The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

by Shehan Karunatilaka

  Over the next few years, I had several doses of bad luck and one stroke of outrageous fortune. Its name was The Darkening.

  Defying the zeitgeist of morose shoe-gazing, The Darkening had haystacks of hair, lengthy guitar solos and wrote big choruses about cars, bars and guitars. The 80s were due for a revival, and for at least one summer these lederhosen-wearing freaks were it.

  Their second album featured a ballad called Poison on a Tray, a cover of a track by an obscure post-grunge band with a Sri Lankan bass player.

  The first cheque I received was more than I’d seen that year playing Hotel California in a waistcoat for bored Arabs. When it was featured in that teenage show named after a Californian suburb, I received a cheque for more than all the radio royalties in Luxembourg. When it went top 20 in Canada, I found myself richer than my father would’ve been had he actually placed that bet on Kenya.

  Old W.G. made his pension on a lucky wager at sixty-four. His son hit jackpot at thirty-two on what he then thought was his genius. I had hoped it would lead to a publishing deal and a solo album. It would lead to nothing of the sort.

  Last year The Darkening split up and Poison on a Tray was voted most annoying song of the millennium by that fat git on Radio One.

  If I met that twenty-one-year-old now, I’d tell him to practise more and smoke less.

  Grandchildren

  I get down to the serious business of googling the words Pradeep, Sivanathan and Mathew. I find nothing. I google Pradeep and Mathews with an s. There is an engineer from Kerala who has just had a daughter and is looking for anyone from Sacred Heart College, Villupuram. There is a doctor in Sheffield who authored a paper on spinal injuries.

  I type Pradeep, Mathew, Sri, Lanka and Cricket, and find that only two Pradeeps have played for Sri Lanka, an A-team player called Pradeep Hewage and Thaathi’s old favourite, Asanka Pradeep Gurusinha. Not much else.

  I decide to go to Ari Uncle. He is sitting on a haansi putuwa in his study, watching his grandchildren play video games. He has a smile on his face. ‘Come, Shehan, sit.’

  ‘Call me Garfield, Uncle. Too many Shehans in the world.’

  ‘Very good. Very good. Your Thaathi would be happy.’

  Ari Uncle carries my father’s cane, but walks with more agility and purpose than old W.G. ever did. He wears a banian and his glasses hang from a string around his neck.

  ‘Some of these video games are hena violent. Cutting each other up with hammers and axes and all. No wonder all this violence in the world.’

  On the screen two dwarves are attacking three wolves with what look like pitchforks. I decline to tell Ari Uncle that there was violence in the world long before video games.

  ‘Our Jimi also plays these ones. Just a game, no?’

  Everyone thinks I named my son after Hendrix or Page or T. Kirk. W.G. thought it was after Jim Laker, Ammi probably fancies it was after Jim Reeves. I named him after James Jamerson, the finest bass player to walk the earth. Jamerson lived in the shadows of Motown, played uncredited on thirty number 1 pop hits, and died an alcoholic. Now you know everything.

  ‘I of course prefer the car-driving ones. But I’m strange. I prefer test cricket to this 20/20 nonsense. How is the podiyan?’

  ‘Fine. Fine. Wants to be a footballer.’

  ‘Very good. He can play for Germany. That was your father’s team.’

  ‘I read the book, Uncle.’

  ‘What book?’

  ‘The Legend of Pradeep Mathew.’

  Ari Uncle puts on his glasses and peers at me. I see one lens is cracked and has been cellotaped.

  On the TV a fire-spewing dragon enters the frame and the three youngsters scream.

  ‘Shh. Shh. Don’t shout,’ snaps Ari Uncle.

  ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘Of course. I only told your mother to give you to read. She thought you might be offended.’

  ‘Is any of it true?’

  ‘Some of it. Most of it.’

  ‘There is no record of Pradeep Mathew anywhere.’

  ‘They say his name was erased when the archives were computerised.

  ‘According to Reggie Ranwala. You believe that?’

  ‘Sheh … um, Garfield, that’s one of the few parts of the story that I’m sure is true.’

  ‘So he does exist?’

  ‘I saw him with these very eyes,’ he says, pointing to his broken specs.

