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What we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping styles that do not reflect our true self at all but the loss of it.” It’s a subtle thing, freedom. It takes effort; it takes attention and focus to not act something like an automaton. Although we do have freedom, we exercise it only when we strive for awareness, when we are conscious not just of the content of the mind but also of the mind itself as a process.’ Reading The Hungry Ghosts is like exploring a lake in a handcrafted canoe. It might not be as easy or efficient as using say, a motor boat, but you can't help but enjoy the slow, steady and deliberate journey that you're being taken on. Selvaduri's craft is in the tiny, perfect grains of literature, planted there intentionally for you to admire and connect, from the distinct language the characters use, that make you feel as if you've met his characters, to the repeated use of stories and phrases.
the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with
I've never been to Sri Lanka, but I know that on the street in Kolkata, people speak in a mix of languages -- Bengali, Hindi and English -- tangled together in various proportions, depending on the preferences and abilities of the speaker and listener. I suspect it's the same in Colombo. It would seem only natural then, to find thriving code-switching or creole literatures in these places.This is a story about a gay, upper-middle-class Sri Lankan teenager's immigration to Canada with his mother and sister to escape the island's ethnic violence and homophobia. In fact except for Hema and David (and that only at the very very end of the book - too little, too late), no one is this book is happy or kind or funny or decent. No one is redeemed or consoled. This is a world peopled by the mean, the petty, and the emotionally stupid. Especially Shivan.
the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
Selvadurai recounted an account of the discomfort he and his partner experienced during a period spent in Sri Lanka in 1997 in his essay "Coming Out" in Time Asia's special issue on the Asian diaspora in 2003. Methods for gaining self-knowledge and self-mastery through conscious awareness strengthen the mind’s capacity to act as its own impartial observer. Among the simplest and most skilful of the meditative techniques taught in many spiritual traditions is the disciplined practice of what Buddhists call ‘bare attention’. Nietzsche called Buddha ‘that profound physiologist’ and his teachings less a religion than a ‘kind of hygiene’...’ Many of our automatic brain processes have to do with either wanting something or not wanting something else – very much the way a small child’s mental life functions. We are forever desiring or longing, or judging and rejecting. Mental hygiene consists of noticing the ebb and flow of all those automatic grasping or rejecting impulses without being hooked by then. Bare attention is directed not only toward what’s happening on the outside, but also to what’s taking place on the inside. Defined by a fusion of rage and desire, tormented by unfulfilled cravings and insatiably demanding impossible satisfactions, hungry ghosts are condemned to inhabit shadowy and dismal places in the realm of the living. Their specific hunger varies according to their past karma and the sins they are atoning for. Some can eat but find it impossible to find food or drink. Others may find food and drink, but have pinhole mouths and cannot swallow. For others, food bursts into flames or rots even as they devour it. Japanese hungry ghosts called gaki must eat excrement while those called jikininki are cursed to devour human corpses. According to Hindu tradition, hungry ghosts may endlessly seek particular objects, emotions or people, those things that obsessed them or caused them to commit bad deeds when they were living: riches, gems, children, even fear or the vitality of the living. Shyam Selvadurai weaves a certain magic in bringing together the personal and the political. This time around he also adds in this silky thread of Buddhist stories that really adds a lot to the narrative. Other than being very intriguing on their own, these Buddhist myths add a certain gravitas that helps us understand the mindset of the characters. This story is almost a re-imagining of one of those mythical stories - there are many echoes and as the author himself comments, this story is an exploration of how "fate" might work. Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity and love. What seems nonadapative and self-harming in the present was, at some point in our lives, an adaptation to help us endure what we then had to go through. If people are addicted to self-soothing behaviours, it's only because in their formative years they did not receive the soothing they needed. Such understanding helps delete toxic self-judgment on the past and supports responsibility for the now. Hence the need for compassionate self-inquiry.”
Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka to a Sinhalese mother and a Tamil father--members of conflicting ethnic groups whose troubles form a major theme in his work. Ethnic riots in 1983 drove the family to emigrate to Canada when Selvadurai was nineteen. He studied creative and professional writing as part of a Bachelor of Fine Arts program at York University. all addictions—whether to drugs or to non-drug behaviors—share the same brain circuits and brain chemicals. On the biochemical level the purpose of all addictions is to create an altered physiological state in the brain. This can be achieved in many ways, drug taking being the most direct. So an addiction is never purely “psychological”; all addictions have a biological dimension.” I was very moved by Funny Boy, however due to some issues I couldn’t recommend it. Here’s my review. However, Shyam Selvadurai’s writing is so beautiful and I wanted to read another book of his, as I hoped that I would be able to recommend it. This is why I chose to read The Hungry Ghosts. It fit into the Asian Lit Bingo challenge as well. Not the world, not what’s outside of us, but what we hold inside traps us. We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.”
Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein | Goodreads
In Buddhist myth, the dead may be reborn as "hungry ghosts"—spirits with stomach so large they can never be full—if they have desired too much during their lives. It is the duty of the living relatives to free those doomed to this fate by doing kind deeds and creating good karma. In Shyam Selvadurai’s sweeping new novel, his first in more than a decade, he creates an unforgettable ghost, a powerful Sri Lankan matriarch whose wily ways, insatiable longing for land, houses, money and control, and tragic blindness to the human needs of those around her parallels the volatile political situation of her war-torn country. Lastly the major issue in the book, homosexuality. And no, it is not yet accepted and is no where close to being accepted. People hide their homosexuality as if it's a disease and others look at it as if they too would be infected. It is the 21st century and you would think people of our generation and those after us would be more open minded, yet the grim reality is somewhat completely different. I wish as a Sri Lankan living in 2021, a good 30+ years afterwards I can say that the situation would be different to that of Mili and Shivan I am sorry. This kind of thing can happen even now.We may not be responsible for another’s addiction or the life history that preceded it, but many painful situations could be avoided if we recognized that we are responsible for the way we ourselves enter into the interaction. And that, to put it most simply, means dealing with our own stuff.” From the latin word vulnerare, ‘to wound’, vulnerability is our susceptibility to be wounded. This fragility is part of our nature and cannot be escaped. The best the brain can do is to shut down conscious awareness of it when pain becomes so vast or unbearable that it threatens to overwhelm our capacity to function. The automatic repression of painful emotions is a helpless child’s prime defence mechanism and can enable the child to endure trauma that would otherwise be catastrophic. The unfortunate consequence is a wholesale dulling of emotional awareness. ‘Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression,’ wrote the American novelist Saul Bellow in The Adventures of Augie March; ‘if you hold down one thing you hold down the adjoining.’
Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein: Summary and reviews Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein: Summary and reviews
Intuitively we all know that it’s better to feel than not to feel. Beyond their energizing subjective change, emotions have crucial survival value. They orient us, interpret the world for us and offer us vital information. They tell us what is dangerous and what is benign, what threatens our existence and what will nurture our growth. Imagine how disabled we would be if we could not see or hear or taste or sense heat or cold or physical pain. Emotional shutdown is similar. Our emotions are an indispensable part of our sensory apparatus and an essential part of who we are. They make life worthwhile, exciting, challenging, beautiful and meaningful. This is the kind of book that, upon entering the final chapter, the reader takes a deep breath, holds it, and only lets it out when the last word is read. There is so much to anticipate in the last moments of the story, that it is almost unbearable to breathe. Shyam Selvadurai’s novels are sad. They’re difficult to read. However, they are beautiful and heart-wrenching stories that portray realistic situations and people’s reactions to these events.I liked how the story juxtaposes how people imagine Sri Lankan refugees live in first world countries with the actual reality. Anyone who goes 'oh but they live in Canada/Australia/France/etc' should just read this story. The chasm between the government welcoming the people and the society welcoming the people was brought out so we'll! More broadly, though, it's an exploration of the workings of karma, of how the sins of our past supposedly follow us through this and future lives unless we make amends. The book is well-written and offers suspense, mystery and romance, but the Buddhist parables woven into the narrative were problematic. This message about the dangers of ambition, of trying to rise above one's station, should be relegated to the bad old days and not retold except as an example of how religious and social structures are often used by ruling classes to keep those they are oppressing from rising up and demanding equality. The Hungry Ghosts is a story about karma, the burden of it, and a family whose particular burden is that they always seem to destroy the things they love. The only way to break the cycle, the stories say, is to freely offer kindness to those who need it. Filled with Sri Lankan folklore and allegorical Buddhist stories, The Hungry Ghosts paints a vivid picture of life in Colombo and the immigrant experience in Canada.
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