Taboos of Sri Lankan Society as Revealed in the Novels Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens by Shyam Selvadurai.

Universiteit van Amsterdam

Taboos of Sri Lankan Society as Revealed in the

Novels Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens by

Shyam Selvadurai.

Sanya Mathur (11748621)

Literary Studies: English Literature and Culture

Dr. R.W.H. (Rudolph) Glitz

Table of Contents

1. Introduction – 3

2. Chapter 1: Taboo Love Relationships: Class, Caste and Racial Tensions – 6

3. Chapter 2: The Taboo of Homosexuality: Homophobic Assumptions and Reactions – 20 4. Chapter 3: “Hags”, “Fast” and “Manly Women”: Misogynist Taboos – 34

5. Conclusion – 48 6. Works Cited – 52

Introduction

Shyam Selvadurai's historical novel Funny Boy (1994) is set in 1980s Colombo whereas Cinnamon Gardens (1998) is set in late 1920s Colombo, at a time when Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon. These texts highlight issues such as communal violence, rigid gender roles, homosexuality amidst obsessively heteronormative society, and the taboos that

surround each of these subject matters that have always been a significant part of Sri Lanka’s history.

Taboos are undoubtedly present in Sri Lankan society but are not noticeable at a surface level since they are not always addressed directly. They become apparent through the act of forbidding, negation, pseudo-explanations, adynatons, euphemisms, silence, or even through the violent measures that are taken when the taboos are challenged or broken. Using various passages from Freud’s Totem and Taboo, I will analyse – how taboos can be

identified in Selvadurai’s novels, even though there is no direct mention of them; where do taboos come from; what forces are at work that orchestrate the taboos; what are the reasons as to why taboos manage to stay in place even though most people suffer because of them; how characters often use taboos to their advantage; and most importantly, why they are ‘taboos’. These taboos as represented in the novels indicate how rigid, suffocating and oppressive Sri Lankan society can be –at least for the characters in the novel.

Given the complex nature of taboos, a perfect definition cannot be formed. However, Allan and Burridge in Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language attempt to explain taboo by stating that “taboos arise out of social constraints on the individual's behaviour where it can cause discomfort, harm or injury. (1)” They further elucidate by claiming that because of taboos, people are at physical and moral risk since one

simple act of transgression can lead to substantial penalties. In my chosen novels by Selvadurai also, there is ample evidence of a simple act of breaching the social codes that result in instantaneous punishments.

Although a wide range of taboos surrounds the Sri Lankan society, they can still be roughly classified into three main categories – caste, class and racial taboos, taboos of homosexuality and misogynist taboos. The taboos pertaining to these categories have always been a part of Sri Lankan society and hold relevance even today, although the extent of their influence might vary.

Asiff Hussein in his 2013 study Does Caste Matter? discusses how in the

contemporary time the caste and class issues are talked about with utmost cautions to not hurt anyone’s sentiments since it is quite a sensitive topic. People still argue about their caste being superior to the others, and this often leads to heated arguments. Junius Richard Jayewardene, who was the president of Sri Lanka from 1978 to 1989 reinforced the caste differences by affirming that Sri Lankan society cannot exist without it. He further stated that “marriages arranged with great foresight are important in order to expand property and wealth, consolidate class status and widen contacts… Caste was, however, the determining factor in both social relations and reproduction…” (Hussein 285). A critical review of

Cinnamon Gardens by Vera Alexander reads: “I think of Cinnamon Gardens not as a

historical novel, but more as a metaphor for the present” (146) since such problems in the social structure, though slightly diminished, persist.

In the introduction to a collection of his novels Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from

South Asian Writers (2004), Selvadurai writes that "homosexuality is illegal in Sri Lanka and

the genuine threat of physical violence and intimidation might have stopped me from

gender roles” (4). Selvadurai could only write about these issues once he was out of that place and his tone conveys the fear and revulsion of the hostile environment of the society that he was a part of.

Various scholars have examined my chosen novels and emphasised the issues that Selvadurai attempts to bring to light. Gaytri Gopinath unfolds the potential social

connotations behind the children’s games in the first chapter of Funny Boy and brings queer theory into the picture concerning the diasporic aspect of this novel in her book Impossible

Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Kaustav Bakshi writes about the

strict rules and the hostile environment of the Victorian Academy school in Funny Boy –a school would go to any length to ensure the conformity of gender roles. Heather Smyth presents a postcolonial and nationalist reading of Cinnamon Gardens and includes the social expectations of Sri Lankan society in her analysis. Academics have also researched the sexual as well as linguistic taboos in general. Building on the insights gained by several of these scholars, I will examine the taboos and prohibitions in the novels as my central subject without subordinating them to any other critical concern.

Taboo Relationships: Class, Caste and Racial Tensions

The caste system is one of the most ancient and problematic constituents of Sri Lankan society. Asiff Hussein in Casteism in Sri Lanka: From Ancient Times to the Present

Day states that “a caste may basically be defined as a largely homogeneous group of people who are almost or invariably endogamous and who claim descent from a common ancestor or a close association from the distant past. A caste also professes to follow a common

hereditary calling” (8). Caste is, therefore, carried down by every generation and each generation is expected, and in numerous cases forced, to follow this flawed yet inevitable system in its entirety with its shortcomings and its terrible and often scandalous repercussions as we will notice through the textual evidence.

In this chapter, I will focus on a series of essential relationships that many of the significant characters within the two novels share instinctively but in most cases get sanctioned for it instantaneously. The differences and tensions between communities

essentially arise when taboos are at work, and these taboos are most detectable when the said communities come together. A practical way to show this ‘coming together’ is to depict the actual relationships themselves – be it in the form of a friendship, a love relationship, a master-slave relationship or a failed marriage.

In this caste and class-divided Sri Lankan society, one is expected to marry the person of his or her caste, which is why an inter-caste marriage is a huge taboo. Even if one successfully manages to transgress the taboo, it is impossible for the transgressor and for the taboo to co-exist in the same space. Freud in Totem and Taboo says that “the violation of certain taboo prohibitions becomes a social danger which must be punished or expiated by all the members of society lest it harms them all” (56). Arul in Cinnamon Gardens is banished

by his father, the Mudaliyar when he marries Pakkiam, a woman who was a servant in their house and being born into a family of servants; she was of a lower-caste. It is one of the most outrageous scenes when Arul stabs his father who opposes their marriage given the caste and class differences. To the Mudaliyar, Arul’s actions – the marriage as well as his attempt to prevent anyone from stopping this marriage – went against the entire family as well as the society and therefore, it was impossible to forgive him. As a consequence, his punishment was his exile to India with his wife. Arul was expected to have been like the other upper-caste men who perceive the lower-caste people as their servants and slaves – who should always be answerable to them and should never deny anything that the upper-caste people ask of them. They belong to the lowest strata of society, and it was thus unthinkable that an upper-caste man would fall in love with someone who is meant to be used for his own sake. The

Mudaliyar is the example that the society follows, he is the authority of the state of Colombo, and therefore, he has to take actions so that no one ever does what his son dared to do. It is thus unendurable for the taboo and the transgressor to be in the same space especially when everyone around them is aware of the transgression.

