LLYOD FERNANDO
(1926-2008)
Born to a Sinhalese family in Kandy, Sri Lanka in 1926, Mr. Fernando's family migrated to Singapore in 1938 and he enrolled into St. Patrick's in which the Japanese occupation which interrupted his education from 1943 to 1945. His father was killed in one of the Japanese bomb raids on Singapore; leaving him to work various manual labor jobs such as a trishaw rider, construction laborer, and apprentice mechanic to support his family. He later took part time jobs as a radio broadcasting assistant and newsreader. He also enlisted himself into the Ceylon branch of the Indian National Army, not impelled by any ideology but out of a sheer necessity for self-sustenance. However, the early migration across the Indian Ocean at a tender age enriched and influenced him greatly in his writings and scholarly works later on.
After the war, Fernando completed his Cambridge School Certificate and embarked on a school teaching career. As soon as he graduated with double Honours in English and Philosophy from the University of Malaya in Singapore in 1959, he served as as instructor in Singapore Polytechnic. He was then promoted to become an assistant lecturer at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur in 1960. Mr. Fernando was also given a scholarship from Leeds University, United Kingdom where he studied his PhD. Four years later in 1967, he returned to the same post at UM until he retired in 1978. People in Malaysia usually retire at 55, but when the time came for him to retire, Fernando refused to continue on a yearly contract or live in uncertainty. He decided to study law at City University, United Kingdom and then at Middle Temple, returned to Malaysia with two law degrees, joined a firm, eventually started his own law practice business as Advocate and Solicitor of the High Court of Malaya in 1980, and continued right up to his stroke in December 1997 which ended his professional activities.
Fernando began writing at the age of fifteen. He describes writing as taking snapshots of the society and showing the reality without being sentimental. Fernando approaches his writing in a very disciplined manner; he would begin writing at eight in the morning, and only takes breaks for lunch and tea.
A few years before his stroke though; around 1994, he converted his first novel, Scorpion Orchid written in 1976 into a play which was first produced in Singapore. The following year saw the premiere of the play in Kuala Lumpur. It was first anthologized by the Singapore Institute of Management for the Open University in a collection of literature by Malaysian and Singaporean writers meant only for student consumption and not for sale.
In 1998, Mr. Fernando managed to piece an answer to a questionnaire by Daizal Samad, a lecturer at UKM, in which he shared some refreshing and engaging information about his work and his personal life; something he had never done before. He was able to write coherently after the stroke incident, and was working on a third novel that same year but he only completed three chapters before he lost his flair in writing altogether and had to stop.
Bibliography
- 1976. Scorpion Orchid. Heinemann Educational Books (Asia).
- 1977. 'New Women' in the late Victorian novel.. Pennysylvania State University Press.
- 1986. Cultures in Conflict. Graham Brash.
- 1993. Green is the Colour. Landmark Books.
- 1968. Twenty-two Malaysian stories: An Anthology of Writing in English. Ed. Heinemann Asia.
- 2002. "Surja Singh." The Merlion and the Hibiscus: Contemporary Short Stories from Singapore and Malaysia. Ed. Mukherjee, Dipika, Kirpal Singh and Mohammad A. Quayum. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2002.
SCORPION ORCHID
INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT YEO
It is instructive to read Scorpion Orchid together with Lloyd Fernando's essays collected by his wife Marie, after his death, in Lloyd Fernando: A Celebration of His Life (2004). In both books, there are revealing passages that inform about his citizenship status, the novel's themes and characters. I am never convinced about D.H. Lawrence's advice to trust the tale and not the teller as I am sure a knowledge of what Fernando was doing with Scorpion Orchid will greatly enhance our reading of it. In the second book, Fernando wrote an essay Engmalchin and the opening paragraph is revealing:
During my life in Singapore in the 1950s, I became aware of the many races in this country and incompatibility of our colonial upbringing with the concept of a united society of multi-racial origins.
Undoubtedly, this is the theme of Scorpion Orchid.
