Arjie’s Journey in Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy

            Growing up during a time of violent political upheaval in Sri Lanka, Arjie travels an especially bittersweet journey into maturation in Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy.  The adults in Arjie’s extended family mostly belong to an older, more conservative generation that attempts to fit Arjie into society’s norms.  The adults that Arjie meets in the community through his family are individuals who prompt him to see past the confines of his childhood, and it is Arjie’s peers who give him the extra push to understanding himself.  With guidance from his extended family, his adult friends, and his peers, Arjie is able to discover his identity through understanding the impact of race and gender on his life.

            Although spend-the-day occurs but once a month, Ammachi has a commanding presence in Arjie’s life.  While Appachi hides behind his newspapers, Ammachi is “enthroned in big reclining chairs” (Selvadurai, 2), her canes inspiring awe in her grandchildren. When Arjie is caught dressed in a sari while playing bride-bride, Ammachi decides that manual labour will teach him to be more masculine.  This is the first time Arjie is embarrassed about his “funniness”, though he does not understand why. It is also at his grandparents’ house that Arjie first learns about the tension between the Tamils and the Sinhalese. Afraid that people will talk, Ammachi forbids Radha Aunty to receive rides from Anil Jayasinghe, a Sinhalese. Arjie does not comprehend why Ammachi is upset, for he is in a Sinhala class at school and his friends are Sinhalese.  His parents’ best friends and servant are Sinhalese too.  Nevertheless, Ammachi sends Radha Aunty to Jaffna for a month, hoping that her “illicit relations” (76) with Anil will end. When confronted by a daughter, Ammachi is unsure of herself and says, “I did what was correct” (77). She believes that as long as she upholds traditions, she is a good mother.

            Like Ammachi, Amma is at times uncertain of herself when she tries to help Arjie in his maturation journey.  Before Arjie is caught wearing a sari, Amma used to let him play with her jewellery and watch her put on her sari.  However, after Arjie’s humiliation, Amma orders Diggy to let Arjie play with the boys during spend-the-day – and forbids Arjie from playing bride-bride with his girl cousins. When Arjie questions this, Amma says simply, “You’re a big boy now. And big boys must play with other boys” (20). This does not appear to satisfy Arjie because he is still unmarred by society’s expectations. Not knowing how to deal with the problem of gender issues, Amma allows that “life is full of stupid things and sometimes we just have to do them” (20). Amma is equally uncomfortable with explaining racism to Arjie.  When Arjie is disappointed that the English governess does not marry the King in The King and I, Amma tells Arjie that people do not marry outside their own race (54). It is only later that Arjie learns of his mother’s more accepting side. After Radha Aunty’s ordeal in the attacked train, Amma is the only one who calls Anil a “poor man” (87). As her best friends and neighbours are Sinhalese, Amma welcomes people of different “races”. In fact, in her youth, she had fallen in love with Daryl Uncle, a Burgher. When Daryl Uncle visits her briefly, Amma thinks it useless of him to investigate the government’s corruption in Jaffna, for she denies that racism exists there.  After Daryl’s suspicious death, Amma loses faith in the police, because she thinks they are Daryl’s murderers as well as perpetrators of racism. 

Appa is a conservative Tamil businessman who thinks highly of tradition.  He demands that Amma wears a sari for her mother-in-law’s sixtieth birthday, and he is mortified and ashamed when Arjie is paraded in front of the relatives wearing a sari.  Appa blames Amma for allowing Arjie to play with her jewellery, because he believes that Arjie’s “funniness” is a nurtured trait. Some years later, Appa is still worried about Arjie, so he sends Arjie to the Academy that “will force [him] to become a man” (210). In his explanations about racism, Appa is reluctant to describe the rifts between the Tamils and Sinhalese to Arjie, for he doesn’t think Arjie is old enough to comprehend the extent of racism.  Appa’s stance against racism is a passive one. Although Appa is initially against hiring Jegan because of the suspicion that the latter may be involved with the Tamil Tigers, it is Jegan who fights most rigorously against racism.  Appa reproves Jegan for confronting the people who are spreading government propaganda, because he believes that Tamils should be a careful minority: “As a Tamil you have to learn how to play the game…The trick is not to make yourself conspicuous” (173). Appa believes that passivity can help elude racism and he does not listen to Amma’s suggestions to immigrate to Canada until it is too late.  It takes many riots, burnt houses, and the deaths of Ammachi and Appachi to persuade him to flee Sri Lanka with his family.

