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

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What's up with these brilliant novelists from the subcontinent who emigrate to Canada and freeze after 3-4 novels? Rohinton Mistry is similar to Shyam Selvadurai in this aspect. Shyam Selvadurai is a Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist who wrote Funny Boy (1994), which won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and Cinnamon Gardens (1998). He currently lives in Toronto with his partner Andrew Champion.

The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai | Goodreads The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai | Goodreads

Starting in markets in 1991, he opened his first store in the Sydney suburb of Newtown in 1994. I gave up my own career as a government scientist to join him in 2000 and soon convinced my partner Ian to join us in what was to become the Family Business. The characters were all so alive, they were breathing, living people. I felt like they weren’t fictional at all, and I was very invested in Shivan’s (MC) life and also in his mother’s and sister’s lives. Shivan and his grandmother have a very intricate and elaborate relationship, which is influenced by cultural and family values, as well as the fact that Shivan is multiracial (Sinhalese-Tamil) and gay. Methods for gaining self-knowledge and self-mastery through conscious awareness strengthen the mind’s capacity to act as its own impartial observer. Among the simplest and most skilful of the meditative techniques taught in many spiritual traditions is the disciplined practice of what Buddhists call ‘bare attention’. Nietzsche called Buddha ‘that profound physiologist’ and his teachings less a religion than a ‘kind of hygiene’...’ Many of our automatic brain processes have to do with either wanting something or not wanting something else – very much the way a small child’s mental life functions. We are forever desiring or longing, or judging and rejecting. Mental hygiene consists of noticing the ebb and flow of all those automatic grasping or rejecting impulses without being hooked by then. Bare attention is directed not only toward what’s happening on the outside, but also to what’s taking place on the inside.

It’s a subtle thing, freedom. It takes effort; it takes attention and focus to not act something like an automaton. Although we do have freedom, we exercise it only when we strive for awareness, when we are conscious not just of the content of the mind but also of the mind itself as a process.’ This book broke my heart. Especially in the second act, which for me was the strongest section of the book. The author does such a great job at fleshing out his characters and making them seem real, it is almost too easy to build empathy with them. As with his other books, Selvadurai uses lush, tactile description to illustrate the cultures of both countries he is writing about, to the point that you can almost taste and smell the food that is being eaten. The only issue I take with this book is that the pacing in the third act seems a little choppy, but it is not so choppy that it breaks an emotional connection to the story... it just makes you care a little less about the protagonists (just a smidgen). Selvadurai recounted an account of the discomfort he and his partner experienced during a period spent in Sri Lanka in 1997 in his essay "Coming Out" in Time Asia's special issue on the Asian diaspora in 2003. Shyam Selvadurai writes in such a way that you are transported into a fictional place but still feel like the events are not fictional at all. The story is gripping. It was an emotional journey and my feelings were all over the place. It’s a very realistic book that will give you different perspectives into the conflicts that shaped Sri Lanka into the country it is today and how historical events impacted the lives of various people.

of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with

The greatest damage done by neglect, trauma or emotional loss is not the immediate pain they inflict but the long-term distortions they induce in the way a developing child will continue to interpret the world and her situation in it. All too often these ill-conditioned implicit beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies in our lives. We create meanings from our unconscious interpretation of early events, and then we forge our present experiences from the meaning we’ve created. Unwittingly, we write the story of our future from narratives based on the past...Mindful awareness can bring into consciousness those hidden, past-based perspectives so that they no longer frame our worldview.’Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present…Until you reach that point, you are unconscious.’ …In present awareness we are liberated from the past.” 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. This book was quite an emotional ride for me, as were the other two books I have read by this author. It is dense, thought-provoking, and cathartic literature without much effort needed from the reader to be so. Definitely one of the best books I have read in 2013. The question then, is how to break the cycle. The Buddhist parables, with their talk of karma and fate and insistence on bribing monks, are dangerous and silly. They may add a Sri Lankan flavor to the book that pleases Selvadurai's Western readers with its exoticism and his Sri Lankan readers with its familiarity. Giving offerings to a temple or paying off a con-man isn't going to bring either national or familial reconciliation.

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. O brahmana, by that sin I became a ghost with mouth as small as the hole of a needle and body as huge as a mountain. At first, this seems like a fairly common retelling of the immigrant experience; however, Selvadurai then flips the immigrant experience around and uses it to explore the coming-out experience in Shivan's homeland. How the two experiences mirror and contrast each other makes for a fascinating and engrossing comparison. Be at least interested in your reactions as in the person or situation that triggers them.’... In a mindful state one can choose to be aware of the ebb and flow of emotions and thought patterns instead of brooding on their content. Not ‘he did this to me therefore I’m suffering’ but ‘I notice that feelings of resentment and a desire for vengeance keep flooding my mind.’... ‘Bare Attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the successive moments of perception,’... ‘It is called ‘Bare’ because it attends just to the bare facts of a perception as presented either through the five physical senses of through the mind without reacting to them.” I want to be not money-driven and find my purpose in life which will allow me to calm my hunger feeling.

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein | Waterstones

Not every story has a happy ending, ... but the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart, and the revelations of the soul all assure us that no human being is ever beyond redemption. The possibility of renewal exists so long as life exists. How to support that possibility in others and in ourselves is the ultimate question.” The Hungry Ghosts" is a gem of a novel centered around an uncommon theme for English literature: making personal concessions to correct the transgressions of others. Selvadurai takes his readers on a tense journey of forgiveness and family ties, juxtaposing how two different cultures, Canadian and Sri Lankan, approach these two notions in very different ways.I enjoyed reading the retellings of Buddhist stories. I hadn’t read them before, so this was a lovely addition to my reading experience.

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

Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours. It is present in the gambler, the Internet addict, the compulsive shopper and the workaholic. The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden—but it’s there. As we’ll see, the effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain.” Not the world, not what’s outside of us, but what we hold inside traps us. We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.” Shyam Selvadurai weaves a certain magic in bringing together the personal and the political. This time around he also adds in this silky thread of Buddhist stories that really adds a lot to the narrative. Other than being very intriguing on their own, these Buddhist myths add a certain gravitas that helps us understand the mindset of the characters. This story is almost a re-imagining of one of those mythical stories - there are many echoes and as the author himself comments, this story is an exploration of how "fate" might work. The Lord said: It is the men of sinful actions actuated by their previous misdeeds who become ghosts after death. Please listen to me, I shall tell you in detail. Shyam Selvadurai writes about Love, be it Filial, romantic or otherwise, intertwining the Sri Lankan political landscape from 1983 to 1994 , and trials and tribulations of an immigrant's life. For a person who grew up during the mentioned years , the situations and characters in the story evokes nostalgia. One suddenly gets reminded about the real News , that dominated the headlines of newspapers. I actually started thinking of Richard De Zoysa , when reading about Mili Jayasinghe.

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?) this book is well written technically and the premise initially intriguing. but then the sense of fatalistic doom crept in and stayed till the very end. 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.