Introduction

314
Sonja Lehmann
of describing the smell of durian, where bullocks hold up traffic and steam
after the rains. (RF 69)
He appears to want to write down every impression and sensation he comes
across to evoke the atmosphere of the place but by his choice of topics which
highlight everyday life reveals how unusual these events have become for him. As
Graham Huggan observes, “he mocks his readers, and himself, for playing the
part of wide-eyed foreigners” (122). It is clearly not the point of view of someone
who feels naturally at home in the place Ondaatje describes but that of an outsider.
Soon, his approach does not stay this humorous but turns to frustration in the
chapter called “The Karapothas” which translates as the foreigners (RF 80). At
this point in the text, Ondaatje becomes aware that he is displaced in this country,
which is also his homeland and states “I am the foreigner. I am the prodigal who
hates the foreigner” (RF 79). His belonging or lack of belonging to Sri Lanka is
paradoxical to him as he believes “[w]e own the country we grow up in, or we are
aliens and invaders” (RF 81). He grew up in the country, and nevertheless is also a
stranger in it upon his return and consequently a colonizer.
Ajay Heble therefore concludes that Ondaatje is “ex-centric” and assumes that
Ondaatje realizes that “he himself is the other” (“Rumours” 189; also Huggan
118-19; Saul 43) which, however, provokes the questions ‘Which other?’ and
‘Where is the centre that he is displaced from?’ After all, Ondaatje is not only
unable to connect to his family tradition because it existed in the bygone era of Sri
Lanka’s colonial past. He in addition does not fit into present-day independent Sri
Lanka either. He is “other” and “ex-centric” in several ways: as a Canadian in Sri
Lanka, as a Ceylonese in Sri Lanka and as both a Canadian and Ceylonese who
cannot return to a stable past that would offer a locally fixed sense of belonging
because this past was never stable to begin with but subject to many different
influences and affiliations. A dichotomy between self and other is hence not possible
anymore in his case and a clearly identifiable centre can no longer be located.
31 Ondaatje’s self-understanding is troubled by this because he does not
know to which of these he belongs and how he can connect to them.
It is hardly surprising that the two poems following this chapter, “High
Flower” and “To Colombo” (RF 87-91), focus on Sri Lankans without a mixed
background whose belonging is rooted in place. While Sangeeta Ray complains
that the characters are presented as “native subalterns” (43), this does not seem to
31 In her analysis of Anil’s Ghost Victoria Cook similarly states, “[Ondaatje’s] voice is one of those
involved in re-defining the boundaries, speaking from beyond preconceptions of ‘the Other’
and ‘writing back’ to ‘the West,’ and reconfiguring the ‘postcolonial’ perspective into one of
‘transnationalism.’ Anil’s Ghost provides a forum for the expression of a range of cultural identities
– one in which the postcolonial voice does not simply speak from the margins, but is represented
as an integrated component of a transnational identity” (8). This clearly applies to all of
Ondaatje’s fiction.