The Hindu (Thiruvananthapuram)
India has irrepressible main character energy, says Meena Kandasamy, explaining why she chose to frame her dissent poems as an independent section in her new collection
energy — I had to frame those poems as an independent section. Whether it is the widespread misogyny and rape culture, the clampdown on every remaining speck of the freedom of expression, the regimentation of personal choices or the repression unleashed on the marginalised — we are either victims or witnesses, often both.”
When asked if there is a particular point in her life when she decided to enter this intellectual and political minefield, Kandasamy says we cannot afford the luxury of decisionmaking any more. “We have been dragged into this not of our own volition, we have been dragged into it because of who we are, what beliefs we hold. To resist and to dissent then is an act of survival. Every poem is like this little trinket you can hold in the palm of your hand — this, these words, this course of history has found Sri
Lanka grappling with uprisings, civil wars, tsunamis, and now, an ongoing economic crisis. Literature, including poetry, plays witness to human history — adds to it, and finds ways to explain and understand it.
In this book, there are poems “long out of print” and poems that have been beloved for years, sharing space with new, unpublished voices; there are poems in English, and in translation from Sinhala and Tamil. The volume begins with a rich, detailed introduction to all three, offering short historical overviews
Out of Sri Lanka thought, this person — did not yield; they did not break; they could not be broken.” She adds that those who are consciously entering this intellectualpolitical battlefield are the apologists for the oppressive forces. “The Goebbelslike rightwing attempts to capture art, along with emphasising that in each language, its poets and poetry have played a unique role. “These poetries developed parallel to each other, their lines rarely touching — astonishing, in an island smaller in size than Scotland.”
A new way of life
And as each of these poetries grew independently, they shaping the identities of the people, and reflected their experiences. The act of containing within a single volume, then, all three, also becomes part of the modernday experience, where, as the introduction states, Sri Lankans today are searching for a way of life that transcends the lines drawn for them so long ago.
The poems tell a developing story of a nation that has seen so much violence and disruption — there are moments of horror, like in the second poem titled ‘Manamperi’ by Aazhiyaal, translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmström, which speaks of the “language of violence” and is literature, cinema is premeditated — these newly minted, fully sponsored footsoldiers will counter all resistance literature as antinational, unpatriotic, seditious.”
Room for hope
‘We are Not Citizens’ starts with a couplet from Tamil Bhakti poet Appar (Thirunavukkarasar), and Kandasamy says things have been in free fall for a while. “We are under the illusion that we have so much more social media and other communication channels — everything screams individual expression, a person is a brand, etc. — but opinions and news exist in silos and echochambers, and at the slightest sign of trouble, your account/ reach is restricted/ withheld. So you cannot say what you want to say because there is the threat of cases, arrests, clampdowns — or, you are screaming into the algorithmically stagemanaged void,” she says.
The anthology beautifully weaves the political with the personal and the two realms seem to work in perfect sync leaving some space for hope amidst all the unrest. Quiz her about the autobiographical nature of her works and the author says she’s decided to keep her poetry as real as possible after dabbling in fiction. “Everybody keeps reading the narrative voice as the poet’s own voice, the character as a standin for the author. I resisted a great deal, and then decided that I’ll own up to every version of me, including the imaginary ones,” she concludes. accompanied by a little note on the violent context it was borne out of — the rapes and murders of 22yearold Manamperi and 33yearold Koneswari.
And there are scenes captured in black and white — picture postcards from everyday lives, made up of words — like in Sundra Lawrences’s poem titled ‘Rassam’: We sit balancing broths on our laps, blow brown islands in each spoon. In some, lived history finds a voice, like in Eric Illayapparachchi’s ‘Against Colombo’, translated from Sinhalese by Gaya Nagahawatta: engaged in a hundred-year hunger strike/ at the base of the Olcott statue,/ labourers’ eyes register/ the fate of strike action gone wrong.
This is a rich, evocative collection — defiant and proud, with a confident voice that demands to be noticed, demands first our attention, and then awe. Hundreds of voices are raised within these pages, voices that are witness to life lived and lost, of joy, love and destruction.