Sumathi Sivamohan: Not ‘in a foreign tongue’
HER POETRY CONTAINS THE STORIES SHE IS DYING TO RELATE. MANY YEARS AFTER GETTING SWEPT AWAY BY THE TIDES OF INSPIRATION, SHE STILL BELIEVES IN THE MAGIC OF WORDS. DR. SUMATHY SIVAMOHAN REVEALS HER HEART TO HER READERS IN AN E-MAIL INTERVIEW WITH DAILY MIR
Q: Some of your poems are in the prescribed anthologies for those who study English at the university level. Are you satisfied with the degree of prominence given to Literature by the local education system?I think Jean Arasanayagam’s poetry has been taught widely, and I must say, however one sees her poetry, she was the ‘first’ within this generation to raise the ethnic conflict, war and identity as issues. Funny Boy compelled people to talk about and confront sexuality set within an interestingly decisive historical period. Jam Fruit Tree insisted on talking about the Burghers in their own right and without being apologetic. Whether these were able to dispel any of the stereotypes of the other is hard to say. I find very little about the Muslims in Sri Lankan literature except for Ameena Hussein there is not too much written from the inside about the Muslims. The best story in Zillich by Ameena is called the Muslim Girl (if I remember right). On the other hand, English literature in Sri Lanka has remained unabashedly and provincially classist. Shehan Karunatillaka’s Chinaman has received quite a lot of attention in the international arena. I think it is cleverly crafted novel and is quite engaging in sections. But it plays too much to an internet-globalist sensibility which belies its rather conservative moorings.q: Every writer has a set of conventions and principles that shape his/her writing. What moulds your poetry?
I think of myself as somebody writing across the boundaries; the boundaries of genre, the boundaries of community, the boundaries of language, the boundaries of the academe and the fascinating world outside it. It is the act of writing that is important, not the formation of the self as a poet, writer, dramatist. Language is everything. In poetry, the words, the formation, perform in an accentuated sense, in a dance of delight and sorrow; it resides in the epic. Though my poetry is not in any classical form, it is the spirit of the epic, where language becomes everything, is what fascinates me. When I was around 7, I read through Rajaji’s ‘Viyasar Virunthu,’ a simplified version of the Mahabharatha that retains its epic character; and what is so captivating about that epic is its complexity, its ambiguities about good and evil, about truth. The question of truth in Mahabharatha is so fraught. Unfortunately, colonial scholarship projected the Bhagavat Gita as the definitive text; but for me the central story of Pandavas and Kauravas and all the digressions, conjures up an exciting and yet violent world of bloodthirsty competition, gambling and womanizing princes, sexual violence and violation, sexual transgression and transvestite warriors, murder and mayhem. It is a world of physicality, quest, conquest, betrayal, loss and redemption. There is nothing very pious about the Mahabharatha I encountered in my childhood. In Ulysses, Joyce takes us through a tour of Dublin that is both magical and sordid at the same time. The act of translation brings on a kind of distancing, where language begins to perform on its own. Q: How far do the works of other writers influence your writing?
One August, everybody around me was dropping dead; they were being killed. And I felt overpowered, helpless. I wrote the ‘unfinished poem’ opening it with the line, ‘august is the cruelest month.’ And this is ironic. I had always held out against T. S. Eliot as an elitist poet. I did not consciously seek after that line of Eliot’s in the Wasteland, ‘April is the cruelest month,’ modified from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I like William Blake a lot; the visionary and the tonal in Blake merge to create futuristic images. The poem about the three wheeler driver in ‘like myth and mother’ draws upon Blake’s ‘London,’ and at the same time, turns the three wheeler driver into Krishna, the charioteer. I deliberately avoided annotating these overt references Q: What is the responsibility of a Sri Lankan writer in the post war era?
I would think one responsibility of the writer in the post war era is to look back at themselves as they were in the war era. What did they do as writers and as people during the last 20-30 years? And that is important. And this does not mean that they should have been writing about the war at all. Writers and others should first forget all about writing as a self-conscious exercise and figure out what they want to be as people. Q: Today, English literature seems to be dominated by the Colombo elite. If you take a reading session, an oration or even a book festival, the chances are very low for an ordinary person to walk in and enjoy. What should be done to take literature to other parts of the country?
There is literature in other parts of the country. It is important to have a dialogue. There are some institutional and individual efforts, but I am not sure that this happens in ways that shift the locus of operation from the centre to the periphery. Q: Finally, tell us about how you started writing, what inspires you, and what are your future plans?
I am first and foremost a person. I don’t consider myself a writer so much as a person. I will get back to the poem, ‘first lesson’. I started writing when I was struggling on the blackboard to get the twists and curves of the letter E in Tamil. The watershed in my life is as thus: I lived a life of total bewilderment and yearning: the letters in books, newspapers, bottles of jam, sign posts, wherever they appeared were a total enigma. Then one day I got up from bed, opened a book and could read everything. Isn’t that magical? I still have not lost that fascination for words, the script. It is still magical. I think that’s when I started writing. Apart from Here and Now, my first feature film, which I am really excited about, I have nothing very definite. I also want to produce my play, The Wicked Witch. And of course I do look forward to the residency in India. It would be invigorating.
I would think one responsibility of the writer in the post war era is to look back at themselves as they were in the war era. What did they do as writers and as people during the last 20-30 years? And that is important. And this does not mean that they should have been writing about the war at all. Writers and others should first forget all about writing as a self-conscious exercise and figure out what they want to be as people. Q: Today, English literature seems to be dominated by the Colombo elite. If you take a reading session, an oration or even a book festival, the chances are very low for an ordinary person to walk in and enjoy. What should be done to take literature to other parts of the country?
There is literature in other parts of the country. It is important to have a dialogue. There are some institutional and individual efforts, but I am not sure that this happens in ways that shift the locus of operation from the centre to the periphery. Q: Finally, tell us about how you started writing, what inspires you, and what are your future plans?