The Mudaliyar makes his whole family swear to the Gods that no one shall ever make contact with Arul, but on the contrary, he always keeps an eye on him even when he is in India, through his servants' network. However, since he is the one who has all the power, he can exercise his will to do whatever he wishes to, even if it means breaking the rules himself, but of course, this makes him a hypocrite in the first place. We learn of the hypocrisy of this social system when Pakkiam tells Balendran that Mudaliyar used to visit Pakkiam’s mother to "satisfy his needs" and she had no other option but to oblige. Mudaliyar then brought her daughter Pakkiam to take her place when her mother died –he fed her, bought her clothes, gave her work at his house till she would be of a mature age to then fulfil his “needs” as his slave (Selvadurai 255). Firstly, the Mudaliyar assumed that he had the upper hand on

her since he was the one who brought her into the house. Secondly, the Mudaliyar expected his son to treat the lower caste women just as he did, but Arul's fault was that he was caste-blind – “he loved where he should have simply lusted” (Selvadurai 256) –which is a bizarre and an intolerable transgression in the eyes of the Mudaliyar.

A similar example in Funny Boy is of Radha’s theatre and drama teacher Doris, who tells Radha her experience when she decided to marry Paskaran, a man who was of a different caste than hers. Doris confesses how her father never forgave her and much like the Mudaliyar, and he also forbade his family to have any ties with her. Her family then

emigrated to England without telling her and did not leave any address behind. She ruminates that “when my father died, my sisters and I were finally free to make contact again. However, it was too late then. We had become strangers to each other. Now Paskaran is dead and I’m alone” (Selvadurai 81). Allan and Burridge assert that “infractions of taboo can lead to illness or death, as well as to the lesser penalties of corporal punishment, incarceration, social ostracism or mere disapproval” (1). Though Doris is not physically banished to another place, she is socially banished from the lives of the people she loves. Doris instantly becomes an outcast, and her post-marriage social alienation is a testament to the fact that taboos are quite strong and cannot be overpowered.

What happened to Arul, happened to Doris too, and in the course of both novels, many cases just like theirs are revealed. Their stories prove that these situations are not unique or rare yet despite that, the inter-caste marriage taboo holds a strong position in the society. The next important question that then arises is– why is no one able to oppose this taboo when there are so many people who suffer because of it? Freud while evaluating the reasons as to why a taboo remains unchallenged, says that “taboos are ancient prohibitions which at one time were forced upon a generation of primitive people from without, that is, they probably were forcibly impressed upon them by an earlier generation”(53). He further

states that such prohibitions are not reconsidered or brought up for discussion; instead, they are carried down from generation to generation. The consequences of this integrated system too are forwarded to every generation. Moreover, Freud proclaims that the consistency of the prohibitions is a result of “tradition set up by paternal or social authority” (53). The latter of what Freud says can be noted in the situation of the Mudaliyar as well when Selvadurai gives the readers intermittent flashbacks into the childhood of the Mudaliyar. Selvadurai states that "he was taught to feel his superiority" even as a child (Cinnamon Gardens 51). That is where the problem lies –at the root level. A mere child was given the power over people just

because he was the first son in the family. The taboos too were passed down to him. He could order people around as he was growing up and people around him including his mother obeyed him and obliged him with whatever he wished for or wished to do. That power he exercised over others became habitual as he regarded himself as the pre-eminent authority. Through the entire course of the novel his name is not revealed, he is just referred to as the Mudaliyar –which is his caste that he wears like a crown. Much emphasis is given to the prefix ‘the’, and given his political position being practically similar to the mayor of the city, the ‘the’ depicts the gravitas associated with his position which thereby adds to his

dominance over others.

The established dominance of the Mudaliyar and the fear that he generates in the people around him is evident when the life of his second son, Balendran, is disclosed. In a series of flashbacks, Balendran recalls that his male love interest Richard gave him a text written by the author Edward Carpenter –The Intermediate Sex. This text questions and challenges the notion that the only purpose that sex serves is of regeneration. He argues that intercourse is natural and meant for pleasure and bonding with the partner –be it in a

homosexual relationship or a heterosexual one. Balendran is, therefore, aware of this aspect of the relationship but does not have the strength to pursue his homosexual relationship once

his father discovers it. It is henceforth established that even though he is aware of the men who successfully had a loving relationship, he lacks the courage to pursue the same because “the fear (of taboo) is stronger than the pleasure” (Freud 53). Allan and Burridge also agree with this as they claim that “many taboos are tied in with our fears” and the governing authorities quite often “exploit such fears to extend their power base among the populous” (250). It is the Mudaliyar’s dominance and controlling nature which instils fear in Balendran and so, he does not dare to go against the man of the state. The priority is given to other people’s perspectives and beliefs rather than one’s own. The obedient agents of the social structure are people like Pillai. He appears to be a great friend of Balendran, but to his utmost shock is the one who informs the Mudaliyar about his son’s “inversion” and the taboo relationship that he is in (Selvadurai 273). Once driven out of London, Balendran never dares to revisit his past as he feels too ashamed and embarrassed for his actions. It is often the ideology of the dominant figure which is held to be the righteous one. If that figure promotes the taboo, his or her subjects have to believe and live by it too. Mudaliyar’s hypocrisy again becomes evident when he asks Balendran to reach out to Richard when he is invited to Ceylon as he was in charge of a political matter which was of personal importance to the Mudaliyar. He wanted to use Richard’s influence on a political leader to do the Mudaliyar a favour, and being the dutiful son that Balendran is, he obliges to the Mudaliyar’s request, even though it puts him through a tough time to imagine meeting the person he left broken-hearted without an explanation. The Mudaliyar does not take into account his son's feeling but manipulates him to his advantage. When a governing authority such as the Mudaliyar is successfully able to make use of the guilt that his son feels as a consequence of transgressing a taboo, the Mudaliyar would always want the taboos to stay in place for him to achieve his objectives.

The instrumentalisation of taboos can also be noticed in the second storyline of

Cinnamon Gardens with Annalukshmi as the protagonist. Her mother, Louisa and her father

Murugasu, are separated. Louisa lives in Colombo with her daughters and Murugasu in Malaya, but both are in a hurry to get Annalukshmi married. When Murugasu sends a proposal for Annalukshmi’s marriage to a Hindu boy from Malaya, Louisa, who is a Christian, prohibits the marriage immediately. She assumes what it would be like for her daughter to stay in a Hindu household. She believes that Annalukshmi would be “forced to conform to the ideals of a Hindu wife, cloistered like a nun, her movements restricted, her thoughts and opinions suppressed in favour of her husband” (Selvadurai 39). The problem here is the pretext of Hinduism being the reason that Louisa does not want Annalukshmi to get married there, but the actual reason is that she is amidst a power struggle in her

relationship with her husband. If Annalukshmi gets married in a household suggested by her husband, then it will prove that her husband has an ascendancy and is the powerful and dominant one in their relationship as well as the family. Being a mother, she should be concerned about whether or not the proposed family is a good one or not, or that the

prospective husband will keep her daughter happy or not, but this is the least of her worries as she wants Annalukshmi to marry into the family of her choice. She mentions the conformities of a Hindu household to show the restrictiveness of a specific caste and religion, but it is her prejudice about Hindu religion that is reflected as these conformities are a part of the

ideologies of the Sri-lankan society and do not pertain to a specific caste. She, therefore, uses the caste conflicts in her favour to exert more power in her relationship and takes advantage of the casteism prevalent in the society. Louisa becomes an orchestrator of the inter-caste taboos by reinforcing the rigid ideologies that one religion has towards the other, which proves that in some cases it is not the taboo which is strong, but the people, who have their hidden agendas to fulfil.

