The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises

 

Shehan Karunatilaka begins The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises with a note ‘How to read the collection?’ and advises ‘never in sequence’. Still, he guides us through the broad categories his stories fall into showing he cares for the reader’s moods. Doing this, he has us impressed even before the collection of 30 stories (some very short and others long) has begun for we all know that a reader's mood is as unpredictable as vagaries of monsoon in the subcontinent.

It is exceptional how despite maintaining an amazingly funny tone in his stories, he is mighty serious about his craft and its import. He embeds facts, his country’s turbulent history and politics within fiction. For instance, No.One.Cares on the outset feels like a young, depressed man’s attempt to garner attention on social media but gradually reveals how the country’s autocratic regime has silenced many voices of dissent. Time Machine, Assassin’s Paradise, The Eyes Have It are other stories that brim with such intricately woven facts. Our heads teem with names when we are done with the above stories - JR Jayawardene, Sarojini Yogeswaran, Ranjan Wijeratne, Anagarika Dharmapala to name a few. 

Easy Tiger, Baby Monitor and Second Person impress us with twists, a delectably unique way of handling infidelity in marriage. Hugs, The 1969 Game, If You’re Sad and You Know It feel bizarre to start with before ending in beautiful & important messages. 

I would love to know Elon Musk’s reaction when he reads the opening piece - ‘A self-driving car’s thoughts as it crashes’. The titular story, in 42 vignettes, shows how one's birth over which one has no control is a tragedy/travesty of one's existence, an offbeat exploration of the question - 'How many births before attaining nibbana?' 

The Colonials and My Name is not Malini are interesting stories that depict how for the economically weaker sections of the society, freedom is an elusive concept even after the island nation is free from its foreign rulers. 

Shehan’s stories sparkle with wit, sardonic humor and imagination that can be described by adjectives only in superlative. His stories move beyond the moral and conventional norms. He’s brazen when he writes about the Sri Lankan civil war, human rights violation, adultery in marriages, messy college music-fest or nasty office politics. He is fiercely fearless as he washes his nation’s dirty linen in public and exposes the failures of his countrymen, people of his race and religion. This audacity truly deserves accolades, especially in today’s times when it's easier to label someone a traitor and the definition of patriotism is highly skewed. 

“Criticizing your country is not an act of treason. It is an act of love”, he writes in the story Assassin's Paradise and we can only pray that every country has a share of writers and readers who firmly believe in this. I must admit that though this audacity leaves us awestruck in some stories , it also leaves us cringing at few other places. 

Of the thirty entries that make this collection, the short ones are all winners, they're little surprises. Among the longer ones, The Ceylon Islands, Time Machine (though this one gets tedious), No.One.Cares, The Capital of Djibouti and Easy Tiger are favorites. 

If you (like me) love short stories, prefer them to a novel to sample an author’s writing style or if you wish to stay away from the much hyped award-winning novels by the author for the time being, The Birth Lottery and other Surprises published by Hachette India is a wonderful option. The stories here brace us for the author’s worldview and his way with words. Demanding the reader's  complete attention and patience, even re-read at places, The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises is a wonderful miscellany. Quirky, thought-provoking from start to end, it is packed with truth bombs and many surprises pop up all along.