  ‘Then I want to finish it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to find Mathew and finish the book.’

  The youngsters stop their game and look up in shock as their grandfather hugs the long-haired uncle with the tattoo. It’s a long time since I’ve been hugged by anyone. He holds me tight and I do not feel embarrassed. In fact I feel something I have been unable to feel for most of my worthless life.

  Copyists

  I haven’t done much writing before. I tried to steer clear of anything Thaathi clung to. I prefer marijuana to booze, football to cricket, music to words. I do not remember the surname of the cricketer after whom I am named. And it pains me at my deepest level to hear someone describe Meat Loaf as modern opera.

  I spent all of 2004 recording demos, putting bands together and calling up labels. I even let another man marry my wife and bring up my son in a city oceans away. Sure it stings, but what kind of father would I be anyway? How different can I be from W.G.? I see my son twice a year and while the moments I spend with him are magic, I have considered caning him for listening to Mariah Carey. Soon he will turn thirteen. Soon he will begin to hate me.

  I sit at Barefoot Café listening to jazz amid light rain, squirming birds and locals who act like tourists. I hate everything about Colombo, it’s a pseudo city with semi-people living quasi-lives. It is a mess. I despise its lethargy, its stupidity and its pretensions. The only thing I like about Colombo is how it smells during monsoon.

  Manilal Simon, my old bandmate in Capricorn, is playing keyboards, still sporting the mullet and the gold chains. Back in the day, Manilal told me to forget about originals and learn jazz. ‘Let me tell you, machang. Lankans can imitate, but can we create? We are good craftsmen, I won’t say no, but let’s not bullshit, we are hopeless at being artists. Learn your instrument, machang, forget about being Bob Dylan.’

  Paul Bowles, who lived on a private island off Weligama in the 1950s, once said, ‘The Sinhalese are beyond a doubt the least musical people in the world. It would be quite impossible to have less sense of pitch or rhythm.’ Not meaning to boast, but I can hear music in rustling leaves, in tractor wheels, in kottu clangs and at certain moments with the right mix of chemicals, I can even smell sound.

  I made it my life’s mission to prove Mr Bowles wrong, but looking at Manilal playing a cover of a cover to an audience who isn’t listening, I think we all may have failed.

  Crikipedia

  Despite threats of recession, the pound still goes a long way in Sri Lanka. I don’t really need to work, but I help out a few friends from the band CrossFire and we do some weddings. It gives me pocket money and a sliver of a social life.

  My girlfriend from India visits and notices foundation on my collar. Shouldn’t this be lipstick, she giggles. Then she sits on my lap, pins me down, dusts my neck and finds the love bite that I don’t remember getting, but do remember trying to mask with cheap make-up. I heed the old man’s advice and deny till I die. She tells me to drop dead and departs. So it goes.

  I tell my mother I am going to edit the book.

  ‘You think people will be interested?’

  ‘Ammi, it’s an important story.’

  I do not tell her about the list of things to do yesterday. Maybe I should.

  ‘Be careful about publishing it in Thaathi’s name.’

  ‘Otherwise whose name?’

  ‘People used to call home asking about the book. Some threatened to sue if it comes out.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who knows, Putha? Thaathi left debts. I don’t know half o
f what he did. Be careful.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How is your business going?’

  ‘Thought I would do some travel first.’

  ‘How much travel, Putha? Now you are thirty-two. Isn’t it time you settled?’

  Settle down is what Ammi meant. But she hit the nail on the head. Settling. Settling for whatever limits exist on your present.

  ‘How many times do you want me to get married?’

  ‘Just once.’

  ‘How’s George?’

  ‘Good. He heard your song on the radio in Cairo.’

  ‘Not my song any more.’

  ‘Have you thought about asking Adriana about Sri Lanka? Will be good for Jimi.’

  ‘Ammi, she has her own life. So does Jimi.’

  ‘The boy is a Sri Lankan. He should know his country.’

  I have no desire to own a woman or be owned by one. I like to have sex with women and to be friends with them. Both of which seem to cease after rings are exchanged. Marriage is two people deciding whose turn it is to be unhappy. I have been there and been unable to do that.

  I call her in Geneva, where her husband lectures in something dull and important, and tell her what I am planning.