It is not just the actual transgression of taboo but also its utterance that is despised. As a consequence, people start using euphemisms or innuendos to refer to the taboos to spell it out without outright stating it. Eliecer Fernandez opines, “the power of taboo keeps

language users from avoiding the forbidden concept and compels them to preserve or violate it” (94). Another inter-caste relationship in Funny Boy which does not get flourished is the relationship between Arjie’s mother, Amma, and Daryl, her childhood friend. Their relationship is not given any name but is hinted upon constantly as is clear in the case of Arjie’s Aunt Neliya, who does not dare to directly refer to the pre-marital relationship that Daryl and Arjie’s mother once shared, as it is too taboo to be talked about because of their caste and racial differences. “I didn’t know what to do because of you know what,” she says while explaining her helplessness after seeing Daryl return to Colombo after plenty of years abroad (Selvadurai, Funny Boy 108). She makes use of this mild alternative which spells out the ‘unmentionability’ of the relationship. Fernandez adds that people, in order to refer to a taboo, often “resort either to euphemism (i.e. the semantic or formal process by which the taboo is stripped of its most explicit or obscene overtones) (95). According to his

conceptions, it is a euphemism that Neliya uses, as the relationship had to be kept covered and referred to in such a way.

Daryl shows up at a time when Arjie’s father is on a trip abroad for business purposes and Daryl, on the other hand, does not mind talking openly about the taboo. With the absence of her husband, Amma gets an opportunity to mingle with Daryl once again thus bringing back the taboo into the picture. Daryl was a Burgher by caste, whose ancestors were Dutch while Amma was a Tamil. Here the problem is not just of caste but also of the race since Daryl has a fair complexion which is uncommon in Sri Lanka. He was often referred to as “the white man” or “a foreigner” by Amma’s family members who would meet him for the first time (Funny Boy 107). Arjie is always a part of Amma and Daryl’s conversations, and at

one point in time, Arjie raises an innocent question as to why inter-caste marriages are problematic when everyone is a Sri Lankan. To this Daryl gives a straightforward reply that, “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”

(Selvadurai, Funny Boy 116). After uttering this, he stares at Amma, and Arjie notices the tension between them. Daryl is the only one who speaks out and addresses this social problem directly, but Amma is silent and uneasy in the face of the truth. This positively communicates the fact that that before Amma’s marriage they did try to propose marriage, but their respective families undoubtedly did not approve. Perhaps they did not even dare to pursue the subject matter of their relationship any further as they were confident enough that their relationship would not be accepted by anyone. It is conceivable that they did not even bother to try any longer, but love does not take account of the castes, and so here they were after nearly twenty years, still in love. Daryl is perhaps able to clearly state the predicaments of the caste system as he is not part of the Sri-Lanka community since he lives abroad. Neliya and Daryl show the two sides of the same coin thus exposing the effect that taboo has on someone who is part of the society that believes in the taboo and how it has no such effect on an outsider. While discussing the paradoxical nature of the linguistic play in Sri Lankan society, Asiff Hussein describes how at one time it becomes incredibly impolite to mention the caste or racial issues in public domain. On the other hand, the matter is not kept in hushed tones when the matrimonial columns of national Sri Lankan newspapers are full of demands from the prospective brides or groom, mentioning their preferable caste, complexion and much more in unusually frank terms; then it suddenly assumed acceptability (8).

When someone is trapped within the stigmas of the society, it is hard to imagine a social order without such prohibitions and taboos. Thus, quite often a person believes that this social order and its constituents are a universal phenomenon or perhaps even if that person is

aware of another society free of such beliefs, the society in which he or she lives is still inescapable for him or her. Arjie’s father shares his taboo relationship which is resonant of the same. In the latter half of the novel Funny Boy, Arjie overhears the following conversation that his father has with Jegan, his colleague, telling him about his relationship with an English woman before he was married to Arjie’s mother, which he had to end given the caste and class differences:

An English girl, he had realised, would never fit in with his family. Also, she was from the working class family, and “low class was low class whether it was English or Sri Lankan.” This story, more than any of the others, truly amazed me. A love affair with a white person, with all the taboos that surrounded it, took a certain spirit and nerve, a certain thumbing of one’s nose in the face of society. True, my father had finally ended it, but I could not even imagine him beginning the relationship. It did not fit with the strict, proper man I knew. (Selvadurai 164) This conversation gives us an insight into the mind of the supreme authority of Arjie’s house that is his father. He follows the rules laid down by the society as he too was culturally and socially conditioned in this manner, which is also why he does not pursue this taboo relationship under the pressure of the difference in their class, background and skin colour too apparently. He understood it beforehand that if ever their relationship would have come to light, it could have potentially raised quite a few eyebrows and might have even proved to be scandalous as was in Arul’s case in Cinnamon Gardens. This case in point also spells out how this rigid ideology regarding the caste system managed to transcend geographical boundaries, but perchance only in Arjie’s father’s mind. When he says that “low class was low class whether it was English or Sri Lankan,” he makes it a universal phenomenon, possibly because he cannot imagine the order of things being any different in any part of the world than it is now. Even if he is aware of the fact that these ideologies exist

only in Sri Lanka, he knows that he will never be allowed to, or be able to, transgress what has been set out for him since the very beginning. Arjie raises a valid point here that even though his father ended the relationship, he had after all begun it too. There was a part of him that did not think of the taboos of the society at the start of the relationship, but they eventually got to him as he might have realised the impossibility of the relationship being a successful one.

There are many reasons as to why the caste conflicts exist and one of the reasons is the violent history of the clashing communities. Due to that past, one or both communities cannot forgive or get over the actions of the other. We get an insight of this through the relationship of Anil and Radha in Funny Boy. Both of them share a happy relationship, but it is Radha’s mother, Ammachi, who has a problem with Anil, since he is of a different caste – a Sinhala, as opposed to Radha who is a Tamil. Ammachi, when learns about this relationship, altercates, “What did I tell you? She was getting a lift from a Sinhalese. Only a Sinhalese would be impertinent enough to offer an unmarried girl a lift” (Selvadurai, Funny

Boy 58). As soon as she finds out he is a Sinhalese, she fits him in a stereotype and cannot, or

would not, look at him as anything more than just that. Ania Loomba professes that “stereotyping involves a reduction of images and ideas to a simple manageable form; rather than simple ignorance or lack of 'real' knowledge, it is a method of processing information. The function of stereotypes is to perpetuate an artificial sense of the difference between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’” (55). Following her line of argument, we can infer that quite often one community finds a way to dishonour the other to perhaps glorify oneself while debasing the other. Seeing how the ‘self', which here is Ammachi, perceives the ‘other', one can imagine how she would never let anyone close to her be reduced to the stature of the other by being associated with the other. This is why it becomes intolerable and consequently a taboo since

it is not just Ammachi, but a majority of communities who feel the same way towards one another.

