The South Asian Art and Literature Festival (SALA 2024) hosted three award-winning writers of Sri Lankan descent on September 28th at Stanford University. The panel included Shyam Selvadurai a pioneer of Sri Lankan writing in English and author of Mansions of the Moon; VV Ganeshananthan, author of the award-winning novel Brotherless Night; and Shehan Karunatilaka, the Booker Prize-winning author of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Moderating the conversation was Nayomi Munaweera, Bay Area-based author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors, who steered the session with warmth and wit.
Ink from the Island panel (Photo: Raji Pillai)
Shyam Selvadurai and Yasodhara's lament
Shyam Selvadurai’s book Mansions of the Moon is a reimagining of the life of Yashodhara, the wife of Gautama Siddhartha who became the Buddha. He spoke about the different ways women were seen in Buddha’s time. Over millennia, the position of women got worse, but there was another way in which women existed before. Selvadurai read a passage in which Yasodhara goes for a traditional visit to see a courtesan, Vimala, in the second week of marriage, to discuss any problems in the marriage bed.
Shyam Selvadurai in conversation at the panel Ink from the Island at SALA 2024. Photo courtesy: Art Forum SF.
Selvadurai, well-known for writing on gay themes (such as Funny Boy, his first book,) recounted how he came to write a novel about Yashodhara. Psychology interests him, and while he was writing his previous book about immigration and trauma, he came across a poem, called Yasodhara’s Lament. He was stunned by the poem. While he couldn’t write about Siddhartha’s journey, he could contemplate Yashodhara looking at Siddhartha. A door opened for him, he was in that world, and it was joyful. It was nice to not be in a world of trauma, he said, and it took him 10 years to write the book. He made an amusing observation that there are plenty of stories of men leaving their wives for other women, but there’s no story about a man leaving his wife for a philosophy!
Selvadurai described “a profound and beautiful moment” while writing the book. He completed his research for the book and went to Nepal. He saw a mother and son walking in the rain, and she was covering him. Calling it a mystical moment, he said he watched them for a while, and in those moments, he got the story. He started in 2014, and it was published in 2022.
V V Ganeshanathan and Brotherless Night
VV Ganeshanathan read the prologue from her book Brotherless Night. In it, a middle-aged Tamil woman in New York in 2009 remembers her childhood in Jaffna and reflects on the words terrorist, civilian, and home. The struggles with all of those are at the heart of the novel about a family in Jaffna in the mid-1980s torn apart by Sri Lanka’s Civil War.
V V Ganeshanathan at the panel Ink From The Island at SALA 2024. Photo courtesy: Art Forum/ SALA 2024.
In talking about the relationship between history and fiction in her book, Ganeshananthan said stories in the US about the Sri Lankan Civil War hewed to a party line, yet she had heard other versions of the stories in Sri Lanka. She was interested in finding a version to reconcile the different stories and wanted to see women in the center. She began the book in 2004 and finished it in 2022. On reading one iteration, a friend asked her “Have you considered writing your book in order?” When she rewrote it chronologically, the book fell into place.
Shehan Karunatilaka and the Drunkle narrator
Shehan Karunatilaka read out the first conversation in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida between Maali and Dr. Ranee Sridharan. The latter is modeled after Dr. Rajani Thiranagama who was murdered by Tamil extremists for being a Tamil moderate.
While Sri Lanka-born Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje won the Booker Prize in 1992, for The English Patient, Shehan Karunatilaka is the first Sri Lankan to win the prestigious prize. He spoke of the evolution that Seven Moons went through over the years. Starting in 2012, he completed the book in 2020 as Chats with the Dead, and spoke a memorable and delightful line that sounded like it was straight out of Maali Almeida: “It takes just as long to write a crap book as it does to write a good one.” For Karunatilaka, a defining moment in the book was when he realized that the narrator would be a “drunk Uncle, or Drunkle” – a particular voice that many of us have encountered in real life.
On the research they do for their books and what they recommend, each author had a different take. “Do as much as you need to enter the world credibly”, said Selvadurai, and “Read three books on anything”, was Karunatilaka’s take. Ganeshananthan didn’t just read three—she commented that the research becomes really interesting where the stories stop.
On who each author is in conversation with as a writer, Ganeshananthan, Karunatilaka, and Munaweera resoundingly agreed on how influential Selvadurai’s work has been to each of them, how foundational it was. Ganeshananthan spoke of his tenderness toward so many people — Sri Lanka is described as contentious, and Selvadurai showed another aspect. Karunatilaka also acknowledged “Uncle Kurt” (Vonnegut) and Uncle Carl (Muller, Sri Lankan writer) as influences, presumably in the “Drunkle” category.
On characters that are difficult to write or are historical characters, Selvadurai offered an interesting perspective: “Give him/her a part of yourself.” He gave Yasodhara privacy.
A pivotal moment for Sri Lankan writers
Noting that Sri Lankan writers are “having a moment” as the world becomes more familiar with writings from the island, Karunatilaka spoke of myriad voices, humorous and serious, mentioning writers such as Shankari Chandran. After the session, the authors continued to engage with attendees in the long book signing line.
This article was published in India Currents on November 8, 2024.
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