I reveal myself in all my writing

The Chennai-based author has also illustrated her children’s book steeped in folklore and the civil war in Sri Lanka

1 Let’s talk about the mermaid as a creature and a metaphor. While reading the book, I thought of how affirming it would be for queer and trans readers, and for people with disabilities, whose bodies are either erased or made hyper visible for being non-normative. What mix of intention and serendipity made this possible?

It was intentional. As this is a visual book, I had exciting new ways to bring these affirmations in. For instance: the person in the wheelchair was an image that came to me quite early on and that I really believed in. There are a couple of tritonbodied characters who are just there without a fuss over what to call them, and then there’s the queer love implied on the page where a South American mermaid uses a charango to serenade one from Kumari Kandam. Moonlight’s mermaids come in different colours and shapes as well. For example, the fact that European sailors who saw manatees on their expeditions and thought them to be mermaids were obviously fantasising about bodies that are nothing like the Disney-barbie standard is made clear. The stories also challenge the assumed Eurocentricity of the mermaid figure. Mermaid stories have always existed across human cultures.

2 When your work is called ‘feminist’, does it set up expectations?

Mermaids In The Moonlight is intended to be a feminist picture book. It’s a story about a single mother who adopts a daughter, a story about the erstwhile matrilineal and matrilocal culture that even my recent ancestors practised, and many stories about mermaids who long for or love their freedom. I was careful to weave in the 1983-2009 civil war and the 2004 tsunami, both of which had (and still have) a tremendous impact on the region and its people. So the expectations – I set them up myself. I have tried my best to fulfil them.

3

What would you say to people who read Ila, the mermaid of Mattakalappu, as your alter ego? Is it exhausting to find readers scavenging for pieces of your autobiography?

I understood eventually that, as in dream theory, I am both the protagonists in Moonlight. I am Nilavoli, the beloved child whose mother gives her the world in lieu of all other inheritances she cannot have, and I am the mother too. So perhaps I am Ila too. I reveal myself in all my writing, a way of being that comes with its wonders and its snares. There will always be judgmental people, but equally disturbing are those who do not realise their relationship is only with the work, not with me as a person. I bare my heart, but I maintain this boundary.