...and the Rain my Drink

...and the Rain my Drink is Han Suyin's 1956 novel set during the Malayan Emergency (i.e., the Malaysian fight for independence from British rule following the centuries of colonialism). The title derives from an old Chinese ballad that the fighters sang, "I will go to the forest for justice. The wind for my garment I wear. ... and the rain my drink."

I'll dispense with the negatives first: there are simply so many characters here, and many of them with two or more names, that I sometimes found it difficult to keep up with who was who (as well as various plot points involving different characters).

In the plus column, the book is beautifully written, and provides an excellent history and context for those who wish to know more of the this time and place. Reading through those lenses, rather than reading this as a typical novel, allowed me to appreciate it ... and the Rain my Drink even when I was a bit lost in the weeds of the story itself.

Suyin's sympathies clearly lie with the jungle fighters, and how could it be otherwise when "there was no door to the future for them, save through the green mouth of the jungle." (Much later in the book, the other side of the coin is articulated clear as day: " All over South East Asia there were white men pointing out, loud and long, how bad freedom was for anyone but themselves.") For that reason alone this is a great read for anyone who wants to understand more of Southeast Asia, particularly without the distortion of European perspective.

This particular book may be fiction, but the events that underpin each page are grounded in the very real history of Malaya. Anyone seeking to understand the tensions between Malays and Chinese within Malaysia (whom Suyin describes as wielding wealth, but not power, a description which is still apt in parts of the region), where even today each ethnicity's roles and functions in society are codified into law, would do well to read this book, which provides historic background with fictional drama. (Likewise, although it was published before Singapore and Malaysia had separated, the coming chasm is well foreshadowed.)

And yet, while Suyin sympathizes with the fighters, she also recognizes the hardships for the majority who were caught in the middle: "...endured, as so many things were endured in these days between two terrors, that of the Police, and that of the People Inside." Suyin doesn't only capture the tensions of the Emergency, of those between Malay and Chinese, or between those who would fight and those who prefer to exist quietly. She also captures Malaysia - and all of Southeast Asia - in the unrelenting heat and the frequently demoralizing rains. British officers are frequently described as having "whiteskin fury," which explodes most commonly in the heat of the day, not only in Malaya, but in all the places of the Empire where "January is as July will ever be." Hot. Wet. Hotter.  

Likewise, Suyin captures a key difference between Europe and Asia, one which holds as much today as it did 65 years ago when she first penned it, and that is the notional of Europe as "staid, stay-behind and unimaginative behind the surging exaltation of Asia." (That, right there, is why 100 times out of 100 I will bet on Asia over Europe, but I digress.)

There is also quiet wisdom between these pages, the idea, for example, that "there is knowledge that is not knowledge, not in words and yet inhabits the mind, informs it with facts and events." At the time Suyin wrote ...and the Rain my Drink, Malay's future was still very much in flux and Suyin is grappling not only with the British but with questions of the changing world more broadly. Through the voice of her characters, she questions the price extracted by "that other jungle, the ravenous, stupid, loud brash jungle of money-making" and how the price life in that jungle compares to the damage inflicted on the soul by life in the literal jungle. The answers are as elusive as the People Inside.

A last piece of advice: "Remember....there is no such thing as defeat. There is only change of tactics."