Running in the Family - Michael Ondaatje

The after effects was "Warlight" was such that, I elevated Ondaatje to the level of Camus, as possibly my favourite author ( these things change, of course ). Yet there it was. As a result, I took into my hands his one poetry collection I have, "The Cinnamon Peeler" (abandoned 1/4th of the way last year) to read afresh, and also his memoir "Running in the Family" - the plan was to read the latter as extra reading ( meaning a page here, a page there, during lunch, waiting to pick a kid etc.), not trespassing upon that cherished domain of the limited reading time, and the former with a dose of just one or two poems a day. The former continues, and the latter is now complete. As expected, the reading allotments were as I planned till more than half the book was completed. Till past the 180th page, its abstract style, ensured that it could be read in that fashion. Till the 180th page, we hear of his ancestors, his parents, his aunts, his father's run ins with John Kotalawela, bathing in the rain in Wilpattu, his parents' drunken friends and relations, his father's carefree life style in England etc. The most interesting and concrete story till that time was his grandma's experience in the floods of 1947, at Nuwara Eliya. These abstract stories then feed the main theme, which becomes apparent in the next 50 plus pages. Why did Michael Ondaatje return to Sri Lanka in 1978 and 1980 ? It is for the partly fictional history, no doubt carried out with a lot of research, that he presents to us, but more so to his siblings Christopher, Jeniffer and Janet. There is a quote attributed to his brother, Christopher, here:

"'You must get his book right,' my brother tells me. 'you can only write it once.' But the book again is incomplete"

Michael was the youngest of four children, and it is possible he who knew his father least. Michael has left Ceylon when he was 11, and after living with his relations upon their parents' separation and divorce. To me, it felt that his trips back to, by then Sri Lanka, was to pick up whatever strands he could off his relations, their memories, and try to see who his father was - possibly his father who he didn't know well enough. The agony of Micheal is apparent in these last 50 odd pages -

"Her behaviour in his drunken moments was there to shock him in his times of gentleness when he loved muted behaviour"

"You see I thought they would have found out what a disgraceful family I had come from. Mummy had drummed this story into us about what we had all been through there."

"My loss was that I never spoke to him as an adult. Was he locked in the ceremony of being 'a father'? He died before I even thought of such things."

"You must understand all this was happening while his first family was in England or Canada or Colombo totally unaware of what was happening to him. That would always be the curse on us, the guilt we would be left with"

“There is so much to know and we can only guess. Guess around him. To know him from these stray actions I am told about by those who loved him. And yet, he is still one of those books we long to read whose pages remain uncut. We are still unwise. It is not that he became too complicated but that he had reduced himself to a few things around him and he gave them immense meaning and significance.”

To me, this was clearly the agony and the remorse of a son, for a father, he couldn't ever meet and get to know, again - denied at an early age through the faults of his parents. While his father's actions from a youth suggest that he was more than a handful when drunk, it can clearly be read, he appears to be searching high and low for someone, who is to be blamed for this injustice that he had to endure - of never knowing his father well enough.

A son will always, as he grows more mature try to understand and read his father - "who is this imperfect man who fathered me, who is also imperfect to the core ? Whose actions and habits are deep inside of me, either encouraged, or discouraged ? Who laid the platform for me to write my story?" - the son would be thinking. Being denied of that, a son would be in agony, unable to open his heavy heart to any one else in the world. Michael, a great wordsmith if ever there was one, had done his best to come to terms and understand the father he didn't know to his heart's content. And it makes a heart rendering reading, in those last 50 odd pages. The first abstract "salad", scanty at times, is the foundation for things to come.