“Dictators are pretty good for landscaping and gardens,” quipped Shehan Karunatilaka, winner of the 2022 Booker Prize for his novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, a satire set in 1990 in Sri Lanka during a Civil War that rocked the country and affected it for years. Karunatilaka was in conversation with Sharika Thiranagama, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University, at the South Asian Art and Literature Festival (SALA 2024) on September 29th. Unassuming and dryly humorous, Karunatilaka presented a low-key, self-deprecating demeanor, not unlike his book’s main character.
Shehan Karunatilaka in conversation with Sharika Thiranagama at SALA 2024. Photo courtesy: ArtForum SF
Characters inspired by real people
Thiranagama called Karunatilaka’s choice to use real people in his books very courageous. The moderator’s late mother was Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, an activist and human rights advocate who was assassinated in 1989 during Sri Lanka’s Civil War. The white-coated Dr. Ranee in Seven Moons is modeled after her; in an early appearance in the book, she admonishes Maali, “You think I wanted to die? My daughters were eight and ten when they shot me.” The weight and poignancy of this history was evident throughout the keynote session.
Thiranagama’s father’s friend Daya Pathirana is represented in the book as Sena Pathirana. The main character Maali Almeida is modeled on Richard de Zoysa, a journalist who was abducted and killed in 1990 by the Sri Lankan government in a Civil War that lasted several years.
Thiranagama pointed out that in Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, there’s a character Shehan Karunatilaka, who plays music, and asked if there was any character in Seven Moons fashioned after the author. Karunatilaka responded by saying that perhaps Maali Almeida is a fantasy version of himself: instead of playing in a band, he could have gone and taken photos; “Your mother had a lot more idealism,” he said ruefully.
Dictators and gardens
Observing that there is a lot of love for Colombo in Karunatilaka’s books, Thiranagama asked if the author saw Colombo as his literary city – with its urban fabric and very particular language. Karunatilaka responded that Sri Lanka is a beautiful country, and there is plenty of space for dystopian novelists.
Karunatilaka said Seven Moons depicted the seedy underbelly of Colombo; in the third edition of the book, they included maps of where the corpses were. Every ghost is based on an unsolved murder in 1989. Colombo today, however, is much nicer, he observed wryly – the places where bombs once went off are now gardens and parks; there are no physical memorials to July 1983. On the Hotel Leo, the location of several events in the book, and the 42nd floor of a building referred to in Seven Moons where people were tortured, he remarked, “If you know Colombo, you know where it is.”
Shehan Karunatilaka (Photo: Raji Pillai)
A Book of Mourning
Calling The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida a book of mourning, and a very tender loving book about how we treat our dead, Thiranagama said “We have all these ghosts,” she said, “we carry on.” She observed that Seven Moons addresses present-day conflicts, and how we approach all our ghosts; She referred to Gaza and Lebanon, where “all is lost because of the Israeli army.”
In Sri Lanka, there’s no Sherlock Holmes, no Hercule Poirot. There’s a cover-up. The journalists are the heroes. Thiranagama pointed out that Maali Almeida doesn’t know who killed him. In Sri Lanka, she said, you know, but can’t prove it.
Salman Rushdie & Carl Muller as influences
On his influences, Karunatilaka mentioned Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. (This writer has called Seven Moons “Midnight’s Grandchild” in a review here.) Rushdie sounds like a posh Englishman but Saleem Sinai and the other characters did not – Rushdie made it okay to use language that was a hybrid of English and South Asian languages. Carl Muller, writer of The Jam Fruit Tree, among other books, is less celebrated but also used “masala language.” Further, Karunatilaka named Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie.
Kuveni’s Curse & a Dead Leopard
The speakers discussed “Kuveni’s Curse,” the legend of a queen who ruled Sri Lanka until Prince Vijaya came from northern India, married her, took over her Kingdom, and then betrayed her. When asked how he dealt with such a contested ethno-nationalist identity, Karuntilaka responded that we have demonized Kuveni’s descendants, thought to be the aboriginal population of Sri Lanka. For example, King Ravana was Sri Lankan but in the Ramayana, is a Rakshasa, a demon.
The dead Leopard is the true hero of Seven Moons, Karunatilaka commented, referring to the philosophical leopard who wished to be human, who mouths compelling lines such as “Nothing is forgotten. We just don’t remember where we put it,” leading the narrator to observe “It is not often you are stumped by a feline. This jungle cat appears to have a larger soul than most of the former Homo sapiens who have darkened your counter.”
Audiobook Narration
Did he consider narrating his own book as an audiobook? “I thought I would read it for a second,” he responded and then decided to leave it to the professionals. A very talented actor read it — it had to be a Sri Lankan, otherwise the names would be mangled.
Michael Ondaatje & Arthur C. Clarke
When asked if Michael Ondaatje, winner of the 1992 Booker Prize for The English Patient, is considered Sri Lankan as he has lived in Canada for years, Karunatilaka called him “very much the godfather, the OG of Sri Lankan writing.” He wants to claim writer Arthur C. Clarke as Sri Lankan; Clarke came to Sri Lanka and never left. Stanley Kubrick who directed 2001: A Space Odyssey came to Sri Lanka, sat in a café and discussed it with Clarke.
On his writing craft, Karunatilaka responded by saying he sees himself as a gardener rather than an architect. “I live in the swamp. I see the frangipani flowers and the uncollected garbage.”
Thiranagama concluded the outstanding session on a poignant note: “You did a great job depicting my mother. I enjoyed the way you wrote about her.” The white-coated spirit Dr. Ranee might have smiled briefly before bustling off to organize lost spirits.
This article was published in India Currents on November 24, 2024.
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