Ashok Ferrey wins 2021 Gratiaen Prize for creative writing

I felt impelled to start my piece on Ferrey and the Gratiaen with his much quoted comment each time he was short listed as it is indicative of the man himself: draws fun from even failure, takes things on the bump as we say, and is happy.

This article is the result of an email cum telephone interview. I could have walked to his Flower Road, Colombo 7 home, or he to mine. But the travel restrictions imposed on us have good influences too: we decided that I ask and get replies without actually meeting and spending time that way. Hence within the article, I often quote what he wrote in answer to the questions I posed to him.

I know Ashok from quite some time back and his lovely wife Mandy who is all concern for others. Meeting her on a stroll or at the pool has her asking me in genuine concern – can you manage OK? I never missed Ashok’s evening sessions at the Closenburg Hotel during the Galle Literary Festivals, where lesser publicized Sri Lankan writers showcased their creative writing. Ashok and others also dramatized parts of novels, often his.

Family

Ashok’s father is from a well established family in Kandy, their family home being just above the Kandy Convent in Katukelle. He was an accountant and financier. Ashok writes: “My father’s ancestor was the Lord High Treasurer to the last King of Kandy. I have made light of his family history in my book The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons. The book actually takes place in the house I was currently restoring – in my other capacity as builder.

My mother was Sri Lanka’s first London-qualified beautician and quite a celebrity in her day, with a widely-read column in the Daily News of the time. (Her editor was the author and translator Vijita Fernando.) Mother would get proposals in the post from adoring fans who didn’t know she was already married; it drove my father wild. Fifty years ago, I remember meeting her teachers in England – Alfred Morris and Leida Costigan. Leida told me how she had worked for the firm Cyclax in Bond Street that did the hair and make-up for the Queen’s Coronation. They worked through the night and all those posh ladies had to sleep in chairs so their hair and tiaras wouldn’t be spoilt before the coronation next morning. This sort of commitment impressed me deeply as a schoolboy – I couldn’t imagine sacrificing my sleep for anyone, not even the Queen!”

Education

“I started life at St Joseph’s (for Catholics of the time it was unthinkable to be educated outside the Church) followed by the American School in Mogadishu, with a brief three-month stint in Nairobi. At the age of eleven I was packed off to boarding school in the UK, to a Benedictine Monastery in Sussex called Worth Abbey. Then on to read Pure Mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford University, where the Head Porter actually remembered SWRD Bandaranaike who had been at the same college 50 years before me. He called him ‘the man with the silver tongue.’”

I asked Ashok for personal information as I said it was to satisfy my women readers’ curiosity. We women love to know the ‘background’ of a person with not the curiosity that killed the cat but to place a person in correct perspective. Strong believers are we of family, breeding and school being significant in character creation and the final who you are. He replied in addition to the info on his parents: “My wife Mandy, and two children Rehan (an actor/director, who most recently acted in Funny Boy) and Francesca (known as Q, a singer/composer whose rap single ‘100K’ was released on July 6). I joke that as a proper South Asian father I long for children who are doctors, lawyers or accountants – to keep me in the style to which I was never accustomed. In fact I am incredibly proud of my two and their mind-blowing creativity!”

Creativity and innovative adventuring has been passed on by Ashok to his two children.

Creative writing

I posed the questions: ‘When did you start writing as a must-give-into impulse? Is it only prose you write?’ He replied thus:

“Through most of my life, writing was absolutely the last thing on my mind. I was a Maths nerd who ended up a builder. At the tender age of forty-two the stress of my father’s cancer and death drove me to pick up a pencil and a Raheema’s exercise book: the writing just poured out of me. That tale of my very personal grief is told in the new book The Unmarriageable Man.

“Sadly, I write only prose. The truth is that I am scared of poetry. It is a phobia from schooldays. I am frequently asked if I write poetry – because readers think they hear a certain music in the prose. But if so, this is totally unplanned! However I do love reading other people’s poetry out loud. I am called to do this quite frequently – I used to love reading Anne Ranasinghe’s or Ramya Jirasinghe’s poetry to audiences.”

Yes, that comment people made is correct; Ashok uses words not plain direct but with a poetic slant in style. But to me what emerges from most of his books is the sheer joy and fun of living with the writer often moving to the laughable angle of happenings or people or things.

I asked him whether he writes according to a routine or timetable – disciplined in fact or as many do –mostly freshers in creative writing – whenever the need/urge comes upon one. Here quoted is his answer:

“I am lucky. I have other disciplines to fall back on. I design and build houses, and my actual day job is that of Personal Trainer. The writing only happens in those chaotic spaces in-between. I write when I feel the almost biological need to, and when I do actually begin, the process is very fast – five months or so for that first draft. For instance, much of The Professional was written during a back-packing holiday in Portugal. Every evening we arrived at whichever hostel we were staying at, and I would write my 400 words; and edit it next morning before we caught the bus to wherever next. While I napped on the bus the next few pages would form in my head, ready for that evening’s writing.” That is wonderful! A most unusual writer is Ashok Ferrey. I suppose it is proof that a very busy schedule calls for such as getting lost in the mind, through creative writing in this case.

Innovatory moves

I know Ashok has been involved in innovative inaugurations of literary happenings in SL, so I enquired specifically about the sessions at Closenburg Hotel, during GLFs.

“I always felt that the Galle Lit Fest never adequately showcased homegrown Sri Lankan writers. This was because Sri Lankan audiences, I was told, only came to listen to foreign writers! So every year at the festival I organized a parallel event called Stories at Sunset, where the cream of Sri Lankan writing was showcased. This was a fringe event and hugely popular – there were always audiences of two to three hundred – putting paid to the theory that Sri Lankans only came to listen to foreigners.” He made room for novice writers too.

‘Could you please comment on English creative writing in SL?’ was my final request via email. “Last year I was one of the judges of the Gratiaen Prize. Perhaps it was because of Covid, with many people having time on their hands: the number of entries was huge! What most struck me was the range of writing, the many diverse types of book entered. We actually gave the prize to a medical thriller, Carmel Miranda’s Crossmatch. This venturing into other genres is I think a very good thing – it shows that the ‘profession’ is maturing. In other words, Sri Lankan writing is no longer only about pretty young girls in chintz, skipping through paddy fields to the sound of flute and drum.” Typical Ashok Ferry comment: light, a mite sarcastic, fun impregnated but hitting the nail on the head.

The 2021 Gratiaen Prize winning novel

The Unmarriageable Man has protagonist Sanjay de Silva approached by a busybody dame at his father’s funeral with the supposition he would go overseas; which he does. He lives in London in the 1980s and becomes a builder developing and selling, at profit, houses he buys and converts to apartments. He completes 84 flats while love and other accompaniments of life assail him; love, disappointment and pain woven in. “Grief is only the transmutation of love, of the very same chemical composition…”

The famous playwright Sir David Hare commented on the publication: “This fabulous chronicle of Sri Lankan youth sparkles with Ferrey’s characteristic lightness of tone, which smuggles in huge emotional impact.”

“A wonderful writer” was Alexander McCall Smith’s comment. McCall Smith, one of the world’s most prolific and best loved authors, was a professor of medical law and then moved to full time fiction writing.

Need anyone say anything more?