Hungry Ghosts: A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick

Product Information

We may say, then, that in the world of the psyche, freedom is a relative concept: the power to choose exists only when our automatic mechanisms are subject to those brain systems that are able to maintain conscious awareness. A person experiences greater or less freedom from one situation to the next, from one interaction to the next, from one moment to the next. Anyone whose automatic brain mechanisms habitually run in overdrive has diminished capacity for free decision making, especially if the parts of the brain that facilitate conscious choice are impaired or underdeveloped.” What's the best part of the book? The beautiful beautiful relationship that blossoms somewhere halfway in the story and it is like rain soaking a parched land. I wish the whole book were just about that relationship so that we didn't have to get to know all these awful people. Take Kolkata, for example. Bengali, Hindi and English are three of the world's six most widely spoken languages -- there are millions who are trilingual. Surely there must be a large enough audience to make it worthwhile to publish more books using elements of all three languages. Hopefully, some of Kolkata's many writers and poets will take what Selvadurai has done by sprinkling his Canadian English with Sinhala and Tamil to the next level by writing books the way they speak in daily life.

The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai | Goodreads

This novel also portrays the difficulties faced by Sri Lankans who tried to start a new life in western countries, after fleeing the motherland due to the unsavory political situations. I literally started this book after chanting a mantra in hopes I would be able to get out the slump I've fallen into. Ironically it looks like it worked. The addict's reliance on the drug to reawaken her dulled feelings is no adolescent caprice. The dullness is itself a consequence of an emotional malfunction not of her making; the internal shutdown of vulnerability. Vulnerability is our susceptibility to be wounded. This fragility is part of our nature and cannot be escaped. The best the brain can do is to shut down conscious awareness of it when pain becomes so vast or unbearable that it threatens our ability to function. The automatic repression of painful emotion is a helpful child's prime defence mechanism and can enable the child to endure trauma otherwise be catastrophic. The unfortunate consequence is a wholesale dulling of emotional awareness.” It was also interesting to hear about the racial conflicts in Sri Lanka, which are described in detail through Shivan's eyes as events unfold. At one point, we even get a peek into the struggles of a human rights group in Colombo. The leader of the group was probably my favourite character of the book, because she was one amazing lady! (Similarly, I really liked Shivan's sister, who would honestly be my favourite grandchild if I were their grandmother. Girl reads Anita Desai and bell hooks, what's not to love?) We see that substance addictions are only one specific form of blind attachment to harmful ways of being, yet we condemn the addict's stubborn refusal to give up something deleterious to his life or to the life of others. Why do we despise, ostracize and punish the drug addict, when as a social collective, we share the same blindness and engage in the same rationalizations?”Shyam Selvadurai has the advantage of catching his readers between the double edged conflict of civil war and ethnic troubles to being gay in a country that still outlaws this lifestyle, his native Sri Lanka. Intuitively we all know that it’s better to feel than not to feel. Beyond their energizing subjective change, emotions have crucial survival value. They orient us, interpret the world for us and offer us vital information. They tell us what is dangerous and what is benign, what threatens our existence and what will nurture our growth. Imagine how disabled we would be if we could not see or hear or taste or sense heat or cold or physical pain. Emotional shutdown is similar. Our emotions are an indispensable part of our sensory apparatus and an essential part of who we are. They make life worthwhile, exciting, challenging, beautiful and meaningful.

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein: Summary and reviews Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein: Summary and reviews

I can feel a sense of things never being enough, the more and more money I earn never fills the spot once I obtain what I want it feels like it didn’t happen and I’m constantly searching for more.I liked how the story juxtaposes how people imagine Sri Lankan refugees live in first world countries with the actual reality. Anyone who goes 'oh but they live in Canada/Australia/France/etc' should just read this story. The chasm between the government welcoming the people and the society welcoming the people was brought out so we'll! At the centre of this story, is the immigrant experience. Shivan Rassiah and his family, Tamil by name, flee Sri Lanka for fear of what could happen to them because of the immense civil unrest in that country at that time. They arrive in Canada, where Shivan's family must adapt, practically overnight, and start anew in a strange land.