  ‘I always said you should do writing. Aren’t you tired of playing rock star?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Call when you are.’

  ‘Then you may never hear from me.’

  ‘Your son wants to speak to you. Go chase your father’s ghost. Might be good for you.’

  She mattered for a while. There was a time when I felt like a corpse every time she left the room. But that fades. Who has not lost his head at the feet of a woman?

  I drive Ari Uncle around in his shitty, power steering-less Ford. We go to Malinda Bakers in Moratuwa where I eat a maalu paan made in heaven. The white widow has given me the munchies and I whack three. It is fish and spice cushioned in a hot, hot bun and it is so good it gives me the hiccups.

  There is nothing here for us except pastries in cages and crumbs on the floor. The manager, Indrakrishnan Amirthalingam, tells us that his wife’s brother died ten years ago, that she never talks about him, and that he would be greatly unhappy if we harassed her. He is a large man and we get his message.

  The former Thurstan cricket coach Lucius Nanayakkara died of a heart attack five years ago. The Moratuwa police may have records of the death of a Mr Satyakumar Gokulanath in 1997, but to obtain them I will have to fill out seventeen forms and hand them in on a Thursday between 2 and 4 p.m.

  Ari Uncle refuses to take me to Newton Rodrigo, saying that he shamelessly courted my mother right after Thaathi’s death. Charith Silva has migrated to Holland and is working as a bowling coach. Uvais Amalean is now CEO of Ceylon Petroleum and is difficult to reach.

  Danila Guneratne, accounts director at DDB Colombo, was transferred to New York in 2001. I hope her office wasn’t where I think it could have been. She was the one I most wanted to meet.

  I dig up articles on TamilNet.com of an operations coordinator, I.E. Kugarajah, aka Kuga, captured by the Sri Lankan forces in ‘94. I also find references to a South Asian bookie called Emmanuel in Simon Marqusee’s rambling book.

  I cannot find the midget’s ground. Ari Uncle refuses to help me.

  ‘Enough. I cursed your father. I can’t have you also cursed.’

  I meet Jabir who has traded his cap for a beard and his hair for a belly. He still smiles a lot. ‘I will not tell you where, Garfield boss. But you have to find the manhole next to the lamp post, then only you will find the entrance.’

  I go from Colombo 7 to Colombo 11. At the P. Sara, I find a manhole and a lamp post. I bend down and heave the lid, straining my spine for the privilege of whiffing sewage. No entrance. I go to SSC, NCC, Bloomfield and R. Premadasa looking for lamp posts and manholes. Finally I end up at the Tyronne Cooray.

  No one aside from schoolboys plays cricket here any more. I find out that the lamp post only went up last year and that the manhole has been sealed since the Dutch era. The old man at the rickety scoreboard says he has never heard of anyone called Hewman Neiris Abeytunge. All I find is fallen leaves and swirls of dog shit and the bo tree under which my father claims to have slept.

  This time I am the one cursing Ari Uncle.

  ‘Garfield, who said it was the Tyronne Cooray?’

  ‘I’ve read the book five times. It’s obvious.’

  ‘Putha, the obvious things are never worth looking at.’

  ‘So where is the midget?’

  ‘Uncle Neiris died in the tsunami. I don’t know where the saasthara woman is.’

  ‘So none of this is true?’

  ‘What are you saying? I can prove.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can play you the spools.’

  ‘You still have them?’

  ‘Of course. I just need to find them.’

  I resume my search. Cricket is probably the most intricately catalogued subject on the worldwide web aside from porn. I can drum up the scorecard of Bloomfield vs Nomads 1992 at the Tyronne Cooray if I choose to. I do. No mention of Mathew. I get sidetracked by a preview of an India–Pakistan game where the reader comments begin with ‘Dravid may struggle against Gul,’ and end with ‘You goat-fucking paki swine fukkers drink yo ma’s urine and cum in your dad’s terrorist beard.’

  Over my lifetime, yo momma jokes have replaced mother-in-law jokes, Hollywood Arabs have replaced Hollywood Russians, and Indians and Pakistanis have remained incapable of civilised cricketing discourse. Sri Lankans do not behave much better, though not without provocation. I stumble upon www.muralisachucker.com and observe my fellow countrymen using language that makes me blush.

