1. FUNNY BOY(2): QUEERING POSTCOLONIAL SRI LANKA
Small Choices
See No Evil,
Hear No Evil
Shyam Selvadurai

2. Outline
Introduction: Queering as intersection (of Gender, Race Colonial & National identities)
Discussion Questions
See No Evil, Hear No Evil
Small Choices
Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew: "There's small choice in rotten apples," meaning that if all the fruit is rotten, there isn't much to choose from.

3. Introduction: Narrative Continuity thru’ Fragments
1) Settings: home grandma’s house, theatre, hotel (Paradise Beach Resort) & country bungalow, Jeffna, Europe & Australia
2) Gender + Race Positions: Aunt Radha, mother, Uncle Daryl, Jegan, servant boy, staff members at the hotel
3) authorities: Grandma, Husband, A.S.P., hotel owner/government, lawyer, Sinhala as a sign of power

4. Introduction: Narrative Continuity thru’ Fragments
4) Queered games: bride-bride, cricket game (1, 2) weddings, marriage, The King & I, hotel management, Little Women

5. Introduction: Narrative Continuity thru’ Fragments
Politics & Language:
anti-Tamil riots as a main plot elements in chap 2, chap 4 (close to home),
government dictatorship in chap 3 (vs. Gandhians and the Tigers)
Game of invisibility[hiring their own people]
P. 169 “ But we are a minority, and that' s a fact of 1ife,” my father said placatingly. “As a Tamil you have to learn how to play the game. Play it right and you can do very well for yourself. The trick is not to make yourself conspicuous.
Go around quietly, make your money, and don't step on anyone's toes."

6. Discussion Questions Meanings of the titles? (137; 172)
“See No Evil, Hear No Evil”: How is the patriarchal family structure queered (broken and then re-established)? How is trauma introduced into this story?
“Small Choices”: How does Arjie develop his homosexual desire in this chapter; how is his family queered (extended to include Jegan, who is first well connected with both the father and Arjie, and then quickly excluded). Why?
What roles do racial conflicts & riots play in each part?
How does Arjie grow through the two chapters?
What role does journalism play in the 3rd & 4th stories, and hotel business play in the 4th?

7. Journalist Daryl (like a foreigner)
See No Evil, Hear No Evil
Society/ Government
Law & Justice
Father
Upper vs.
Under
class
Free economy
Police
Amma’s
Journalist Daryl (like a foreigner)
US-style supermarket
Civil right lawyer
(QC Appadurei)
Arjie’s
Amma
Referendum
Servant Boy Somaratne
Family richer
Daryl arrives
Arjie ill
In country
Daryl absent
Police, house,
Lawyer
servant boy,

8. Responses to the affair & death
Mother’s responses
Problems in Jeffna 118; Aunt Neliya’s warning 121; servant boy 127; A.S.P ; “something must be done” 133; 137
2) Arjie’s responses:
Fear: of discovery 114; of Daryl’s safety; phone being tapped 140;
sympathy 141; anger you are so selfish ’
3) References to Little Women
4) Endings of the first four chapters?

9. Little Women
Seen as books for girls, but uncle Daryl gives him more of its series
Arjie’s dreams –
[leaving country house] Amma-Jo; him-Beth 115, fear of disclosure
[before going to Appadurai] Arjie – Jo; Amma – Beth 134,
[after the visit to the servant boy ] Amma & Arjie by the sea: facing a towering wave

10. “Small Choices” Hotels: With the poor living around them
Family
Friend
Hotel & Staff
Father /Uncle /Boss
Father’s Buddy
Banduratne Mudalali –owner of many hotel 165
Arjie
Jegan
Manager
Jegan envied
Suspected; sent to police
Media report
Hate note & filthy phone calls
Hotel inspection
The van of young men
Hotels:
With the poor living around them
“other natural resource (167)
Hate note at the hotel
Jegan’s suitcase broken open
Uncle will do the inevitable

11. “Small Choices” Hate note at the hotel Jegan’s suitcase broken open
Jegan envied
Suspected; sent to police
Media report
Hate note & filthy phone calls
Hotel inspection
The van of young men
“Small Choices”
Hate note at the hotel
Jegan’s suitcase broken open
Uncle will do the inevitable
Jegan leaves

12. Hotel Business in free economy
“It's not just our luscious beaches that keep the tourist industry going, you know. We have other natural resources as well.“ (166-67)
The bottom levels in society: the boys on the beach, the servant boy at Daryl’s

13. Jegan’s Joining the Family
resemblance to his father 154
Evening drinks 160: father talked about his past
Defending Arjie 162
Jegan and Arjie: jogging or walking to the beach together
Jegan tells him of his past with the Tigers

14. Jegan’s Leaving the Family
Differences from the father
about posting political propaganda about referendum Jegan fighting (father: discreet; Arjie: admiring and uneasy)
about being Tamil: father “play the game” “not to make yourself conspicuous”)
suspects Jegan’s connections with Tigers; the father takes him to the police 173; Father “don’t be so sure about that” 177
Newspaper report  hate note and phone calls  F wants to send Jegan away  sided with his other staff (185)

15. Arjie’s Changes further distanced from his siblings
used as an excuse for the mother’s meeting Uncle Daryl
close observation and companion of mother (as is with Aunt Radha)
physical changes 157; excited about Jegan’s living with them; finds him “investing the house with something extraordinary”
Jogging with him everyday
As Jegan is about to be sent away, he calls Arjie “just a boy” –200-01
Understand his father ( )

16. Oberoi Hotel = Cinnamon Grand
REFERENCE (1):
Oberoi Hotel =
Cinnamon Grand

17. References Interpreting Homes in South Asian Literature
Malashri Lal, Sukrita Paul Kumar
Pearson Education India, 2007
Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures
Gayatri Gopinath
Duke University Press, 2005