It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behaviour.”

the Realm of Hungry Ghosts Quotes - Goodreads In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts Quotes - Goodreads

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. I found the Sri Lankan sections of the book to be well written and dramatic, and they captured the vernacular and the Cinnamon Gardens culture (i.e. the moneyed class) very well. Selvadurai offers no apologies or translations for Sri Lankan words and expressions that litter the text, and I found no glossary to assist the non-Sri Lankan reader. He captures the rudeness, the temperamental natures, the deceits, and the rather coddled behaviour of grown men from the Colombo 7 milieu. The relationships between Shivan and his male lovers are also fraught with petty jealousies, silly arguments and possessiveness, mirroring perhaps the relationship Shivan has with his grandmother. Shivan, a gay man of mixed Sinhalese and Tamil blood, someone who could be a reflection of the author, grows up in a dysfunctional family ruled by his maternal Sinhalese grandmother. Grandma is a greedy, unscrupulous woman of immense wealth, extracted from the misery of others, including her family – she is the incarnation of the perethaya, the hungry ghost who cannot be satiated. And yet the grandmother has a strong emotional hold on Shivan, for she loves him in a cruel and possessive way to the exclusion of her daughter and granddaughter and showers him with presents as the form of expressing her love. She has plans and dreams for him which he does not share in. The question then, is how to break the cycle. The Buddhist parables, with their talk of karma and fate and insistence on bribing monks, are dangerous and silly. They may add a Sri Lankan flavor to the book that pleases Selvadurai's Western readers with its exoticism and his Sri Lankan readers with its familiarity. Giving offerings to a temple or paying off a con-man isn't going to bring either national or familial reconciliation. It was also interesting to hear about the racial conflicts in Sri Lanka, which are described in detail through Shivan's eyes as events unfold. At one point, we even get a peek into the struggles of a human rights group in Colombo. The leader of the group was probably my favourite character of the book, because she was one amazing lady! (Similarly, I really liked Shivan's sister, who would honestly be my favourite grandchild if I were their grandmother. Girl reads Anita Desai and bell hooks, what's not to love?)The war mentality represents an unfortunate confluence of ignorance, fear, prejudice, and profit. ... The ignorance exists in its own right and is further perpetuated by government propaganda. The fear is that of ordinary people scared by misinformation but also that of leaders who may know better but are intimidated by the political costs of speaking out on such a heavily moralized and charged issue. The prejudice is evident in the contradiction that some harmful substances (alcohol, tobacco) are legal while others, less harmful in some ways, are contraband. This has less to do with the innate danger of the drugs than with which populations are publicly identified with using the drugs. The white and wealthier the population, the more acceptable is the substance. And profit. If you have fear, prejudice, and ignorance, there will be profit.” people jeopardize their lives for the sake of making the moment livable. Nothing sways them from the habit—not illness, not the sacrifice of love and relationship, not the loss of all earthly goods, not the crushing of their dignity, not the fear of dying. The drive is that relentless.” 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 strikingly beautiful novel, beautifully written. On the surface, this is the story of Shivan, a half-Tamil half-Sinhalese boy who grows up in Sri Lanka and eventually moves to Canada in an attempt to get away from the horrors that he suffered at home. But there are many levels to this book, from the recounted Buddhist myths to the stories of Shivan's mother and grandmother, all tied together into themes of predestination and fate. The characters in the novel are all complex and human, and Selvadurai shows us how they are propelled by the events of their lives to hurt their children in unintended ways, which lead forward into more damage in spite of, or perhaps because of familial love. 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 emotion is a helpless child’s prime defense mechanism and can enable the child to endure trauma that would otherwise be catastrophic.”

Hungry Ghosts - Harvard Review Hungry Ghosts - Harvard Review

In Buddhism, hungry ghosts are often seen as a metaphor for those individuals who are following a path of incorrect desire, who suffer from spiritual emptiness, who cannot see the impossibility of correcting what has already happened or who form an unnatural attachment to the past. Hungry ghosts are also sometimes used as a metaphor for drug addiction.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. I am so happy that this book lived up to my expectations. I’m going to already preface the review by saying it’s beautiful, just in case some of you don’t read the whole review. Tirokudda Kanda: Hungry Shades Outside the Walls (Pv 1.5), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, 8 August 2010.Retrieved on 24 October 2011 . 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.’ The addict's reliance on the drug to reawaken her dulled feelings is no adolescent caprice. The dullness is itself a consequence of an emotional malfunction not of her making; the internal shutdown of vulnerability. 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 our ability to function. The automatic repression of painful emotion is a helpful child's prime defence mechanism and can enable the child to endure trauma otherwise be catastrophic. The unfortunate consequence is a wholesale dulling of emotional awareness.”