Just a moment later we get the context of this kind of anger and contempt that Ammachi holds for the Sinhala community. After Ammachi leaves, the maid, Janki, reminds Radha that she should not forget what had happened in the past, adding that, “You were too young to remember when they brought the body home. You should have seen it. It was as if someone had taken the lid of a tin can and cut pieces out of him.” (Selvadurai, Funny Boy 59) We later learn that it was Ammachi's father who was killed. This vivid image of extreme violence is quite shocking and shows us the extent of hatred that the communities have for each other. We also get an empathetic understanding of why Ammachi would fear the same fate for her child, which in fact does happen, though on a comparatively less severe scale.

Another noteworthy aspect of this instance is when Radha raises a crucial question to Janki being well aware of all that has happened as she asks –"But is that a reason to hate every Sinhala?"(Selvadurai, Funny Boy 59). This is a crucial question as it evokes the prejudices and the generalisation that is done with regards to a specific community based on the actions of a few people from that community. The answer to this question, however, is not that simple because even though Radha is at this moment indifferent towards communal difference, it is later that she becomes deeply affected by the communal tensions as she gets hurt in one of the riots that take place in Jaffna while she visits that city. She gets severely injured, and even though the visible wounds get healed, the impact of this incident does not wear off as can be understood in her decision to end the relationship with Anil as soon as she recovers. The damage done by the first-hand experience of communal violence is, and to not risk it again, she gives in to the system. Perhaps by witnessing such a dreadful event, she suffers through post-traumatic stress disorder as she exhibits a kind of numbness where she starts to agree to whatever her close ones propose such as an arranged marriage, which then

does take place. She earlier was a perfect embodiment of a rebel who did not agree with or conformed to any of the ideologies of the society. It is also entirely possible that now the conformity makes Radha feel safe, as it ensures her survival when she chooses to side with dominant ideology as well as the taboo since she married someone from her caste. This catastrophic event is one of the harsh ways in which the individual succumbs to the system.

In a society where lower-caste people are treated as slaves, they do not have a place with the caste. When a person of a lower-caste enters the space of the upper-caste, he or she is not accepted in that space, nor is that person recognised. That presence of that person becomes a taboo since he or she transgresses the boundaries of the social

structure. Hussein, while explaining the caste system in Sri Lanka, claims that “since caste is hereditary and determined by birth alone, one cannot move out of it. Nor does one have an opportunity for social mobility. One’s place in the overall social structure is fixed" (8). An attempt at this social mobility not only goes in vain but also is resented as quite often. The friendship between Annalukshmi and Nancy and the eyebrows it raises unveils the difficult aspect of Nancy's life. Miss Lawton adopted Nancy from a village as Nancy was an orphan and had nobody to support her. Miss Lawton is the headmistress of the Colpetty Mission School where Annalukshmi teaches at, and Annalukshmi is a frequent visitor of her house. Their friendship is also looked at as a taboo relationship, given the place of origin of Nancy. Philomena, Annalukshmi’s aunt, always referred to Nancy as “that girl”, because of Nancy’s “low, village origins” (Selvadurai, Cinnamon Gardens 58). She thoroughly disapproved of her friendship with Annalukshmi. A lower-caste woman is not even called by her name but becomes ‘the other’ when she is amidst a group of upper-caste people. She is, in a way, dehumanised as her identity is taken away with the refusal to recognise her by name. All the people of lower caste are looked upon in that way, like a herd of sheep where the herd is identifiable, but the identity of a single sheep is demarcated only through the herd, not as an

individual. Even at school, the teachers make fun of Nancy, who also is an employee of the school, commenting upon the way she dresses. On one occasion when Nancy wears a summer dress, one of the teachers remarks that, “she thinks she looks like a European now, more like a peon to me” and then everybody laughs at her (Selvadurai, Cinnamon Gardens 18). They do not miss a chance to degrade or demoralise her. Their taunts are a constant reminder to Nancy about the place where she was born. They want her to remember who she is and what her stature is in this society as well as amongst them. It is also noteworthy that her colleagues ridicule her when she leaves the room but they are well aware that she is near enough to hear what they say about her. They find a suitable gap where they do not have to mock her on her face but still manage to convey their message knowing that she cannot come back to confront them. These casteist derisions surround Nancy’s life, and they are telling of the fact even if she does manage to enter the upper-caste space, she will not belong, and the people around them will make sure they are aware of that fact.

Shakeela Jabbar in a sociological study Does Caste Matter?: A Study of Caste and

Poverty in Sinhalese Society presents various facets of the caste system. He interviews certain

people from Sri Lanka to better understand the issues at hand, and one of them describes his predicament which is quite resonant of the situations of the characters in the novels. Sipala, who is a twenty-eight-year-old man, is a lower caste rural who reminisces:

When I was in school, I was ridiculed by my peers because my parents produced pottery. I felt shy to bring my friends home because they would

discover my parents' occupation. I do not want my children to go through what I went through which is why I became a driver.

He changes professions to get rid of the embarrassment, but this does not result in social mobility. The abandonment of former occupations was not a sign of upward movement

on the social hierarchy. Similarly, even though Nancy pursued an occupation that was unlikely for the people of her caste to opt for, she does not get recognised by her peers as anything more.

As Allan and Burridge put it, "taboo is revolting, untouchable, filthy,

unmentionable, dangerous, disturbing, thrilling –but above all powerful" (199). The inter-caste taboo and its transgression destroy many relationships in a terrible way. A

nonconformist like Radha, the lovers Amma and Daryl or the merely innocent Nancy –each one of them gets overpowered by the taboos as the system proves to be too big to take on. However, not every relationship that is destroyed as a result of the transgression can be viewed in a bad light – because Arul and Pakkiam had the strength to break away from the system, their act ended a dreadful master-slave relationship that the Mudaliyar shared for a long time with Pakkiam’s family. The disturbing nature of taboos is undeniable, and with the help of the perpetrators who further use them as tools, it becomes inevitable. If the

perpetrators and the taboo separate, the taboo might lose its power, but until then, it will remain strong.

The Taboo of Homosexuality: Homophobic Assumptions and

Reactions

The society that Selvadurai depicts in both novels, in addition to being a caste divided society, is also an obsessively heteronormative society. Here, I attempt to draw attention to the reactions that are witnessed in the novels at the hints of homosexuality which prove that it is a taboo.Eventually, we learn the particular reasons as to why it is considered a taboo, followed by the consequences of in case of the transgression. Selvadurai depicts homosexuality in both novels only in male characters. When such a character in the novel exhibits unusual behaviour which could be linked to homosexuality, he evokes homophobic anxiety in the people around him who are mostly his family members. These people then make assumptions as to what could have possibly encouraged this queer behaviour in him. After making careful deductions, they sanction and try to control the transgressor through violence or the system of reward and punishment. If these methods are ever exposed, then there arises a possibility of taboo getting exposed while they are associated with it since they are part of the same family. In this entire process, the fear of the taboo and the feeling of self-disgust at desiring a same-sex relationship is internalised.

