By Gayanga Dissanayaka –
Devika Brendon grew up in a rich literary environment. Her parents shared a deep love for literature, and her late mother, Yasmine Gooneratne, was a renowned Sri Lankan writer and academic. When she and her brother were young, Devika’s mother used to read epic-stirring adventure tales to them, which really got their imagination engaged. “In our house, every room had bookshelves and it was a problem every time we had to move. It was obvious that my parents loved words, and loved literature, and therefore I was also immersed in it,” said Devika. When she was about seven years old, Devika started trying to write by herself. Not many people were doing that at her age, so it was something that her teachers really promoted and encouraged. Today, Devika Brendon is the author of Aversion published by The Jam Fruit Tree Publications. Her poetry, and short stories have been widely published in Australia, India, and Sri Lanka, but this debut novel of hers holds special significance, drawing deeply from the author’s meaningful experiences in Sri Lanka over the past eight years.
“Every single thing in the novel is based on something that actually either happened to me, or that someone trustworthy has told me, or is something that I witnessed happening to other people,” said the author. The protagonist is an investigative reporter who spends her entire time going out and looking at things through the eye of investigative criticism or scrutiny. Her character arrives in Sri Lanka for work, and in the beginning she is seen to be overwhelmed by the chaos. At the beginning of the story, Devika wanted her to be a confronting, hostile and extremely unappealing person. “A journalist is supposed to be unbiased and objective, and any journalist would tell you that this is extremely difficult to do. But it’s part of your training to go past your first emotive response. To step back, look at the big picture, look at the historical context, look at the economic context, and look at all the factors that are happening to the people,” says Devika. ‘Therefore at the beginning, what’s really interesting is that the protagonist is trained that way. But when she comes here, the reality of Sri Lanka throws her and she responds like a child.’
But gradually and slowly, the protagonist begins to engage with people who are doing good work and consciously trying to uplift society. She learns to admire and befriend them. She begins to see beneath the surface of things and starts looking at the causes of why people might be reacting the way they do. She has to set aside her own emotive filter and develop empathy and compassion instead of contempt and judgment. “It takes a while for an interaction to occur, whether it’s between people or between a person and a country. So it takes her a while to start interacting with the country, because she was in a very hostile and defensive position at the beginning. I wanted the readers to be put off by her and then to stay to see her transformation,” says the author.
On a simple level, Devika wanted to see whether anybody feels the way she did. Her intention was to get people to start thinking how Sri Lanka might look, to someone who just met it. Not someone who’s been living here forever and has glossed over it. “That’s where my perspective comes in because I’m an outsider. When I came here, I had culture shock, and I was looking at everything askance, and I was hoping this diasporic perspective would be useful. I’m not an expat, I never intended to return, but I found the whole experience to be very interesting and very revelatory. I also discovered aspects of myself that I never discovered before in Australia,” explained the author.
She feels that as human beings, and particularly in Sri Lanka, we tend to amplify the bad things and add on to all the gossip and news we hear. We tend to add layers upon layers, with our opinions and comments, making things worse and creating a sense of debilitation. But this doesn’t offer remedies or solutions, and it definitely doesn’t offer support to the victims. What the author suggests is that we could rethink this whole cultural attitude. “It’s the same with my protagonist, her voice at the beginning isn’t God’s voice, it’s only her opinion. And her opinion can be flawed and biased, and she is also on a journey of personal growth. This adding-on of trauma when a terrible incident occurs gets amplified over and over again, until it becomes sort of a juggernaut. And afterwards there is this terrible silence,” said Devika. “I was trying to show a story of contemporary Sri Lanka where there is a remedy for the wrong we are witnessing. The remedy doesn’t come from outside us, the remedy comes from each person choosing to decide not to further the offense and to weigh up their cause of action. Are they going to lighten the load or increase it?”
Devika explains how it creates an opportunity for an alternative response, if we can consciously resolve not to get triggered by what is presented to us, and instead observe if there is a pattern, and see if there’s something we could suggest. She also added how blowing issues out of proportion and making the trauma a phenomenon or sensation doesn’t spread awareness about the issue. In fact it does the opposite of it. Awareness requires looking within and deeper and she believes that can’t happen when we are overwhelmed by the noise on social media.
The protagonist in the novel also experiences burnout from writing about these horrifying stories constantly. The author wanted to show how you need to take a break and understand that it is not only human suffering that needs to be witnessed. There’s also beauty, there’s unexpected joy, and there’s kindness. “It is kind of addictive to be that person who is always making sarcastic comments and showing how they are better than other people because they aren’t following the crowd. But ultimately it’s very isolating, because you are missing out on other people and the wholeness of life. You can choose to be more fluid, you can choose to be more open. My protagonist starts off comparing what she sees of the country to hell, but later realises that it is more of a testing ground. Are people going to be haters? Or are they going to be builders?” asks Devika. She explains how one can’t be a hater and also a builder. To be constructive, you have to work with the people, actually talk to them, listen and understand where they are coming from.
