....another person yelled near the carcass of the buffalo. A lady screamed, “She seems dead!” The little girl Ramayee asked, "Patti, you sold me just for thirty rupees?” the girl sobbed and accepted the old lady's proposal. Was it good or bad? Nethuni asked, "What happened to my neighbours?" Kani replied, "They wiped off the people on those two or three streets. Most of them including men, women and babies fled to the North. On the way, many perished due to the shelling and…”
....another person yelled near the carcass of the buffalo. A lady screamed, "She seems dead!" The little girl Ramayee asked, "Patti, you sold me just for thirty rupees?" the girl sobbed and accepted the old lady's proposal. Was it good or bad? Nethuni asked, "What happened to my neighbours?" Kani replied, "They wiped off the people on those two or three streets. Most of them including men, women and babies fled to the North. On the way, many perished due to the shelling and..."
The Ayah and Other Stories is a collection of acutely observed stories that will take you on a memorable journey. Spanning settings from the 1960s Sri Lanka to Somalia of the 80s and to the 21st century Paris, each vignette provides a superbly rendered and deeply atmospheric glimpse into the private and emotional worlds of a variety of narrators. Boisard-Fernando's collection offers not only a deft handling of place and setting, but also the tantalizing possibility of seeing the world through the eyes of her subtle and loveable characters. The Ayah and Other Stories was born out of her poignant memories of a blessed childhood in Sri Lanka and keenly perceptive womanhood in France, in between traversing many places and time-frames the world over.
A story of a child soldier in Sri Lanka's bloody civil war. Two days before Christmas in 1987, at the age of 17, Niromi de Soyza found herself in an ambush as part of a small platoon of militant Tamil Tigers fighting government forces in the bloody civil war that was to engulf Sri Lanka for decades. With her was her lifelong friend, Ajanthi, also aged 17. Leaving behind them their shocked middle-class families, the teenagers had become part of the Tamil Tigers' first female contingent. Equipped with little more than a rifle and a cyanide capsule, Niromi's group managed to survive on their wits in the jungle, facing not only the perils of war but starvation, illness and growing internal tensions among the militant Tigers. And then events erupted in ways that she could no longer bear. How was it that this well-educated, mixed-race, middle-class girl from a respectable family came to be fighting with the Tamil Tigers?
In these stories, the narrators are individuals hapless in the face of some kind of trouble. An over-worked doctor, a returning soldier, a worried husband, or an ambushed lawyer; in each case, the supernatural is an unwanted guest that comes a-knocking. Whether it is for better or worse, however, is only revealed at the end, keeping the reader in suspense as the plot unfolds. Even in this modern age of science, there are many episodes that are simply beyond our ken. The Dalvey Estate Midnight Visitor, for instance, recounts the strange events in a ward that lead a medical man to wonder if there may be something else at work to aid him in his noble calling. Similarly, the husband in The Eerie Guardian prides himself on his no-nonsense attitude, easily dismissing his colleagues’ warnings as flights of fancy. Yet, it is only when he becomes trapped in a living nightmare that he begins to seek the truth behind his misfortunes. At the same time, these are more than dime-store pulp horror. Though the stories tell of grisly figures and tragic pasts, at their very heart, they are about fundamentally human emotions. The lingering memory of safety that a parental figure evokes in The Robin Road Peanut Seller. The violent anger at familial betrayal and stolen love in The Ghostly Bride. Look beyond the tattered rags and chilling voices that these spectres wear like armour, and you may find something that is not so different from you and I after all.
Autobiography of a sales manager at Citigroup, London describing his childhood years at Jaffna. Through it all, Bernard explores his tumultuous journey from childhood to adulthood with candor and heart, ultimately taking away one very important message: Keep Believing in Yourself, no matter what.
