[Nesacat]

Reef by Romesh Gunesekera

For me this book brought back a lot of memories. My grandparents came to Malaysia from Sri Lanka fleeing the troubles. They wanted more than anything to be able to go back there. I'd seen the country change and much that my family loved and treasured destroyed.

It was a painful journey when I went there with my parents in 2004. We were there when the tsunami struck the island. We'd gone to Jaffna and a part of me was glad that my grandparents had not lived to see what had happened.

It's a slim volume, less than 200 pages, written with such love and affection that it's almost poetry. It tells the story of a Sri Lankan servant Triton and his employer, Ranjan Salgado, a compassionate man obsessed by the destruction of coral reefs and with Nili, the woman he loves.

Only a youth when he enters Salgado's home, Triton acquires far more than cooking and cleaning skills. Over the course of many years together, Salgado and Triton witness the growing political turmoil and unrest of their island nation, and Triton observes, emulates, and finally parts company with the man who has nurtured his budding intellect and inherent potential.

Absolutely nothing happens in the book. Triton comes to the house and stays there, doing his work until one day they leave for England. Triton's life is simple. There is the house to look after, the cooking to be done and Salgado, an ordinary man, but what poetry there is in this world, this simple home with the shadow of dark times gathering in the lanes just outside and the shadows that each man casts in his soul. There are long passages devoted to cooking. There are haunting references to the impending bloodbath in Sri Lanka.

As Triton gets older and acquires more and more household responsibilities, Gunesekera reveals a character of unwavering conscientiousness whose personal devotion to Salgado, a marine geologist studying off-shore reefs, and admiration for Salgado's intellectual accomplishments are absolute. His pride in Salgado clearly reflects a degree of vicarious participation in Salgado's achievements, though he remains in his "place."

Reef is not just a story, it is a delicate allegory of the small changes which can bring cataclysmic results to a society, just as the coral reef which Salgado studies is "very delicate. It has survived aeons, but even a small change in the immediate environment...could kill it."

When Salgado falls madly in love with Nili and spends more and more time with her, I thought it was a relatively small change. But as he becomes noticeably more self-centered and less altruistic, I wondered whether the "whole thing will go" -whether the structured world as Triton knows it will collapse. In addition to the complications represented by Nili, political movements inspired by other countries rapidly become more aggressive in Sri Lanka, and other "small changes in the immediate environment" begin for Triton.

The prose shimmers with the light of the tropics and the scent of flowers and I was absorbed into the Sri Lankan jungle and sea, watching as the outside world propels along the small changes which may devour everything - the jungle, the sea, and the cultural fabric of which they have all been part for eons.

As I read the book I like Triton and Salgado, yearned for peace and hoped that the changes would not spell disaster. I hoped for the "twilight, when the forces of darkness and the forces of light are evenly matched and in balance and there is nothing to fear. No demons, no troubles, no carrion. An elephant swaying to a music of its own."

In the end, this book is all about the writing.

j.d, kettricken, karsa ... it's one of the most intriguing books. Draws you into this intricate maze and you never want to get out. I hope you like If On A Winter's Night A Traveller ... I must admit it was frustrating at parts but at the same time I really wanted to see where the tale would turn next.