The compulsively heteronormative society hardens Arjie’s life as a young boy and later on as a teenager in Funny Boy. Christie Davies states that “the force of the taboos lies less in their content than in their structure, in the way they insist on the separation of categories" (1034). These categories here are that of men and women, and it is the rigid segregation of these categories that prohibits anyone from leaving the category assigned to them, possibly in the form of gender roles. The first occurrence of such a case happens in the first chapter of the novel Funny Boy titled ‘Pigs Can’t Fly’, where the children including Arjie and his sister Sonali, are seen playing the game of “bride-bride”, and Arjie is the only

boy amongst the group of girls. Just then his aunt Kanthi spots him dressed as a bride and drags him into a room full of adults. Being firstly surprised and then realising the peculiarity of it, one of the relatives mocks his parents by saying, “looks like you have a funny one here.” (Selvadurai 14)

As an outcome of this scene Arjie’s father feels immensely anxious and troubled about the ‘queerness’ that his son exhibits, leading him to worry about the gender ambiguity that has surfaced itself as he says to Arjie’s mother, as Arjie recalls:

“If he turns out funny like that Rankotwera boy, if he turns out to be the laughing stock of Colombo, it’ll be your fault,” my father said in a tone of finality. “You always spoil him and encourage all this nonsense.” (Selvadurai 15)

Moreover, by the “nonsense” that he refers to, he means that she lets Arjie look at her while she does her makeup and gets ready by putting on the sari for special occasions. He, therefore, believes that it is the social and domestic environment that frames the sexual identity of a person. Consequently, his homophobic assumption tells him that this is what makes a boy "funny" –getting inspired to do makeup or get dressed up. He assumes that exposure to the things that are, according to him, typically ‘feminine', lead men, or in this case Arjie, to become homosexuals or “funny”. Another homophobic logic following the same line of thought can be noticed when he prohibits Arjie from reading the book Little

Women. Arjie reminisces that, “I loved Little Women and longed to read the sequels but

couldn’t find them anywhere. I wondered if I dared ask my father to bring them for me. He had found me reading Little Women and declared it to be a book for girls, a book that boys should not be reading, especially a boy of twelve” (Selvadurai 104). His father here is the supreme authority in his house, and we, therefore, get a glimpse into the mindset of this highest authority that influences and dominates the people around him. The supreme

authority is neither questioned nor opposed and therefore, these principles, since they are not corrected, continue to carry on as the dominant individuals in every home constitute a society which is subsequently restrictive and deterring.

His father is worried about the shame that would be associated with his family name if his son turns out to be “funny”; the reputation of the family is of utmost importance here. Instead of acting in the child’s interest the parents act in the society’s interest, which then leads to the child, Arjie, feeling isolated and alienated as he says, “the future spend-the-days were no longer to be enjoyed, no longer to be looked forward to. And then there would be the loneliness. I would be caught between the boys’ and the girls’ world, not belonging to or wanted in either” (Selvadurai, Funny Boy 39). For a child to be feeling this isolation at such a tender age due to the taboos that he does not understand, is quite disturbing and distressing. Janine Deschenes notes that “by highlighting these everyday traumas (of Arjie), Selvadurai challenges the acceptance of such bordered identities” (2) which is accurate as Selvadurai not only makes the readers aware of Arjie’s everyday trauma, he also makes it clear that Arjie does not belong and most importantly, cannot be a part of the world that these adults are forcibly preparing him for. His father’s insecurity is even more apparent when he transfers Arjie to an all-boy school, The Victoria Academy. Arjie is, of course, heartbroken as he would have to leave his friends but what's more baffling is the reason behind this decision. His father announces this decision at the dining table, and while looking at Arjie, he states that “it will force you to become a man” (Selvadurai, Funny Boy 210). A child who cannot revolt against the social injustice learns to submit at a very young age and so, the seed of taboo is sown which continues to grow.

Freud in Totem and Taboo discusses the concept of a ‘contagion’ that co-exists with the taboo. He propounds that “the violation of taboo makes the offender himself a taboo” (34) or in Arjie’s case, ‘funny’. The offender is considered to be charged with a

threatening power which is infectious and, therefore, communicable by contact, practically like a contagion because he has the dangerous property of alluring others to follow in his example. In that sense, the offender becomes a threat to the system by spreading the contagion as it may even evoke envy, or can make others question as to why they had to accept the prohibitions when the offender did not. The instance of this contagion being implemented in the novel is when Arjie’s father refers to the taboo through the example of the ‘Rankotwera boy’. The taboo of homosexuality is addressed through his name because he is gay and everyone is acquainted with his ‘wrongdoings’ due to which he has become the taboo. By making use of such analogies, Appa is moreover declaring homosexuality as something which is supposed to be understood by examples or by a special vocabulary –he makes it a taboo which is too horrific to be talked about, or perhaps too disgusting. By pointing out the name, I believe that Arjie is being made aware of what lies in his future, which is social unacceptability –not just of Arjie, but of his whole family who might become “the laughing stock”. In Cinnamon Gardens, Balendran’s wife uses the derogatory tag “friends of Oscar” to indicate to her friends that Richard is a homosexual (Selvadurai 111). The origin of this phrase is from Oscar Wilde’s status as a homosexual. Wilde was arrested and tried for “gross indecency with men” in 1895, for which he got convicted (Bakshi 4). Since the novel is set in 1920s Ceylon, one can see how this incident was still fresh in everyone’s memories and how people then made an example out of Oscar Wilde too to refer to homosexuals indirectly.

Different family members react differently to the same transgression. Arjie’s father becomes intensely insecure but never directly says any of the things he fears to Arjie. His mother, however, takes action to ensure that this does not happen again. After Arjie’s father gives Arjie’s mother an earful about the situation which has come to light, she decides to, or has no option but to, take matters in her own hands. This scene is, therefore, followed by an

intense dialogue between Arjie and his mother, who forbids him to play with the girls and forces him to play the game of cricket with the boys instead. When he questions her as to why he should listen to what she says instead of doing something he enjoys, she retorts in exasperation: “Because the sky is so high and pigs can’t fly, that’s why” (Selvadurai, Funny

Boy 19). Arjie being a seven-year-old does not understand what he does wrong, but his

mother through this phrase shuts him up, and he is not able to question her further once she raises her voice. Gayatri Gopinath in her book Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and

South Asian Public Cultures, makes an argument that the adynaton that Arjie’s mother uses

as an answer “attempts to grant to the fixity of gender roles the status of universally

recognised natural law and to root in it common sense” (172), which she obviously fails to do since Arjie is not satisfied with the metaphor she provides him with. By giving this hollow explanation for the prohibition, she is pronouncing the illogical basis of gender codification as well. Freud also argues that “it is useless to question the people as to the real motivation of their prohibitions or as to the genesis of taboo. According to our assumption, they must be incapable of telling us anything about it since this motivation is ‘unconscious’ to them.” (52) Perhaps this is the reason why Arjie's mother is herself unsure as to why anyone has to adhere to these rules, and she is helpless as she simply cannot imagine an alternate reality, which is why she also says that “life is full of stupid things, and sometimes we just have to do them” (Selvadurai 20). Like the rest, she too has been brought up in a way where she could not do things as she desired, as already discussed in the previous segment. Even though she loves her son immensely and understands his predicament, her hands are tied in front of the system. To not get sanctioned by the system any further, she sanctions Arjie instead.