Fernando lived in Singapore in the 1950s and it was a very tumultuous period politically. The Japanese Occupation of Singapore, 1942-45, alienated the local population from its brutal Asian rulers but it also saw disenchantment with colonial rule because of British surrender to the Japanese. When the colonisers returned after the war under the British Military Administration (BMA), there was resentment among the local population which had strong urges to be free of foreign domination. For freedom to be achieved, the multi-racial society of Singapore, comprising the indigenous Malays, the majority Chinese, the Indians (children of migrants) and other peoples on the island, had to be united. But they were not and what divided them were race and politics.
The Maria Hertogh case of 1950 had aggravated race relations. Maria was a Dutch girl adopted by a Malay woman Cik Aminah. Years after her adoption, the colonial administration allowed her biological parents to start legal proceedings to claim their natural daughter against opposition from Aminah, relatives and Muslim sympathisers. Tension, racial and religious, mounted, and when the courts ruled in favour of returning Maria to the Hertoghs, riots erupted. Muslims were pitched against Christians, Malays against white people; Eurasians, who were deemed white by enraged Muslims, were attacked.
In 1949, Mao Tse Tung triumphed over the Kuomintang and China became Communist. Pro-Chinese fervour in the overseas terrorists in Southeast Asia took on a distinctly Chinese and Communist bent, inflaming opinion and inciting violence in places like Singapore, which had a significant Chinese majority.
Lloyd Fernando lived in this cauldron. In the 1950s, he heard of violence in Ceylon between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. Ethnically Sinhalese himself, he made a commitment then. Years later, in 1988, in his essay Engmalchin, he wrote:
Ethnically, I was ashamed and disgusted by the narrow-minded and selfish stand of the Sinhalese community and I choose Singapore's citizenship because it promised a united way of life, without prejudice or dominance by any sector of the society...
In 1957, Malaya achieved independence and in 1959, Singapore became self-governing. In 1960, Fernando joined the English Department of the University of Malaya and it may be around this time that he accepted Malayan citizenship. In his academic career, he thought much about conflicting cultures as reflected in many conference papers he delivered and essays he wrote. In 1986, he collected these in a book, published in Singapore, entitled significantly, Cultures in Conflict.
In Scorpion Orchid, there are four young men -- Santinathan, a Tamil, Guan Kheng, a Chinese, Sabran, a Malay, and a Eurasian, Peter D'Almeida.
The four of them had been sixth formers together and were now undergraduates in the third year at the university. They had moved in a group as young men who are contemporaries and enjoy company do, but the bond of their young manhood was wearing off and they were not fully aware of it yet.
The company they keep include Sally, a Chinese prostitute, and the mysterious prophet Tok Said. Wen the novel opens, Santinathan is coping with the members of his family and his uncles's family who want to return to India; his uncle Rasu, aunt Nalini and their daughter Vasantha, prepare to leave but he Santi and his sister Neela choose to remain. This episode shows the ethnic pull on Indians (it could be Chinese) who, in a crunching time, prefer the homeland of their imagination to the land they grew up in. Later, Santi (as his friends address him) is dismissed from the university for insubordination.
Sabran comes from a poor family in Endau, Johore, which is the southmost state of Malaysia adjoining Singapore. He acts as an interpreter for activists demonstrating against a colonial employer, British Realty. In the course of the novel, he is picked up for questioning but is later released.
Guan Kheng has a relationship with Sally. Going out with her one day in his car, they run into riots in the city, he fails to protect Sally, and she is raped and badly bruised. The bond between them weakens. In hospital, Sally, who had left her husband in Malaya, wonders, "What was she fleeing?" The crisis leads to a discovery she had repressed -- that she could actually be Malay and her name is Salmah. Uncomfortably, at this time too, "Guan Kheng thought, for seeking to be firm, to reassert, in fact, rational pride of race."
Peter, the Eurasian of Portuguese ancestry, is set upon and hurt because his assailants identify him as a white man. After the incident, he comes to this realisation about his attackers. "...At me...Not any of you. Me...I saw the point suddenly. I don't belong here. I don't know anybody here and what's more with the British getting out, I don't want to. I'm getting out too."
