On translation, discovering that the short story is his form of expression, becoming a part of whichever country he lives in, and his book, Where God Began, which is a deep dive into Sri Lankan Tamil refugee life and experience

Translated from the Tamil by Kavitha Muralidharan, the book is a deep dive into Sri Lankan Tamil refugee life and experience

Are you a Sri Lankan writer or is that a category you want to disassociate from?
In 1972, I received a job offer from a country in Africa I had never heard of and I left. Later, I worked for the World Bank and the United Nations that resulted in my travelling to countries like Sudan, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. I worked with different kinds of people belonging to different cultures and speaking different languages. I had only admiration for them and made use of the opportunities to understand their way of living. I never felt different or was judgemental and, in fact, learnt a lot from them. Wherever I lived I became a part of the country and its people. I have stopped calling myself a Sri Lankan. You can call me a world citizen, if you like. I am constantly reminded of the 2000-year-old Tamil Sangam poem which says, ‘All towns are one, and all people our kin.’

Where God Began is a story about refugees and the indomitable human spirit to survive. You are now a Canadian national but do you still feel like a migrant in some ways?
Only fleetingly. I talked to many refugees before starting work on this book. I met with a young person who was caught and sent back three times when he tried to emigrate using false passports. On the fourth attempt, he entered Canada. He told me what happened to him in one such attempt in Singapore. He was caught for overstaying there by nine days and was caned publicly nine times. He cried in pain and there was no one to care for him. Then, an old Chinese lady applied some medicine on his cuts. He later learned that the government paid the man who caned him and also the woman who applied the medicine. You rightly said “indomitable spirit of the refugees” and I couldn’t agree more. A refugee was asked in an interview what his talent was and he said he had a knack to survive in the hardest conditions.

I found the structure of the book intriguing. In fact, it could be read either as a novel or a book of connected short stories. Do these distinctions really matter to you?
Early in life, I discovered that the short story is my form of expression. Even my essays take the short story form. As such, I avoided attempting a novel for a long time. One of the earliest novels I read was Dubliners by James Joyce. I loved the way it was constructed. Each chapter was designed as a short story and when read as a whole it became a novel. I read it as a teenager and it left an indelible mark in my mind. Later, I found that other writers too have tried that type of construction. My favourite writer Alice Munro’s Dear Life has an abiding influence on me. Another famous writer Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge also fascinated me. Tamil writer, Ashokamitran too wrote the novel Ottran in this mode. The advantage is the reader can start reading it at any point. Each chapter stands on its own and like a jigsaw puzzle the chapters turn into a novel when put together. There is a thrill for the writer and even more for the reader.

The interconnected stories are told via the central character, Nishant. The refugee characters are far from unidimensional, which is often the case with such portrayals. How did you construct these narratives of refugee life and experience?
All my life, I have worked with refugees in several countries. When I moved to Canada, I realised Canada too was sheltering refugees from Sri Lanka in large numbers. It was a shock to me. Then, I found that some of the refugees had fled from my own village because of the atrocities committed by the army. It was at that time I decided to record some of their stories for posterity. It was a difficult task; yet, I continued to interview as many refugees as possible because each had a different story to tell. I interviewed people from all sections; Tamils, Sinhalese, freedom fighters and even one soldier from the Sinhalese army. Only then, did I decide to write their experiences as a novel with each chapter standing on its own. I had a wealth of stories and could not decide how to structure them. Many stories were the narrations of refugees about what happened in their villages and the destruction caused by the army. There were also stories about what happened after their arrival in Canada. What was missing was the journey of the refugees, the hardships they endured on their way and how some agents treated them like commodities, exploited and sold them at will. Nishant is the thread that holds all the gems together.

Please share your views on translation with us.
At the beginning, I must applaud Kavitha Muralidharan for an excellent translation of my work. Translators do long hours of painstaking work but they are rarely recognised. Great novels written by Russian writers such as Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and others would not have reached millions of people around the world if not for the dedicated work of Constance Garnett. She would sit in the garden and type nonstop and the typed sheets would swirl around her legs. During her lifetime, she translated 71 volumes of Russian literature expecting nothing in return.

The great Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare, who died recently, wrote in the Albanian language. He could not find anyone to translate his novel into English; so, he first got it translated into French and then into English. It won the Man Booker International Prize 2005 amounting to about US$ 80,000. Only after getting this award, did he get international attention.

Recently, I started translating English short stories into Tamil. A few days back, I paid a considerable amount to an English author and got the rights to translate one of her stories into Tamil. This particular English story is important because it reached 1.5 million people in two weeks. People say it is the first viral short story in the world. I was very keen to share this story with Tamil readers. Who in their right mind will pay money for the rights and spend 20 hours translating it? But I get immense pleasure in doing these things.

What is your assessment of Tamil writing and the situation of the Tamil minorities in present day Sri Lanka?
Tamil writing is flourishing in Sri Lanka. Many new writers have emerged and their stories are full of war memories. In Tamil, there was no war literature for a long time and the gap is now getting filled. Earlier, the war stories were written by people who escaped the war or who are well settled outside Sri Lanka and their writings were based on TV news. Now, the real stories are coming out from people who experienced the horrors of war and continue to live in Sri Lanka. The purpose for which the war was fought has never been realised. I am constantly thinking of my birth country. I believe there is hope for the Tamils in Sri Lanka too.

Do you ever want to return to Sri Lanka?
No. My wife has been there and other relations too have returned. I don’t want to see the destruction that has happened. Others have sent me photographs of the dilapidated house and surroundings where I played as a child. I want to remember my childhood as it was at that time. I do not want to visit Sri Lanka ever.

Author: Prof. Kunal Ray, Faculty of English Literature, FLAME University.