In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Judith Butler asserts that sex is essentially biological, but gender is a social construct. She considers the body to be a “variable boundary, a surface whose permeability is politically regulated, a signifying

practice within a cultural field of gender hierarchy and compulsory heterosexuality” (178). These societal ideals are what Arjie is brought under. What complicates the situation even more than just the gender constructs is that no one even directly proclaims that this is how he needs to be because that is how a boy/man should behave; instead he is given a code -"the sky is too high and pigs can't fly"- that he must de-code on his own. My intent here is not to declare that a society with specific rigid gender constructs is easier to be in, but that in this particular scenario of Sri Lankan society, the inexplicit phrases and pseudo-explanations on top of the gender conformities, make the situations even worse.

When the transgressions are severe, the way opted to fix them is also severe. Ammachi, Arjie's grandmother when witnesses another transgression, decides to take the matter into her own hands. For her, the cure for this contagion of homosexuality becomes an absolute necessity. Hence, the ‘needed measures’ are taken to stop it from spreading, as it may awaken the ambivalent conflict in others. After Arjie is forbidden from playing the game of ‘Bride-bride’, he still brings his saree at the following spend-the-day which then his rival cousin sister Tanuja steals from him and runs away. When Arjie tries to stop her, he

accidentally rips off her sleeve and Ammachi, the most authoritarian woman in the house, witnesses this. She is the second example of the supreme authority that we notice in Funny

Boy, and the astonishing part is that she does not find any fault with Tanuja, instead, she

punishes Arjie in the most brutal way possible, because being a boy, he was seen with a saree that he seemed to love so much. The needed measure taken by Ammachi here was to cane him repeatedly until the cane broke off, which it did. When he did not adhere completely to do as he was told, violence came into the picture to remove the ‘funniness' from him, and it did not stop there. From that point on, on every spend-the-day, he was given a miserable task to do a household chore, which if he got even a bit wrong, he would get beat up again and then he would be told that he has a “devil’s temperament” (Selvadurai, Funny Boy 43).

Hetero-sexism considers all the queer sexualities to be of deviant nature and that is precisely the line of reasoning due to which she indicates that Arjie has a “devil’s temperament.” This brutal punishment, I argue, is according to Ammachi, the appropriate action taken in order to stop that contagion at its roots and also to cure the contagion of which Arjie shows the symptoms. The other children are also made conscious of all the punishments that are given to Arjie so that they too would not even think of doing the unspeakable. This display of punishments is how the children are forced to follow the rules. After such a terrible beating no child would ever dare to repeat what he or she did that caused this punishment, be it good or bad, fair or unfair, their fault or not.Perhaps it is not just the act of transgressing the laid down rules, and the taboos that led to this extreme violence, but also the disgust and shame associated with the thought that he might be gay that made the intolerant others around him react in such a hateful way. Physical abuse always leaves a deep impact in a child’s psychology throughout life and it, in fact, leads Arjie to say in all seriousness, “I wish I was dead” (Selvadurai 38). One can comprehend the turmoil that someone goes through if he or she wishes to be dead than alive and deal with these suffering. Perhaps if he had taken this extreme measure as a response to the ‘needed measures', then he might have had a chance to be heard in his final silence since people in this novel as well as in Cinnamon Gardens, tend to be more affected by the idea of shame rather than the actual guilt of making their child suffer.

Punishments are how the ‘wrong' is corrected, and rewards are how the ‘right' is promoted. The feeling of pleasure gets associated with rewards, and the feeling of pain gets supplemented with punishments which elucidates why this method is one of the ways of how the transgression of a taboo is prevented. A study –Sympathetic Skin Responses in the

Markov Decision Task– was conducted by a group of sociologists and it reveals that this

procedural reward/punishment method leads the nervous system of our body to make autonomic decisions by anticipating the future reward or punishment scenarios –the

emotional response and therefore the ‘subjects’ are in this manner, controlled by the system in place (573). This pattern of rewards and punishment is also followed in Cinnamon

Gardens as is observed in the previously discussed case of Arul being banished as he did not

adhere to the social caste rules, and even Mudaliyar’s younger son Balendran was punished when his father found out about his homosexual relationship with Richard while he was studying in London. Balendran was prohibited from continuing his studies abroad and was taken back to Sri Lanka immediately by his father since Balendran contravened this terrible taboo. For a long time, he was not given any major duties because of his mistakes, which since he was the son of a Mudaliyar he was entitled to. He believed that what his father did was out of love, that his "terrible anger at the time had been the roar of a bear protecting its cub. It had been out of love for him” (Selvadurai 54). However, a few years later when Balendran gets married to the woman of Mudaliyar’s choice and eventually has a son, then he is given the control and responsibilities which his father arranges for him to show him that he is supposedly on the right track now. Balendran surprisingly understands this gesture as a sign of his father’s forgiveness towards his sins as he let his father down as all this while he felt incredibly guilty as he feels that he might have tainted his father’s reputation, which was of grave importance to the family name and fame. Through the method of reward and punishment, the Mudaliyar controls both of his sons.

Another way in which this understanding how the obedience of the supreme authority is incorporated is through the use of quotes from the classical texts as Balendran can be seen repeating the phrase from an ancient Tamil text Tirukkural –“As one by one we give up, we get freer and freer of pain” (Selvadurai, Cinnamon Gardens 35). This is the quote he keeps uttering almost as if he wants to internalise the idea that he would have to give up everything that he desires as most likely nothing will go in his favour or perhaps because that is the only key to his survival. Selvadurai perhaps wants to prove here through this repetition

– that the classical texts are not guides on how to live life. Just as the Mudaliyar, being the eldest authority has faults that are discovered later, so does this ancient text. Just because some values and rules are carried forward generation after generation and have been followed by each generation by heart does not mean that it is the ultimate truth –it needs to be

challenged and changed as time goes on to live a truly peaceful life. It is later when he learns of Mudaliyar’s hypocrisy that he is shaken and regrets that he threw away his life as he lived it according to his father. To please his father while all Mudaliyar did was present a falsified image of himself in front of the whole family and society, while he had affairs on the side and took advantage of the lower class.

Another thought-provoking aspect is also how easily these adults cover up their process of brutal punishment. Ammachi tortures Arjie every time he comes to her house, and when on one occasion her daughter, Radha, comes home from London and notices how the little boy gets treated, she is quite disturbed at the sight which makes her stand up for him. She argues saying, “Honestly, Amma, you treat him like a servant boy” to which Ammachi replies “No, I’m just trying to teach him a skill.” This is a cover-up that does not work in front of Radha who then laughs at the absurdity of Ammachi’s answer and in response to it asks, “Are you planning to set him up on Galle Road as a brass karaya?” and to this, Ammachi doesn’t reply (Selvadurai, Funny Boy 47,48). A brass karaya is a person who makes brass from scratch to its final form of utensils or jewellery –which is hard labour. Ammachi's silence and lack of substantial grounds of contestation reveal that she has no proper justification of why she is making Arjie go through such ill-treatment. Just because she is the supreme authority, what she does, does not get questioned. Radha is not used to such frameworks as she lives abroad which is why she, being an outsider, can see the wrong that is being exercised in her presence. Moreover, thereby she is the only one who questions it. Ammachi's lack of clear justification about the treatment of Arjie in such a dreadful way,

also illustrates how big the taboo is, that even though Arjie is punished because of transgressing the taboo, the taboo itself remains unmentionable.