            Radha Aunty, returning from America, forever changes Arjie’s view on gender and race.  In Arjie’s imagination, brides-to-be are supposed to be fair-skinned, plump, and with big rounded hips. However, Radha Aunty shatters this image. She is also liberal-minded. Unlike other adults who are afraid of Arjie turning out “funny”, Radha noted that it is “all in good fun” when Arjie is enchanted by her assortment of pottus.  Although Radha Aunty remembers how Ammachi’s father had been killed by the Sinhalese, she questions racism: “But is that a reason to hate every Sinhalese?” (59). She takes the initiative to apologize to Anil after Ammachi had insulted him and, despite the strict surveillance from her relatives, Radha manages to see Anil many times and to make plans for marriage. However, after the Sinhalese attacks her train and Radha is badly injured, Radha hardens her heart and marries Rajan, a man of her own race. Having witnessed Radha’s earlier romance with Anil, Arjie realizes the extent of Radha Aunty’s loss due to racism and cannot bear to watch the elaborate wedding ceremony that he had used to fantasize about.

            Anil does not distinguish people due to their ethnic backgrounds. He treats Radha Aunty as a lady, and he does not eat before Radha’s lamprais arrives.  Anil believes that race should not be a factor in the matters of love and says to Radha: “If you really like me, together we can make our parents accept us” (74). This is a parallel with Amma’s love for Daryl Uncle, whom Amma was discouraged from marrying due to his race. Daryl Uncle, a Burgher, is an old friend of Neliya Aunty and of Amma. Though unaware of it, Arjie makes an assumption about Daryl Uncle’s race. He is shocked when Daryl Uncle - who looks like a ‘white man’ - speaks perfect Sinhalese. Daryl is in fact a Sri Lankan, just like his family. Daryl Uncle is also open to matters of gender. He does not consider Little Women a “girl’s book”, and he even buys Arjie the rest of the series.  Arjie is surprised to learn that Little Women used to be one of Daryl Uncle’s favourite books too, because Appa frowns on reading as a feminine pastime. Daryl Uncle is patient in explaining matters of race to Arjie; he tells Arjie that many Burghers left Sri Lanka in the 1950s because they spoke only English and the government had made Sinhala the national language. Discovering Amma’s past romance with Daryl Uncle, Arjie questions why love and race must conflict at times. Daryl Uncle explains to Arjie that “it was not that easy…Some Sri Lankan people thought Burgher people were too white to marry their children and some Burgher people thought Sri Lankan people were too brown to marry theirs” (116). Daryl Uncle has made a large impact on Arjie’s world, but the lessons he has taught are so expansive and ungraspable that his untimely death seems to exist outside Arjie’s senses of reality (136).

            Jegan is also a role model for Arjie, for he is honest about his beliefs. He is straightforward in answering Amma’s question about the Gandhiyam movement and about the Tamil Tigers, even though Appa insists that no politics be involved in the conversation. Arjie begins to learn more about himself when he meets Jegan, because Arjie realizes that he is noticing Jegan’s dark athletic body. Jegan’s moving into his house “filled [Arjie] with an unaccountable joy” (162). Jegan is possibly homosexual, for he hesitantly mentions a “very good friend” who looks just like Arjie. As well, Jegan is the first to defend Arjie about his “tendencies” and this leads Arjie to ponder his sexuality further.  The antagonism in the office towards Jegan at Appa’s business prompts Jegan to takes an active role in dispelling racism and government propaganda. Appa and Sena Uncle promote Jegan to a senior supervisory position, but the other employees resent him because he is Tamil. Although he knows that going away will not help, Jegan is forced to leave when Appa and Sena Uncle’s hotel business is threatened with graffiti and staff complaints. It comes as a blow to Arjie when Jegan comments bitterly before departing: “What do you know about it, you’re just a boy” (205). This is a bitter moment, because Arjie is finally beginning to understand more about gender and race through Jegan, but it is during this crucial time that Jegan disappears from his life.

