Panther is set against the backdrop of Sri Lanka’s troubled war against the Tigers
Set during Sri Lanka’s civil war, little Prabhu tries to use his one skill to emerge from its bloody depths — cricket
Just as the literary world woke up to recognise the brilliance of a posse of novelists from Pakistan, who, following the footsteps of great Indian authors, have made a mark on English writing globally, winning every accolade available, we now witness the rise of writers from Sri Lanka. Among the talent Pakistan gave us were Mohsin Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist), Kamila Shamsie (Broken Verses), Uzma Aslam Khan (Trespassing), Mohammed Hanif (A Case of Exploding Mangoes) and Daniyal Mueenuddin (In Other Rooms, Other Wonders). A varied lot, with great works already out and a lot more awaited.
Sri Lanka’s biggest literary star in English was Michael Ondaatje, whose renowned novel, The English Patient, won the Booker Prize. We have enjoyed the works of Punyakante Wijenaike (An Enemy Within, Amulet), late Nihal de Silva (The Road From Elephant Pass, The Far Spent Day), Shyam Selvadurai (Funny Boy, The Hungry Ghosts) and others.
In such a pantheon of the rising sub-continent literature that is not Indian is author Chimmi Tenduf-La (half English, half Tibetian), whose first novel, Panther, has struck quite a cord with readers in India, even as he is out with a second book, The Amazing Racist.
Panther is set against the backdrop of Sri Lanka’s troubled war against the Tigers of the Eelam, where the Sinhalese people lose their sense of traditional kindness and humanity and look at every Tamil as a terrorist. It follows the life of little Prabhu, who is torn away from his family, who has to restore his life using his only talent — cricket — even as he tries to find and reunite with his father, mother and sister — just as the Lankan nation tries to find peace.
Fast-paced and easy in narrative — despite the alternating progress of the story in present and retracing the past — Panther is a small-sized book with a big heart. Prabhu loses his family as the war comes to town. Has his father, already shown as unfaithful to his wife, disappeared to join the terrorists? Before they can find out, the remaining three of them are taken to a camp, from where Prabhu loses his mother and sister.
The cricketer in him ensures little Prabhu gets to join an elite school on a sporting scholarship, where he finds in Indika, his cricketing partner a brother and friend. Despite being Sinhalese, Indika’s prosperous family almost adopts him, presenting the balancing side of war — a Sinhalese who can love the Tamil.
But the deadly cricketing Tamil boy, with his bad English — which Tenduf-La uses as a style with good impact — has a past and a secret. He was a Panther (avoiding the direct naming of Tiger, or LTTE) — the novel takes the readers along with Prabhu into the camps where child soldiers are prepared for suicide missions by soulless blood-thirsty leaders.
The bulk of the actual story in present — cricket accolades, boozing nights and smoke, chasing girls and dreams of love and sex, boyish bravado — does not feel like an escape. Between the brat son of a powerful leader, Shock Ice, his firang girlfriend, a betraying friend — there is a constant reminder of the war around.
The narrative has another dimension of the voice of the father observing the young Panther in training, learning to hate and kill. Will Prabhu let the cricketing system’s hatred for Tamils, the discrimination and prejudice by the coach, the horrors of violence unleashed by a pedophile resurrect the hatred in him to carry out a suicide mission? Will youthful envy for a friend who has it easy in life, eternally taking Prabhu for granted, using him at times like a servant in exchange of the patronage of his rich family force the Panther to strike?
Such questions lead readers into the climax, which is handled deftly. A wonderful debut by an author who lives in Lanka, never pretending to be an expert on Lanka’s history or war, yet easily maneuvers us into its subtleties. Panther is a good read, but it also falls short of a great work it might have been.
Sriram Karri is the author of the novel, Autobiography of a Mad Nation, longlisted for the MAN Asian Literary Prize, and a non-fiction work, The Spiritual Supermarket, longlisted for the Crossword Book Prize
