On the surface, not much – but, thanks to one local author, the stories of their bizarre lives will soon be shared with literature-loving Malaysians.
Her name may not yet be known to the wider public, but Shivani Sivagurunathan is a familiar face to students and staff at Nottingham University in Semenyih. As an English professor, she has been working with works of fiction and poetry for the past 20 years.
And now, thanks to her own creative endeavours, her latest work, “What Has Happened To Harry Pillai?”, will be hitting local bookshelves next month.
“Harry Pillai”, which launches at the George Town Literary Festival this week, actually comprises two novellas in a single book. Although the stories are set in the same location – the fictional Coal Island – their plots do not intersect.
Still, those who have read Shivani’s previous works would recognise the setting as being that of her 2011 book, “Wildlife on Coal Island”.
So, what are the two stories about? The first, titled “Master Your Life”, tells of a middle-aged woman named Debbie, who has lived a life of trial and tribulation, having lost many of her loved ones.
With a single friend and plenty of wine to call her companions, things take a turn when her ex-husband shows up out of the blue with a spiritual guru.
As it turns out, they are both part of the Master Your Life cult, whose teachings, offering salvation, draw the desperate Debbie in. Whether this ultimately to her benefit is up to the reader to decide.
The second novella, which gives the book its name, tells of an overprotective man named Harry who has kept his three daughters sheltered from the perceived dangers of the modern world.
Unbeknownst to him, his daughters have already tasted the forbidden fruit and, once this is discovered, life in this strange household takes an even stranger turn.
‘Mental colonisation’
On her inspiration behind these tales, Shivani tells FMT that “Master Your Life” was written this year after she’d observed “intelligent people giving their lives away to causes imposed on them, and to figures of authority”.
“The burning question for me became, why and how do people give their power away?” she mused. “This story became an investigation of possible answers.”
Meanwhile, “What Has Happened to Harry Pillai?” examines the consequences of growing up in “cloistered, protected, lives”.
“I wanted to capture the suffocation and utter repression experienced within such families,” Shivani explained.
Apart from the location, there are thematic links between the two narratives. “Debbie is drowning in her own bad decisions and personal tragedies. As such, her yearning for connection and love is strong.”
Once she comes across the cult, she falls headfirst and it soon begins to take over her life – a process Shivani describes as “mental colonisation”. This same “colonisation” is what drives Harry Pillai to become a paranoid helicopter parent.
“From one angle, we see how a person seemingly willingly surrenders their power; and from another, we see how three sisters have always had their power removed from them.”
While writing, Shivani realised she was dealing with two very different worlds that needed individual storytelling. “They were larger than the boundaries of a short story and smaller than that of a novel,” she said of the book’s format and structure.
So, which story should one read first? Shivani suggests “Master Your Life”, which has a simpler narrative arc.
“Harry Pillai”, on the other hand, has a more complex structure, with multiple narrators and different perspectives on the same events.
“I believe people who enjoy thought-provoking subjects, such as the strangeness of human behaviour and why humans are drawn to sinister and unwholesome actions, will have a good read,” the author added.
‘What Has Happened to Harry Pillai?’ will be available at major bookstores such as MPH and Kinokuniya from Dec 1. Signed copies can be obtained here.
The George Town Literary Festival runs until Sunday. For more information, click here.