites at that swank establishment.
Obama who is on a first visit to Kenya having grown up in USA is sensitive enough to relate to sister Auma’s reaction when the sister berates a waiter with “you ——————, how can you do this to your own people?’’
But in Sri Lanka, they’d rather be on denial. Says a shameless company director who came for the Resident Critic session — let’s call him Aesop Ally —— that the entire thing is irrelevant!
Yeah right. A literary festival promising to be an ennobling event — about literature of course not about horses, jockeys and dung —- organizes a festival at a venue that practices apartheid, concurrent with sessions comprehensively deploring apartheid.
The organizers are told about it, and in fact this writer wrote about this very issue in the newspapers after last year’s GLF, but they continue to use the venue to stage a festival event.
But the boss of Mamas ..... I mean Emma’s, Aesop Ally, has to put his big fat foot right into his brick head and say this has nothing to do with the festival.
He also berates me for what? - - For asking questions at the Literary Festival.
Not even for asking ‘provocative’ question or ‘irrelevant’ questions - - but merely for asking questions.
Aesop Ally obviously thinks that a literary festival is some place you do the kinds of commercial things he does in his mundane day to day existence — you know, pass drugs, take money, sell airplane tickets, scratch behind the ear, make more money, that type of thing.
But these Aesop Ally types who come for literary festivals to hobnob while they haven’t read beyond A is for Aesop and C is for Cat and D is for Daft are so much comic relief --- that with them around, one needs not invite writers such as Moses Isegawa from Uganda to provoke the laughs.
Unbeknownst to themselves the Aesop Allys do all the comic bits...
Oh anyway, that’s critiquing the Galle literary Festival for you, in a nutshell.

The follow-up is from this session:

Resident Critic Maritime Museum

Rajpal Abeynayake tells us what he dislikes about the Galle Literary Festival(GLF). And you get to ask the questions this time. Moderated by Sunila Galpatti, Director of the GLF this year