chasing bawa

I don’t think I’ve read much erotica, apart from bodice rippers such a few Mills & Boon, Sidney Sheldon, Lace and Jilly Cooper’s infamous Riders at school (well, I did go to a girls’ boarding school). Probably the only other book of erotic stories I’ve read is Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus, Story of the Eye by Georges Battaille and some Marquis de Sade, just because of their notoriety. I don’t think I found them all that titillating, maybe due to the absence of romance. The other thing that always bugs me is whether you are prying into the subconscious desires of the author, whether that’s how they do it, and it embarrasses me a little. I’m probably totally wrong here but I’m not entirely sure.

Blue edited by Ameena Hussein is probably the first collection of erotica published in Sri Lanka so naturally I was a little curious as to what kind of stories it might contain. It came tied up in string which I thought was a clever marketing trick. Like with many short story collections, it’s a mixed bag, more so because in the case of Blue there was a mixture of prose and poetry from professional and amateur writers. But it’s experimental and experiment is good for erotica, no?

Of the sixteen tales here, the two strongest were by Ameena Hussein and Shehan Karunatilaka. They were a little more polished compared to the others but that’s probably because they are both published authors, Hussein has several short story collections and a novel, The Moon in the Water and Karunatilaka’s novel Chinaman has been chosen as one of Waterstone’s 11 best first novels of 2011.

Undercover, Hussein’s tale of a housewife who finds her thrills in a dark and half-empty cinema in downtown Colombo is a mixture of adolescent excitement and old man smuttiness. Yet it strangely touched upon emotions, love, loneliness and lust and didn’t leave you feeling all that dirty. In fact it was a tale of awakening of sorts and I liked it.

Veysee, Karunatilaka’s story is driven more from a male perspective with a sting at the end. Although I’m sure it happens everywhere, I still get a shock when I read about sex-obsessed teenagers and adulterous smug-marrieds especially in Sri Lanka. I seem to have a rose-tinted view of the country entrenched in village life which no matter how many stories I hear or witness can never successfully erase. The protagonist jokes around with his colleagues at a bar, sex-texts some teen who is more experienced that him and proceeds to dump him, and after several drinks stumbles into a prostitute on the way home when he normally avoids such sordid encounters. You see him slowly unravel as all his swagger diminishes and finally we see him for what he is. Very cleverly done. And funny.

The other tales were hit and miss, some bittersweet, some kinky, all teething. But it’s nice to see a cross-section of talent and tales.

You can read an article about books and bookshelves by Ameena Hussein here.

I read this as part of the South Asian Challenge 2011.