‘All writers are thieves’

Says Sri Lankan author Ashok Ferrey, whose latest novel borrows fleetingly from his own life experiences but veers off into a shocking domain

Ashok Ferrey says he’s shy to call himself a ‘writer’. The builder-turned-author-turned personal fitness trainer confesses, “I think even on my deathbed, I will still be shy to call myself an author. Now I have four individual books, plus an anthology, that have been published in India and abroad. Yet, I only started writing in my 40s. I had a career as a builder before and I have a degree in pure mathematics from Oxford. So, in a way, the writing came last of all; but as they say, the last of it is the best.”

The author of Colpetty People and The Good Little Ceylonese Girl, which were shortlisted for Sri Lanka’s Gratiaen Award, points out that his latest book, The Professional, borrows nuances from his experience as a builder in London. “All writers are thieves. We steal other people’s characters. You have to be careful about what you say to a writer. The easiest person to steal from is yourself. You know your experiences. It is easy to put yourself in your book but that is not you. It is just the bits that you choose to portray.

In The Professional, the bits that are mine are the metaphor of water. The protagonist despises himself because he is like water in a glass. He assumes the shape of the container he’s put into. He finds it easier to fit into other people’s lives and environment. He is not strong enough to have his own container. Because he is water; he flows and fits into other people’s containers. That is how I am. But of course, the other circumstances are not about me,” says the author.

The book is about a Sri Lankan man Chamath, an Oxford graduate, who is a suit-and-tie “professional”, who escorts women on dates and occasionally sleeps with them (for a fee, of course).

Ashok’s journey into the literary world began during a stressful phase in his life. He reminisces, “I returned to Sri Lanka back in the 1980s as a builder. But then, my father got cancer. At that time, I was the only person at home. My brother was in New York and my sister in London. So there was nobody to take care of him and make life-changing decisions. I had to do that and it stressed me out. I took to writing, which was a stress buster for me. There was nobody I could speak to. So, by writing, I was speaking to myself.”

A fan of authors Graham Greene (for his interplay with good and evil) and R.K. Narayanan (for his simplicity in portraying human condition), Ashok says that young writers should learn to tap into their subconscious. “As a writer, you have to delve into your subconscious because you are writing from the depths of your being. For instance, you may think that you like blue, but you may discover that in your subconscious, you like green, because it is a wicked colour. Your truth is in your subconscious.

The second thing is even more important, especially for a south Asian writer: you have to lose your self-consciousness. Everybody has family, and we are so ashamed of writing what we really want to because we think about how they would react to it. You have to learn to lose your self-conscious. It is very difficult, but it is important,” he signs off.