51 pages • 1 hour read
Shyam SelvaduraiFunny Boy
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “Riot Journal: An Epilogue”
This chapter takes the form of daily journal entries written by Arjie during riots by Sinhalese individuals against Tamil residents of the city of Colombo, where Arjie’s family lives. The date of the first entry: July 25, 1983. A six am phone call wakes the family up. Mala Aunty informs the family that Tamil houses in a section of Colombo have been burned down in retaliation for the Tamil Tigers killing thirteen government soldiers. The parents try to provide a sense of normalcy, but Arjie is frightened. The family packs up their belongings and plans to leave their home to stay with Sena Uncle and Chithra Aunty, who are Sinhalese. Amma declares that the government must be behind the riots, as they are providing the people causing riots with voting records so they will know which houses have Tamil residents. Appa is not so sure.
By one pm, the government declares a curfew, but the rioting grows worse. Sena Uncle has not yet arrived by three pm to pick them up, and Arjie is worried. One of Appa’s employees arrives and tells them that Sena Uncle could not pick them up because some of the people rioting removed gasoline from his van and used it to light a car—carrying a Tamil family—on fire. At 6:45pm, Amma and Appa make Arjie and his siblings practice climbing a ladder, which they will use to escape their home to their Sinhalese’ neighbors’ house. At 11:30pm, Arjie writes that he finds waiting for the riots to arrive to their house to be terrible. At 12:30pm the next day, the riots arrive. The family escapes to the house next door and hides in the storeroom.
Meanwhile, the rioting mob burns down Arjie’s family’s home. They comb through the wreckage. Sena Uncle and Chithra Aunty arrive. The neighbors gather, remorseful, and provide the family with supplies before they drive away to Sena Uncle’s house. At three pm, they learn that Ammachi and Appachi’s house has burnt down. An anonymous caller threatens to burn down Sena Uncle’s house because he is sheltering a Tamil family. At eleven pm, some strange men arrive to their home, but instead of burning their home, they ask for donations—perhaps an extortion—for some sports event. Amma and Appa want to go to a refugee camp, but Sena Uncle wants the family to stay.
The next diary entry reads “July 27.” At seven pm, Arjie writes that the curfew was lifted so people can buy groceries, but many of the stores were burned because Tamils owned them. The family receives many visitors, but they depress Arjie. He is only excited to see Shehan. Shehan tries to cheer up Arjie, and Arjie becomes aware of the difference between them—that Shehan is Sinhalese and he is not. Lakshman Uncle calls from Canada and urges them to apply for refugee status, but Appa wants to wait. However, at eight pm on July 28th, Arjie writes that Appa’s hotel has burned down in the riots. Appa finally realizes that they must flee, and says, “It is very clear that we no longer belong in this country” (297).
Arjie is relieved because he doesn’t feel safe in Sri Lanka anymore. The journal entry for July 29th at ten am discusses what Arjie misses about his home and how he’s frustrated by the little things he cannot have, like his books. Amma cries over the loss of their home. Ammachi and Appachi fail to show up to Kanthi Aunty’s house, and the family becomes worried. The next diary entry reads “August 2.” Arjie recaps the past four days. Sena Uncle went to look for Ammachi and Appachi, and he learned that their car had been set on fire—while they were still in it. The family buries Ammachi and Appachi, and Radha Aunty comes from America for the funeral, which Arjie notes feels surreal.
On August 25th, Arjie writes that he and his siblings have received passports that will allow them to apply for refugee status in Canada. He contrasts what he knows of foreign countries from books like Little Women with what he imagines their actual life of poverty in this strange land will be like. They will not have much money, as the government regulates how much cash they can take out of the country. Amma and the children will live with Lakshman Uncle in Canada, and Appa will join them later after he wraps up his business dealings in Sri Lanka. On August 27th, Arjie writes about Shehan and notes how his lover’s scent lingers on his body after they have sex. The last time they have sex, Arjie notes that he has emotionally withdrawn from Shehan to avoid feeling pain. Arjie visits his family’s home and realizes that everything not burned was stolen. He becomes enraged and cries while the rain pours down around him.
