LLOYD FERNANDO
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Lloyd Fernando
was born in Sri Lanka on May 31, 1926.
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Followed his
family to Singapore where he grew up and received his
education.
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When his parents
decided to return to Sri Lanka, the sixteen-year-old Fernando decided to stay
behind.
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He continued to
fund his education by taking odd jobs like working as a labourer, trishaw rider
and an apprentice mechanic.
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He later took
part time jobs as a radio broadcasting assistant and newsreader.
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He successfully
graduated with double Honours degrees in English and Philosophy from the
University of Singapore.
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He later went on
to acquire his PhD from the University of Leeds.
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He began teaching
at University of Malaya in 1967, and was head of the English Department for a
period.
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Whilst lecturing
at the University, Fernando took up law purely by chance, and later decided to
be a lawyer in order to not stop working upon reaching a retirement age.
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In 1978, he left
the academic profession to concentrate on his law profession.
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He began writing
at the age of fifteen.
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He describes
writing as taking snapshots of the society and showing the reality without
being sentimental.
HIS WORKS
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Fernando
approaches his writing in a very disciplined manner.
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He begins writing
at eight in the morning , and only takes breaks for lunch and tea.
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His first novel,
Scorpion Orchid presents the story of four university friends of different
ethnic background: Sabran, a Malay; Santinathan, an Indian; Guan Kheng, a
Chinese; and Peter, a Eurasian.
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His second novel,
Green is the Colour is a story about four individuals – Sara, Yun Ming, Dahlan
and Gita, again of different racial/cultural background brought together
through friendship or mutual acquaintance after the bloody May 1969 riots.
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The third
instalment to Fernando’s prose is his sh0rt story Surja Singh, the story of a
28-year-old soldier who lives through the Japanese Occupation and later, the
return of the British.
SUMMARY OF GREEN IS THE COLOR
Lloyd Fernando's Green is the Colour is a very interesting
novel. The country is still scarred by violence, vigilante groups roam the
countryside, religious extremists set up camp in the hinterland, there are
still sporadic outbreaks of fighting in the city, and everyone, all the time,
is conscious of being watched. It comes as some surprise to find that the story
is actually a contemporary (and very clever) reworking of a an episode from the
Misa Melayu, an 18th century classic written by Raja Chulan.
In this climate of unease, Fernando employs a multi-racial cast
of characters. At the centre of the novel there's a core of four main
characters, good (if idealistic) young people who cross the racial divide to
become friends, and even fall in love.
There's Dahlan, a young lawyer and activist who invites trouble
by making impassioned speech on the subject of religious intolerance on the
steps of a Malacca church; his friend from university days, Yun Ming, a civil
servant working for the Ministry of Unity who seeks justice by working from
within the government.
The most fully realised character of the novel is Siti Sara, and
much of the story is told from her viewpoint. A sociologist and academic, she's
newly returned from studies in America where she found life much more
straightforward, and trapped in a loveless marriage to Omar, a young man much
influenced by the Iranian revolution who seeks purification by joining
religious commune. The hungry passion between Yun Ming and Siti - almost
bordering on violence at times and breaking both social and religious taboos -
is very well depicted. (Dahlan falls in love with Gita, Sara's friend and
colleague, and by the end of the novel has made an honest woman of her.)
Like the others, Sara is struggling to make sense of events :
Nobody could get may sixty-nine right, she thought. It was
hopeless to pretend you could be objective about it. speaking even to someone
close to you, you were careful for fear the person might unwittingly quote you
to others. if a third person was present, it was worse, you spoke for the other
person's benefit. If he was Malay you spoke one way, Chinese another, Indian
another. even if he wasn't listening. in the end the spun tissue, like an
unsightly scab, became your vision of what happened; the wound beneath
continued to run pus.
Although the novel is narrated from a third person viewpoint, it
is curious that just one chapter is narrated by Sara's father, one of the minor
characters, an elderly village imam and a man of great compassion and insight.
This shift in narration works so well that I'm surprised Fernando did not make
wider use of it.
The novel has villain, of course, the unsavoury Pangalima, a
senior officer in the Department of Unity and a man of uncertain racial lineage
(he looks Malay, has adopted Malay culture, so of course, that's enough to make
him kosher!). He has coveted Sara for years, and is determined to win her
sexual favours at any cost.
The novel is not without significant weaknesses. It isn't
exactly a rollicking read, and seems rather stilted - not least because there
are just too many talking heads with much of the action taking place
"offstage", including the rape at the end, which is really the climax
of the whole novel.
If we're interested in Yun Ming, Dahlan and Omar it is because
of the contradictory ideas they espouse, but in each case their arguments could
have been explored in greater depth and the characters themselves have been
more fully fleshed.
The plot of Green is the Colour never really holds together as
well as it might but seems to be perpetually rushing off in new directions (as
actually do the characters!) without fully exploring what is set up already. (I
was particularly disappointed that we don't get to spend more time with Omar in
the commune.)
But the strengths of the novel more than makes up for these
lapses.
There's been a lot of talk about local authors not being brave
enough to write about the great mustn't-be-talked-abouts of race, religion and
politics in Malaysian society. Here's one author who was brave enough to do
just that. (And look, hey, the sky didn't cave in!)
Here's an author too who was able to think himself into the skin
of people of different races - how many since have been able, or prepared, to
make that imaginative leap?
Here too is an author who is able to convincingly evoke the
landscape of Malaysia both urban and rural in carefully chosen details.
Above all, though, one feels that here is an author who says
what needed to be said. Heck, what still needs to be said!
Here, he's using Dahlan as his mouthpiece, but the sentiments
are clearly the author's own :
All of us must make amends. Each and every one of us has to make
an individual effort. Words are not enough. We must show by individual actions
that we will not tolerate bigotry and race hatred.
SUMMARY SCORPION ORCHID
The plot entwines four young men of differing ethnic make-up:
Santinathan is a Tamil, Guan Kheng a Chinese, Sabran a Malay and Peter
D'Almeida a Eurasian. The four of them were former schoolmates and now attends
the Singapore university, all in their third year. The story follows them as
they become embroiled with the racial riots in Singapore during the 1950s. A
distinctive feature of Scorpion Orchid lies in fourteen italicized passages of
varying length, drawn from traditional Malayan texts and interwoven into the
narrative.