According to the author, one of the major themes in this book is misogyny. There’s quite a few chapters that illustrate the oppression of women and the subjugation of women. Devika, who co-founded the End Sexual Violence Now (ESVN) group which raises awareness of the violence against women, believes that this has really held the country back. Since her protagonist feels compelled to engage with these issues, in her mind she questions, isn’t Sri Lanka supposed to be a socialist country? Aren’t we supposed to be defending the rights of the vulnerable? Devika notes how there’s a difference between what people say the country should be, and the way the country is, and that difference is unfortunately a tragic difference. But it can be and should be changed, not dismissed as it is what it is. “I wanted to challenge people to think about what we see when we hold a mirror up to Sri Lanka. It’s fascinating to me when people say that my book is very critical of the country. The fact that you want something to be better and can see that it could be better is a loving vision to me,” said the author. She also believes that Sri Lankans are naturally very critical about their country because they feel instinctively that there’s so much talent and potential, and it sickens everybody to see that being wasted. But she highlighted that this criticism has to be constructive, and not just noise which is counter-productive.
Coming up with a title for her book was interesting because she was trying to work out what all these different incidents she wanted to write about have in common. And it was all about the incredible oppositional and argumentative attitude of people. Then she found out that there was a word for it, which is ‘Aversion’. Devika explained how she is really advocating certain Buddhist virtues through her book including mindfulness and equanimity. In fact, ‘Aversion’ itself is one of the three poisons of human character, and they defile our nature. The remedy for it is Metta which is love and kindness. She later realised that it was the perfect title, because the opposite of angry judgment, contempt and disdain is love and kindness.
The book came out as ‘a series of outbursts’ for Devika. It’s a discontinuous narrative and she chose to write it like that. Therefore it has different kinds of writing in it such as outburst poetry, and notes on opinion pieces. She wanted that to reflect how it felt like to live here, since to her, Sri Lanka on any given day seems full of abrupt moments with a level of chaos which has become normalized. There is not a chronological timeline for Aversion, since she wanted to show how it feels for the character: everything coming at her, in a random and mythic way. Not one thing after another, but often all at once. She also explained how in Sri Lanka, often what happens today has roots in history, so what you see on the surface, in real time, has complex roots and history. “I didn’t even know what kind of genre this book is when I was writing it. But then I realised that this book fits the definition of a récit very well. It’s people reciting stories. It enabled me to step back and look at it with a little bit of detachment. As I was developing her character, I began to see that all of us are carrying a lot of depth, everyone, even people who seem at first to be shallow and lacking in dimension,” she said.
Devika’s mother gave her some advice about the first draft, which she was able to read before she passed away last year. “She told me that this is a very didactic, idea-oriented book, and it would benefit the story if I introduced some sympathetic characters who were able to befriend the protagonist and speak with her,” the author said. Devika did follow her advice and introduced several characters in her book. It progressed well, but it’s the first time she created characters over a long sequence of chapters. Therefore the character building, the act, the arc of a character’s development, was an exciting challenge for her.
Devika’s friend and colleague, Kaviru Samarawickrama, listened to her talking about the book, and illustrated the cover for her book. The author explained how the image Kaviru created perfectly envisions what she wanted to say. In the foreground, there is the raging sea, which represents the suffering of the present moment. But beyond that is a calm starry night without any disturbance at all. But the artist has given far more proportion to the surging torrent, because that’s the task we experience each day, which is to navigate through that and not get lost, aiming to ultimately reach serenity. “The stars were used to navigate by sailors when they were travelling the seas, and their positions are significant in our birth charts, so we should try not to be guided by lower things. If you really want to move forwards, you need to look up and aspire to something higher. Not in terms of living on the 55th floor of an apartment building, but rather elevating yourself and growing into a better vision of what you could be,” explained the author.
When the book came out, Devika recalled feeling really excited to the point where she couldn’t stop holding it. She says: “I carry a copy of it everywhere I go. I still can’t quite believe it, because it was in my head for so long, and now it’s out in the world. I honestly feel like we are at a turning point in Sri Lanka but it is really important how we proceed, as a country, now. So I wanted to add my book into that conversation. I believe each individual should decide for themselves and inspire collective action. We are all works in progress and we are all the product of what we experience.”