Chapter 6 Analysis
This chapter is the culmination of years of ethnic tension that have devolved into full-scale civil war, which has finally reached the streets of Colombo’s most privileged Tamil families, including Arjie’s. Denial is strong in human nature. Despite Amma’s protests that they must leave Sri Lanka in order to protect their family, Appa is still hesitant about moving to another country as refugees. His pride will not allow him to abandon all that he has achieved in Sri Lanka just to be impoverished in a foreign country. He stubbornly clings to the belief that if he just stays out of trouble, his family will be allowed to live as they always have. He insists upon giving the Sinhalese government the benefit of the doubt, stating that they may not be behind the rioting.
That folly is shattered after their family home is burned down. Appa’s transformation is finally complete after he gets word that his hotel—his life’s work and the bulk of the family’s fortune—has burned and his parents have been murdered. Wracked with shame, he asks, “How could I have been so blind?” (297). At that point, he realizes that his tactics of accommodation—such as schooling his children in Sinhalese and siding with the Sinhalese over the Tamils—has ultimately not helped protect his family at all. In the eyes of the Sinhalese, Arjie’s family is still Tamil, and no amount of privilege or appeasement will change that fact. Appa becomes resigned to the fact that the country that he loves does not love him back. The book subtly illustrates how all this privilege amounts to very little during a civil war, particularly when Arjie describes how, after the fire, all their grand furniture has been burned, revealing merely “common wood” (291).
Indeed, much of this entire chapter is an exercise in the futility of trying to maintain appearances and go about daily life while a war rages on around the family. Arjie’s family continues to eat using their nice plates and exercise and read books as they wait for the mob to come to their house, highlighting their helplessness. But sometimes, the agony of anticipating violence is just as exhausting as the violence itself, as illustrated when Arjie says, “I am tired of these escape plans. I am tired of the waiting. I just want it all to end” (293).
Although Arjie has witnessed cover-ups of assassinations and experienced discrimination as a Tamil, this sort of overt violence and displacement is wholly foreign to him as a member of a somewhat wealthy family. He misses the basic comforts of his house. It is not just Appa that undergoes a change in this chapter. When Arjie returns to the rubble of his house, he no longer feels like a Sri Lankan or feels at home in his country of birth. His world has been totally upended.
As he faces the prospect of fleeing to Canada to start a new life, he says, “I find it impossible to imagine that the world will ever be normal again” (301). The novel’s themes about power come full circle as Arjie cries in the rain during the chapter’s final scene, realizing how powerless his family is. “I tried to muffle the sound of my weeping, but my voice cried out loudly as if it were the only weapon I had against those who had destroyed my life” (304). Once again, the environment mirrors Arjie’s mood; the rain seems to be Mother Earth crying along with Arjie for what humanity has done to it.
Lastly, despite the traumas that the family undergoes in this chapter, it is remarkable about what still remains unsaid between them. Arjie continues to have sex with Shehan, but his family remains unaware of his sexual orientation as a gay man. A civil war may have changed Amma and Appa’s attitudes towards their status as Sri Lankans, but it’s not enough to change their minds about conservative attitudes toward queer people in their country. Arjie must continue to suppress this important part of himself in order to maintain his family. As Mala Aunty says in an earlier chapter, family is all that they have in this world.
Although, there is a new distance between Arjie and Shehan too, as Arjie realizes that “Shehan was Sinhalese and I was not” (295). Like Radha Aunty and Anil, Shehan and Anil’s love story is doomed by the political circumstances. Moreover, Amma still has not opened up about her affair with Daryl Uncle and his subsequent murder, which completely reframed how she views democracy in Sri Lanka and her status as a Tamil in the country. Appa asks Amma, “How were you able to see it?” regarding the collapse of democracy (297). Amma can either tell the truth and tear apart her family or remain silent. She chooses to remain silent. She is still trying to protect her family, which means suppressing her own truth. The theme of “small choices” between two undesirable options continues to be prevalent in “Riot Journal.” Ultimately, it is not only the Sri Lankan government that tells lies, but also the members of Arjie’s family.