Like the inter-caste taboo, the taboo of homosexuality also has perpetrators who use homosexuality to their advantage when it seems profitable but detests it when he gets any hint of it in his personal domestic life. The next critical instance that I will discuss depicts the hypocrisy and the two-facedness of Arjie’s father. This particular conversation that Arjie’s father has with his colleague Jegan demonstrates the double standards that operate within this social order where the taboo is used where it deems profitable but otherwise is upheld

proudly. To show this, I will quote this relatively long conversation that Arjie describes which he being a child cannot comprehend but the readers get a clear idea about what is happening:

“Then Jegan leaned forward in his chair and looked keenly at something on the beach. My father regarded him, curious. Jegan turned to him and said, “Is what is happening what I think is happening?”

I turned around to look down the beach now, wondering what Jegan had seen. There was nothing out of the ordinary. As was usual at the time, there were many foreign men around. A lot of them were talking to young boys from the village.

“Yes,” my father said.

“And they come back to the hotel?” My father shrugged. “Sometimes.” “you don’t mind?”

“What am I to do? They have paid for the rooms. Besides, if I tried to stop it, they’d simply go to another hotel on the front.”

“But isn’t it illegal?”

My father chuckled. “I don’t see any police out there, do you?” He poured himself another drink. “It’s not just our luscious beaches that keep the tourist industry going, you know. We have other natural resources as well.”

He held his glass up to Jegan. “Cheers.” (Selvadurai, Funny Boy 170) Arjie’s father is completely opposed to the idea of homosexuality until it gives him monetary profit. If he were a man strong in his ideas, he would never have allowed the tourists to come back to his hotel along with the young boys from the village. He abhors homosexuality yet he uses sex tourism for his gain when money comes into the picture. He is, in fact, willing to break the law too as Jegan rightly pointed out, homosexuality was at the time, and still is, illegal and punishable by law in Sri Lanka. As discussed earlier, many authoritarians use taboo to make use of people who fear it or believe in it, but Arjie’s father is the only one who uses people who are in no way related to him as tools. Given the position of taboo in the society, he would never like to be personally associated with a homosexual as it can hamper his reputation. He accepts homosexuality when it does not concern him but furiously rejects it when even the slightest hint of it is apparent in his domestic space. The evidence for the same is apparent when on the other hand his son is the subject of his conversation with Jegan as he says,

“From the time he was small, he has shown certain tendencies.” “what do you mean tendencies?” Jegan asked.

"You know… he used to play with dolls, always reading. Anyway, the main point is, I'm glad you're taking an interest in him. Maybe you'll help him outgrow this phase." (Selvadurai Funny Boy 166)

We can observe here the unawareness regarding this topic in Arjie's father as he thinks homosexuality is something he can "outgrow". It is also noteworthy that here his father gives another pseudo-explanation to address Arjie's homosexuality through the reference to his “certain tendencies” by which he means that Arjie behaved against, and did not conform to, the social gender roles. One also has to understand the predicament of a child stuck in this situation. By now he can grasp that some things that he does are frowned upon by the people around him but he still struggles to make sense of what these "tendencies" are and what is the "funny" aspect in his behaviour which is because of the fact that no one opens up to have a mature conversation with him about it. He yearns to know the truth, but all he gets are several hints or clues through which he must build a bigger picture on his own and Arjie as a child is always innocently confused about it as he says:

“It was clear to me that I had done something wrong, but what it was I couldn’t comprehend. I thought of what my father had said about turning out “funny”. The word “funny” as I understood it meant either humorous or strange, as in the expression, “that’s funny”. Neither of these fitted the sense in which my father had used the word, for there had been a hint of disgust in his tone.” (Selvadurai,

Funny Boy 17)

They make him realise through their behaviour towards him, that he did something wrong and this is how they make the child learn the ways of the world.

Through maltreatment – psychological and physical – the internalisation of the feelings of shame and disgust associated with homosexual actions and transgressions takes place. Arjie's self-disgust, therefore, is evident in his first homosexual, and thereby a taboo relationship with a boy at his school, Shehan Soyza. When he realises that he is getting attracted to Shehan, he first tries to brush it aside but later when they become physically

intimate, even though Arjie enjoys it at the moment, what follows is an immense amount of self-loathing. He is not able to comprehend as to why he is attracted to a boy in such a way. When he is unable to get rid of the feelings he has for Shehan, he hates himself for desiring an intimate relationship with him, in fact he feels perturbed and disgusted at himself for even thinking it as he says, “I tossed and turned restlessly in my bed, torn between my desire for Shehan and disgust at that desire” (Selvadurai, Funny Boy 266). It goes without saying that in a social construct where being a homosexual itself was a taboo, the act of having sex in a homosexual relationship was an even greater taboo. Therefore, it was not only the

relationship per se but the physical intimacy on top of that, which made Arjie toss and turn in his bed all night long out of guilt and shame. Christie Davies argues that the power of taboos in certain cultures and the extremity with which violations have been reprimanded suggest that the concerned societies have understood the forms of comportments such as

homosexuality or even bestiality have been understood by the concerned societies as “injurious to the whole community” (1033). Davies’s argument further allows us to understand how it is difficult to follow the desire when the opposition happens to be their entire community.

Arjie's instincts tell him to follow his heart while the social order dictates him to the opposite. With no one to guide him, he is left with no option but to introspect and figure out a way to survive. Arjie is soon able to realise that there is no way that he can satisfy others as well as be himself –he has to give up one. His family soon gets a hint of his relationship with Shehan and becomes utterly resentful and indignant towards him. He then becomes aware of the fact that he can no longer belong and be accepted in the space and world which his family exists in, and as Arjie, therefore, states –“I inhabited a world they didn’t understand and into which they couldn’t follow me” (Selvadurai, Funny Boy 285). This secluded and a completely different world that Arjie seems to descend is quite similar to

Foucault’s concept of heterotopias that he discusses in Other Spaces. Foucault discusses that heterotopias as real, physical or mental spaces that act as ‘other spaces’ alongside existing spaces. He gives six principles to elucidate this, and it is the first principle that can be applied quite well in this context as it states that heterotopias are spaces where norms of behaviour are suspended. He then further divides this principle into two categories –heterotopias of crisis and heterotopias of deviation. Heterotopias of crisis are privileged, sacred or forbidden spaces which are there for individuals who are in relation to their society, in crisis (25). These heterotopias do not necessarily need to have geographical markers which is why it fits well with Arjie’s secluded world. It is his moment of crisis when his sexuality is not accepted in the society which is perhaps why he has to enter a different mind space of his own as it might be the only solution to survive in an otherwise homophobic society which shuns people like him. This space also makes him feel liberated and comfortable with who he is, and he shares this space only with Shehan. From this point onwards Arjie becomes careful to keep this relationship with Shehan alive; no one finds out about them as Arjie stops feeding them with details of where he is going or who he will be with, although at times suspicion does arise in his family members and he or she gives him the benefit of the doubt. Through this, we can also deduce that homosexuality is tolerable as long as it stays out of the sight of the hetero-patriarchal underpinning of the social system.