            With fourteen cousins, Arjie learns about territoriality and leadership. Through these, he also learned about gender.  During spend-the-days at their grandparents’ house, the boy cousins dominate the front garden, the road, and the field for playing cricket.  The girls belong to the back garden and kitchen porch.  Arjie gravitates naturally towards the back garden where the girls play games of the imagination.  He does not comprehend why no one thinks it strange that his female cousin Meena plays cricket with the boys, but he is not allowed to play bride-bride when “the pleasure the boys had standing for hours on a cricket field under the swelling sun, watching the batsmen run from crease to crease, was incomprehensible to [him]” (3).  Putting on the sari and makeup during a game of bride-bride allows Arjie “to leave the constraints of [himself] and ascend into another, more brilliant, more beautiful self” (4). Tanuja – “Her Fatness” – a cousin who has just returned from abroad, draws attention to what she thinks is an inversion of gender roles. Seeing how Arjie loves the role of the bride, Tanuja calls him a “pansy”, a “faggot”, and a “sissy” (11).  The other female cousins know that the words are insults, but they do not understand their meanings or their significance.  These cousins become Arjie’s shield and it is because of their support that Arjie later defies his parents and continues to play bride-bride. The tearing of the sari is accidental yet significant.  After it is torn, Arjie realizes that he can no longer enter the girls’ world, and he is not wanted in the boys’ world either.  Due to his gender and his sexuality, Arjie is alienated from the worlds of “normal” boys and girls.

            At the Victoria Academy for boys, Arjie learns that one cannot complain but must be able to take it like a man. He learns more about the Sinhalese-Tamil tension from his Sinhalese classmates and from the bathroom terrorizations he witnesses at school. It is at the Academy that he meets Soyza, a Sinhalese who defends him from Salgado’s racist remarks about Tamils. Soyza is embarrassed when Arjie first gives him grateful looks and when he passes him notes. Arjie admires Soyza’s delicately built body and finds Soyza “attractive” (216). However, Arjie is still innocent and he does not understand his own sexuality and gender conflicts. Soyza, on the other hand, knows that he is homosexual; Soyza is unabashed at wearing hair clips and at having sex with the head prefect. Because of his bold display of wearing hair clips, Soyza becomes one of Black Tie’s – the school principal -  “ills and burdens”.  Later, Soyza is chosen to help Arjie memorize the poem “The Best School of All”.  Arjie forgets the poem whenever he recites it in front of the principal, and Soyza’s role as his whipping boy pains Arjie. As the boys’ intimacy grows, Arjie begins calling Soyza by his first name, Shehan. Arjie is bewildered when Shehan kisses him on the lips and he does not know what to do in Shehan’s bedroom. When at last Arjie invites Shehan over for dinner, the two boys have sex in the garage during a game of hide and seek. Though Arjie is disgusted at his own desire, Shehan is upset: “At least I know what I want and I’m not ashamed of it” (265).  To prove his love for Shehan, Arjie messes up on his official recitation of “The Best School of All” on purpose, because he cannot bear to see Shehan suffer any more in the hands of Black Tie. By doing this, Arjie risks the future of the Tamil student body for his lover, because Black Tie wants the school to be for all races and religions, and he needed to use “The Best School of All” to appeal to the minister, to keep the school from altering. From this moment on, Arjie knows that he is forever alienated from his family: “I now inhabited a world they didn’t understand and into which they couldn’t follow me” (285). The scent of Shehan on him after their last sexual intercourse lingers on Arjie’s mind as his family prepares to immigrate to Canada.  This culmination of the experiences with Shehan allows Arjie to reach a new level of understanding about his place in a world where race and gender are of utmost importance.

            Directly and indirectly, the family and friends of Arjie all impress upon the boy their views on race and gender.  The familial love of Arjie’s extended family is at times hurtful and confusing, but it nevertheless serves to guide Arjie through the growing up process.  The lives of family friends merge with Arjie’s for only short periods of time, yet the values that these friends cherish linger on in Arjie’s conscience.  Arjie’s peers grow up with him seeing the world through eyes that are near in age, thus their views on race and gender truly open Arjie’s eyes during his journey into maturation in Selvadurai’s Funny Boy.

WORK CITED

Selvadurai, Shyam.  Funny Boy.  Toronto, Ontario: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1994.