Writing about places you have never visited might pose a difficulty and also another challenge is how do you write about violence in a way that feels imaginative but not exploitive.
by Windya Gamlath and Akil Kumarasamy
(November 6, 2018, New Delhi – Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) “The government has backpedaled from those commitments and now Rajapaksa has been named Prime Minister, which means there will be a harsher crackdown on dissent and Tamils in the north-east are in real danger, Akil Kumarasamy the author of just-released book, Half Gods, published by HarperCollins India said in an interview with Windya Gamlath of Sri Lanka Guardian.
A startlingly beautiful debut, Half Gods brings together the exiled, the disappeared, the seekers. Following the fractured origins and destines of two brothers named after demigods from the ancient epic the Mahabharata, we meet a family struggling with the reverberations of the past in their lives. These ten interlinked stories redraw the map of our world in surprising ways: following an act of violence, a baby girl is renamed after a Hindu goddess but raised as a Muslim; a lonely butcher from Angola finds solace in a family of refugees in New Jersey; a gentle entomologist, in Sri Lanka, discovers unexpected reserves of courage while searching for his missing son.
By turns heartbreaking and fiercely inventive, Half Gods reveals with sharp clarity the ways that parents, children, and friends act as unknowing mirrors to each other, revealing in their all-too human weaknesses, hopes, and sorrows a connection to the divine.
Excerpts of the interview;
Question (Q): The New Yorker said that the book tells about war that has happened in Sri Lanka more than 30 years, and it’s like a history lesson for readers unfamiliar with the Sri Lanka war. How did you bring this history to your book?Answer ( A): I let the history emerge with the lives of the characters, who have been shaped by the war. I cannot capture everything, but at the same time I can be expansive of history. I can mention the 1937 massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic in the same line as the 1983 massacre of Tamils in Sri Lanka. By having a story set on the eve of independence, I can speak of the colonial construct of nationhood. I didn’t intend for this book to be a history lesson but the political is intertwined with the personal for these characters. I never tried to be explanatory and just shared what seemed natural to the narrative.
Q: Once you have said ‘Half Gods’ is a struggle regarding ‘identity’; we are living in a Global Village. How ‘the identity’ is important in this context?
A: Identity is the story we tell about ourselves but it is also positioned in larger narratives that are out of our hands. I wanted to explore the messiness of it. Like what does it mean to be Sri Lankan? It is such a loaded term because of the ethnic conflict and the violence that continues to this day. If you are killed by state forces for being Tamil, do you call yourself Sri Lankan, a Sinhala name for the island or do you say Eelam, the Tamil name? What happens to Tamil consciousness when the Jaffna library, one of the largest libraries in Asia is burned down? What happens when tens of thousands of Tamil civilians are killed by government forces and there is no accountability? When you are not given the rights of a citizen, how do you then identify yourself and what kinds of narrative are projected onto you?
Q: Did you read much about Sri Lankan war and do research kind of thing ? have you ever met Sri Lankan refugees in USA ?
A: My own sense of Tamilness is because of the war. I think the burning of the Jaffna library has lingered in my memory, even though it happened before my birth along with stories from refugee families escaping the violence of 1983. News about the north east was circulated through alternative platforms. Can you rely on state media when violence is being perpetrated by the state? Growing up in a mixed Indian Tamil and Sri Lankan Tamil community, I was well aware of how the different platforms and groups reported on the war or the lack of coverage and knowledge in certain circles. I am particularly interested in power structures embedded in language. For example, saying “Sri Lankan refugee” hides the fact that most of these refugees are Tamils.
In terms of research, one of the stories is set in a tea plantation on the eve of independence, and though my grandfather was a laborer in a rubber plantation in Malaysia, I needed to find specific details about tea cultivation.
Q: What kind of challenges that you have to faced when you write about Sri Lanka specially when you were writing regarding wartorn Sri Lankan village, university and an environment like tea especially
A: Writing about places you have never visited might pose a difficulty and also another challenge is how do you write about violence in a way that feels imaginative but not exploitive. The Iraqi writer, Hassan Blasim, was definitely helpful in showing what is imaginatively possible in writing about war. There’s always a question if your vision resonates for the reader.
Q: Have you ever experienced it by yourself? (did you ever visit Sri Lanka)
A: I have never visited Sri Lanka, but the struggle has been in my consciousness since childhood.
Q: Now we are in 2018 and still trying to reconcile the society (specially we have special reconciliation projects under Yahapalana government like Office for Missing Persons, Office for National Unity and Reconciliation, Office for Reparation). When I read several reviews about your book I got to know that you have criticized some of those efforts saying those are only shows that implement to get media attraction. As a writer how did you get guts to criticize those?
A: How many people have the Office of Missing Person “returned”? Has anyone in the government been prosecuted for war crimes? With the election of Sirisena, there were pledges towards reconciliation and accountability. The government has backpedaled from those commitments and now Rajapaksa has been named Prime Minister, which means there will be a harsher crackdown on dissent and Tamils in the north-east are in real danger. It doesn’t take much guts for me to criticize the government from afar when there are journalists and activists risking their lives in the north-east to report on what is happening. Mothers have been protesting for over a year now to find answers about their disappeared loved ones, and still they are waiting. The situation has been dangerous for Tamils in the militarized north-east since the Rajapaksa-led genocidal offensive in 2009 and it looks like it is going to become worse.
Q: What is your ultimate goal as a writer?
A: With writing I’m trying to process the world, but I don’t necessarily go into a book with a set of expectations. I want the work to feel truthful to the human experience in imaginative ways. How readers respond to a work I cannot really control. I hope they find it moving and it makes them see the world in a different light.
Q: Do you have a special message for Sri Lankan readers?
A: Since the publication is only published in Sinhala and English, I would ask readers to think about what does inclusiveness look like? What does it mean if a Tamil readership is not given access? Why is it controversial to call what is happening to Tamils as a genocide even though Tamils have been calling it that for decades? With continued militarization of the north-east and Tamil mothers protesting on the roadside for their disappeared loved ones, I wonder how there can be a path to reconciliation if there is no acknowledgement of past crimes or of the violence that continues to be committed in the north-east of the island.
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