Sabran realises that his unionist friend Huang, who acts as an interpreter for Prosperity Union against British Realty, has different aims in fighting the British. Sabran suspects Huang has closed an eye to inordinate violence, including attacks on Eurasians. This, and the attacks on Peter and Sally, leaves him pretty disillusioned. "That was why he was going back to the Federation."
Finally, there is the mystical figure of Tok Said. Many of the protagonists have met him and come up with different versions. One unalterable fact about him is that he has prophetic power and predicted the violence that engulfs Singapore, as depicted in the novel. Sally thinks he is a holy man and an Indian and has encountered him in Trengganu and various places in Pahang, the two Eastern states of Malaya. Sabran meets Tok Said and is repelled by his "long" and "blood-curdling" scream and does not think he was a holy man. The authorities think he is linked to the Communists as an inciter of violence. Throughout the novel, the reader is left wondering, who is Tok Said? What is his role in the troubles infesting Singapore? The persistent questions asked about him and the absence of answers lend a thriller element that adds to the tension in the novel.
Two more points are worth making about this novel. True to the thinking of many in his generation, Fernando saw the political-geographical entities of Peninsula Malaya and the island of Singapore as one: Malaya. This is the novel's frame of reference. The four young men go to Singapore because the university is located in the island-state. Tok Said is a Malay-a phenomenon, spotted in Ipoh (the capital of the northern Malayan state of Perak), Trengganu, a northeastern state and elsewhere in other states.
Finally, what can be said of the excerpts from classical Malay, colonial English and one Japanese book that pepper the novel? Fernando's explanation is, "I wanted a mythic meaning to be added on the persons and the several incidents in the novel, yet references to specific works could not rely on the knowledge of the reader. I therefore selected passages which illustrated the truism that there is nothing new under the sun." This is a credible explanation. It supports my feelings that these extracts, placed at strategic points in the novel, remind readers of the multi-racial origins of Malayan-Singaporean history, of early migration, the coming of the colonial powers beginning with the Portuguese in Malacca and followed by the Dutch and the British. Indirectly, they point to the divide-and-rule policy of the British which is one of the causes of racial division shown in the novel.
Lloyd Fernando continued, after publishing Scorpion Orchid in 1976, to be preoccupied with cultures in conflict in fiction and this was demonstrated in his second and last novel, Green is the Colour, published in 1993. It is about the racial riots of 13 May 1969 in Kuala Lumpur, that lead to far-reaching political consequences in Malaysia. It is a must-read novel for those interested in Fernando's take on racial problems that continue to be very relevant today in both Malaysia and Singapore.
Source: Fernando, Lloyd. Scorpion Orchid. Shah Alam: Times Books International. 1992. Print.
GREEN IS THE COLOUR
BY EPIGRAM BOOKS
(DR. WONG SOAK KOON)
“I tell my beloved child there is nothing to forgive, only love to be given.”
First published by Landmark Books in 1993, the novel explores how people of different races face the challenges of living together. The story centres on Yun Ming and Siti Sara falling in love with each other in the post-13 May 1969 period in Malaysia. Both characters are not only from different racial backgrounds and faiths but are also married to different people. In addition, Siti Sara's father is a respected religious figure. How do the protagonists resolve their excruciatingly different circumstances in their fight to stay together?
In Green is the Colour, Fernando tactfully introduces the violence that erupted due to racial riots, rape, imcarceration and torture in a multi-racial population. Besides physical violence, the people were also affected mentally so that they would be divided against each other. Woman characters such as Siti Sara were given more prominence and importance as the last section of the novel was mainly told in her view. Language has been disintegrated to cover up lies and convey half-truths in order that the listeners would not form a real connection between each other and not voice up deeply-felt truths. Fellow citizens whether Malay, Chinese, Indian or Eurasian began to form an artificial togetherness rather than search their soul on the intolerance and bigotry their society faced.
Fernando also invoked the feeling of being watched among the individuals of such a society. Nearly all the major characters felt that they were under scrutiny for betrayal and treason or any other actions that break the law. Such an atmosphere breeds paranoia, and even madness. The people had to watch their every action, behaviour, and words so as to not be interpreted wrongly. They rather seal themselves up than they spill their internal turmoil over. Another constant theme in the story is the violence in sexual scene which proves that misery loves company. By doing so, the characters involved (Yun Ming, Siti Sara and Omar) were trying to transcend the loneliness and consciousness of being a pawn in the current political games.