The social worlds in both novels plague the lives of those who are weakened by the taboos because the forbidden has shame associated with it, and its utterance also becomes an awful deed. Even though Arjie is continually disciplined, punished, prohibited, blamed, and shamed in this overpowering institution, he still emerges victorious, although the extent of his sufferings is too much. One can argue that it is only by being accustomed to the system entirely that someone like Arjie can figure out a loophole or a gap in the existing world of prohibitions. Perhaps by being determined enough to believe that his actions are not morally

wrong and by making a steadfast decision to not change for the world around him, he weakens the taboo instead of the taboo weakening him.

“Hags”, “Fast” and “Manly Women”: Misogynist Taboos

A society which is heteronormative is most likely to have dominant patriarchy as well. As already discussed how the supreme authorities take extreme measure to keep their subjects on the ‘right' track, here the situations are no better when it comes to the treatment of women in a constricted male-dominated society. The misogynist taboos do differ from the rest of the taboos in the sense that the limitations and pressures placed upon women are more psychological than physical –their spirit is broken rather than their body. Misogynist taboos are of quite a wide range since any act of assertion attempted by a woman is subject to being opposed and prohibited. Be it her attempt to make a change by being a part of a political movement, her desire to not get married, her aim to acquire a set of more than acceptable qualifications, or to only think about such aspirations – each one of these assertions and more, are considered to be taboos amidst the existing patriarchal structure.

1920s Ceylon, in which Cinnamon Garden is set, was a time when women were fighting to get fundamental human rights and a seat at the table in the parliament, and due to these demands, they received massive opposition not just from men, but also from women. Malathi de Alwis argues that "the education of women, their employment outside the home, their agitation for political rights, their assumption of political office, etc., have been

perceived as potential threats to women's ‘traditional' roles and status within Ceylonese society, at various moments in Ceylonese history" (92). Selvadurai highlights this very issue when he shows Annalukshmi's interest in attending political meetings that some of the women set up so that their rights are recognised by the government, which at the time was an

uprising of Women Enfranchisement Movement in Ceylon. Annalukshmi gets a harsh response when she decides to do so from her aunt, Philomena, who believes that a woman focussing anywhere apart from her domestic sphere is unacceptable and, therefore, a taboo in the eyes of the majority of the community. Philomena taunts Annalukshmi as she addresses her mother, Lousia:

"It's your fault, cousin," a voice said from the inside. "Who attends political meetings but hooligans."

Philomena Barnett appeared in the doorway, a cup of tea in one hand, a thick slice of cake in another. "Only manly women get involved in men's affairs. Normal women think of their husbands and their homes and nothing else." (Cinnamon Gardens 106)

It is this restrictive view of women contained within the four walls of domesticity that is forced here by a woman on a woman. At this juncture, the maternal patriarchy is what stops the progress of the women from being perceived as something more than just compliant and dutiful wives or mothers. By using the term "manly" Philomena seems to point out a kind of abnormality that she views in women who refuse to stay solely in their domestic sphere. Judith Halberstam in her formulation of the concept of ‘female masculinity' details that it is "generally received by hetero- and homo-normative cultures as a pathological sign of misidentification and maladjustment, as a longing to be and have a power that is always and just out of reach" (7). Annalukshmi continually dares to do the deeds which are considered masculine and as a consequence, majority of the time these acts are held in a bad light. People around her, therefore, never take her actions or efforts seriously since they believe that specific fields, such as the political sphere, are not meant for women, and they will not be able or allowed to enter it either.

The domestic sphere is held to be the space where women belong and should be contained in. Marriage is, therefore, the priority for a woman and no one is satisfied until she is married. However, it is too naïve to think that the victimisation ends as soon as a woman gets married. The discriminatory social institution does not leave any part of a woman's life untouched. It is not just the daughters who suffer at the hands of the system but the mothers too who get judged at every step of their motherhood and are held responsible for every move their child makes. Furthermore, they are looked down upon by being categorised as ‘bad mothers' which is another taboo. Coming back to the conversation about Arjie's mother in

Funny Boy who is blamed for Arjie's ‘funny' behaviour, we can perceive the pressure under

which the mothers are put as they are continuously monitored and watched over by fellow family members and by the society as a whole. The sociological work Psychological Monographs- Patterns of Parent Behavior by Alfred L. Baldwin, Joan Kalhorn and Fay Huffman Bresse, is a study conducted on the types of parental behaviour. It focuses on the cultural patterns of parental behaviour and the relation of parents' behaviour to the

development of a child's personality. The introduction to this work draws attention to the fact that even before a woman has had the baby, the people around her already start passing judgement whether or not she will "make a good mother" (1). It also discloses the duplicity of the society that on the surface level is verbally enthusiastic towards the sacredness of

motherhood, but the words of encouragement never reach a mother's ears. It takes into account the difference in every child and every household which makes the situation of every mother and child utterly different from the rest and not to forget the post-partum depression that mothers often go through. These factors, however, are rarely taken into account as the phenomenon of becoming mothers is generalised and assumed to be universally similar.

Louisa is continuously blamed for Annalukshmi's behaviour, and because she does not want to be labelled as a terrible mother, she makes it her life's aim to get Annalukshmi to

"settle down" (Selvadurai, Cinnamon Gardens 18). It is always an outsider –whether it is Louisa's sister or the rickshaw driver or the even the postman –who let her know about the wrongdoings of Annalukshmi and expect her to fix them. The friction between Annalukshmi and Louisa increases when Louisa, to get her married, gives her photo to the families that were looking for a bride for their sons, without Annalukshmi's permission. When

Annalukshmi learns about this, she is deeply enraged and feels insulted as she questions her mother, "what am I… a piece of furniture? It is outrageous that a complete stranger should be looking at my photograph, passing it around to his friends and relatives as if I were a

souvenir" (Selvadurai, Cinnamon Gardens 119). Annalukshmi's mother objectifies her, letting her daughter to be judged by strangers from a photograph, to see if she fits in their agenda of the required daughter-in-law. Louisa could have arranged a meeting with the family as Annalukshmi does not disagree with that, but to let her daughter be gazed at as a desirable object by others is quite shocking. Louisa's desperation is understandable, but this act of hers cannot possibly be justified as she reduces her daughter to a photograph who as it seems, was most likely to be sold to the best buyer. Instead of empowering her daughter she takes away her fundamental human right to be treated in a dignified manner. Louisa and Annalukshmi's family belongs to the upper caste urban strata of the society, and if in the highest strata of the social structure women are treated like this then one cannot even begin to comprehend the predicaments that rural lower-caste women must go through.

Louisa is a dominating mother, yet Annulakshmi never gives up the fight to stand for what is right. She is the embodiment of the ‘new woman' who is assertive and not afraid to stand up for her beliefs. In the first chapter of Cinnamon Gardens, Annalukshmi receives a gift –a bicycle from an English friend, and when Annalukshmi shows up at her house with it, her mother and sisters are astonished and outraged at the sight of it because only men at the time rode a bicycle. It is her sister, Kamudini, who first asks her not to ride the bike as she