Funny Boy

Heart of the matter

Author: Shyam Selvadurai
Publishing Date: 1994
Price: Rs 250
Genre: Novel

For a long time, Shyam Selvaduarai’s semi-autobiographical novel Funny Boy has remained my most favourite book. The novel’s backdrop is 80s Sri Lanka, a time when the cracks between the majority Singhalese population and minority Tamilians had started to widen. This external intolerance is mirrored in 12 year old Arjun’s innocent, private world, whose need for natural expression is stifled against the oppressive air of rigidity that adults unleash.
Divided into six chapters, the first few parts capture Arjie’s (Arjun) childhood and the growing confusion in him regarding his sexuality. Arjie does not like playing with the boys, he prefers decking up like a girl and playing bride-bride. However, once Arjie’s ‘queerness’ is recogonised by his family, things start to change dratically for him. His concerned yet stern father makes it amply clear that he does not want a ‘funny boy’ in the family and packs him off to an All Boys Public school. Arjie’s father believes that the strict ways of the institution will “force him to become a man”. But, quite ironically, Arjie’s sexual realization and awakening happen right here, amidst the brutal, rigid setting of the school.
Arjie’s relationship with a fellow Sinhalese student, Shehan Zoysa is probably one of the most touching episodes in the novel. Arjie is initially hesitant about accepting his homosexuality and shuns Shehan’s advances. But when he sees the latter being bullied and cruelly punished by his principal, Arjie’s love for Shehan (Zoysa) comes gushing through.
The author does well to captures the undercurrents in the Tamil-Sinhala relationship in Sri Lanka around the 80s. The prevailing ethnic tension is evident when Arjie’s aunt, Radha is strictly dissuaded from having anything to do with a Sinhalese man. Again, Arjie’s father cannot provide a level playing field to one of his favourite Tamil employees and surrogate son, Jegan, for fear of offending his Sinhalese employees, 'who refuse to take orders from Jegan’.
Then in Arjie’s school too, there are ample traces of racism. Ultimately, Arjie’s family is forced to migrate to Canada almost penniless when a riot breaks out in the last chapter.

Funny Boy has no political axes to grind. More than anything else, the novel is about the gagging of individual free will by the use of brute force. The central theme is primarily how society straitjackets individuals, valourising the macho and lampooning the sissy.
Selvadurai's writing is elegant, real, with an emotional power that compels you to connect deeply with the characters and their situations.


Certainly a book everyone must read.