  There are evidently people out there more obsessed over this pointless game than my father. I trawl through cricketing chat rooms and in every cockeyed argument I fancy I catch a glimpse of W.G. I wonder if the dead haunt cyberspace, if the old man’s soul wafts through internet chat rooms arguing Murali’s action with foul-mouthed Aussies for the rest of eternity.

  And then, I come across something that makes me spill my tea. I stare at it for as long as I can, exorcizing all thoughts of cyber ghosts, examining the facts as objectively as I can. We know that W.G. was capable of many things. Like fabricating meetings, brainwashing friends, bending truths and hiding behind bottles.

  But I put it to you that there is no way on God’s green earth or in Satan’s purple hell that arrack-swilling, computer-illiterate W.G. Karunasena would ever be capable of uploading a webpage.

  Pukekohe

  So here I am at the arse-end of the world, breathing the clean green air and counting the money that I’m preparing to bust.

  I am in a glass elevator ascending the spine of the Auckland Skytower to the casino at the top. The lift opens and I enter a warmly lit dome. Armies of orientals throw chips at Polynesian dealers, the music of porcelain hitting carpet drowning out the chatter. Unlike W.G. I’ve never had a weakness for gambling, I just came up here to enjoy the view.

  I travel with a backpack, a laptop and lots of pockets. I google Shirali, Fernando, New and Zealand, watch the digital hourglass turn counterclockwise, and then crack up at what I see. Streaks of copper decorating her straightened hair, posing in jeans with two Kiwi lasses on Facebook, looking buxom in a business suit on LinkedIn. Forty-one, married, living in a town called, get this, Pukekohe. I don’t know where in the arse of the world that is.

  That’s a bad pun for Sinhala speakers. The word puka, a Maori word for hill, in Sinhala means backside. On the plane ride through Oceania, I thumbed through my Hitchhiker’s Guide to New Zealand and looked up New Zealand names that have obscene meanings in my language. I find out the official term for a European New Zealander is Pakeha, Sinhala for fucker. I think I’m going to enjoy my time in Aotearoa.

  Under Education, Shirali’s online profile says:

  Master’s in Finance at Perth (95–98)

  BCom at Monash (86–89)

/>   Under Employment, it says:

  Pukekohe MasterPlumbers (′04 to present) Finance Director

  Manukau City Council (96–03) Finance Manager

  HSBC, Brisbane (94–95) Research Analyst

  Commercial Bank, Colombo (89–92) Business Development Executive

  Under Marital Status, it says:

  Married with two kids, Teran and Sabi.

  It does not mention her husband’s name.

  I sit in a motel in Manukau City where I crave a kottu and a joint, but settle for a six-pack of Lion Red and a chicken pie. The plywood walls have a poster of a green lake surrounded by mountains and the varnished bedside table has a Bible in English and Maori. Unlike Thaathi, I’m no non-believer. I go to church whenever there is a woman to drag me there. With the number of sins I have accumulated, it would be foolish not to have the Big Man on my side.

  There are two Fernandos in the Pukekohe online directory and one number for Pukekohe MasterPlumbers. I take them down before stumbling upon a website called www.lostrelative.co.nz.

  I run a search for Pradeep Sivanathan Mathew and let them take NZ$18.99 off my credit card, but end up with no matches. Unperturbed, I request individual searches for each name and have to wade through pages of disclaimers before I click on OK.

  I get a call from a girl who tells me in an accent that is not Kiwi that it will be a further NZ$129.95. I make my voice chocolatey and make her laugh a few times. She tells me free of charge that there are 137 Sivanathans, 1,638 Pradeeps and 154,843 Mathews living in New Zealand. The list stretches from Whangarei to Invercargil. I tell her I’m in Auckland and ask if she’s free for a coffee. She laughs for the last time and tells me her call centre is in Chennai.

  My passport has been stamped for three months and I wonder if I should not work a detour into this adventure. My Hitchhiker’s Guide reveals that there is more to these two islands than the sprawling city that I’m caged in. A few days in the Bay of Islands before I start playing detective? A quick ski on those distant mountains before I set out on my quest?