Although the novel seem to end on a positive note, it seems that the horrors that have taken place are terrifyingly present still and can never be erased, safe for the only place which is the little rooms in our heads. Despite the existing scars of the wounds inflicted on the body and nerves, Fernando salvages the story by infusing it with simple acts of kindness between people of different races and "bonds strong as they are unspoken" as glimpses of hope for the future generation. Although trees have been felled and hills leveled for sundry development projects, it is still able to renew itself in fresh, green vegetation.
Green is the Colour is written primarily as a novel of ideas which serves as a weakness and strength at the same time. The characters were not addressed thoroughly or exceptionally except for Siti Sara. The only insight we were given are its uncompromising and unexpressed truths of the past and its legacies for the present. With the future unknown, it is only befitting that a work invites us to think about the time that has been and what is to come.
Source: Fernando, Lloyd. Green is the Colour. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish Books. 2004. Print.
“A sensitive novel about racial and religious tolerance set against the shadow of the 1969 racial riots in Kuala Lumpur.”
— Koh Buck Song, The Straits Times
“Fernando seeks to strip away the Englishness from English, to find a uniquely Malaysian prose voice… This is evident in his remarkable ear for Malaysian English, never sinking into caricature, but establishing a familiar flow… The best thing about it (the novel), and the reason I recommend it, is its picture of a society aware of its ‘roots’ but is simultaneously rootless.”
—Amir Muhammad, New Straits Times, August 18, 1993
“After the communal riots of May 13th, 1969 there was no wide-scale communal strife in Malaysia such as is depicted in Green is the Colour. Nonetheless, Lloyd Fernando’s vision of post 1969 Malaysia earns its validity as a bold attempt to present the fissures within Malaysia’s modernity.”
—Wong Soak Koon, ‘Unveiling Malaysia’s Modernity and Ethnicity: Lloyd Fernando’s Green is the Colour, in Risking Malaysia” Culture, Politics and Identity. Eds. Maznah Mohamed & Wong Soak Koon, Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 2001
“In his novel, Green Is the Colour, Lloyd Fernando explores undercurrents of our of our multiethnic society with insight and honesty. He shows a deep understanding of minds shaped by different cultures and faiths, and of conflicts that can create a nightmare world when tolerance breaks down. This is a poignant story of tender humanity struggling against the cold inhumanity of closed minds – a story relevant to all of us today.”
—Abidah Amin
“A sensitive novel about racial and religious tolerance set against the shadow of the 1969 racial riots in Kuala Lumpur.”
— Koh Buck Song, The Straits Times
“Fernando seeks to strip away the Englishness from English, to find a uniquely Malaysian prose voice… This is evident in his remarkable ear for Malaysian English, never sinking into caricature, but establishing a familiar flow… The best thing about it (the novel), and the reason I recommend it, is its picture of a society aware of its ‘roots’ but is simultaneously rootless.”
—Amir Muhammad, New Straits Times, August 18, 1993
“After the communal riots of May 13th, 1969 there was no wide-scale communal strife in Malaysia such as is depicted in Green is the Colour. Nonetheless, Lloyd Fernando’s vision of post 1969 Malaysia earns its validity as a bold attempt to present the fissures within Malaysia’s modernity.”
—Wong Soak Koon, ‘Unveiling Malaysia’s Modernity and Ethnicity: Lloyd Fernando’s Green is the Colour, in Risking Malaysia” Culture, Politics and Identity. Eds. Maznah Mohamed & Wong Soak Koon, Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 2001
“In his novel, Green Is the Colour, Lloyd Fernando explores undercurrents of our of our multiethnic society with insight and honesty. He shows a deep understanding of minds shaped by different cultures and faiths, and of conflicts that can create a nightmare world when tolerance breaks down. This is a poignant story of tender humanity struggling against the cold inhumanity of closed minds – a story relevant to all of us today.”
—Abidah Amin
