In V V Ganeshananthan’s thought-provoking and moving first novel Love Marriage, Kumaran, a dying former Tamil Tiger, triggers a series of reactions in his last days that provoke some people close to him to examine their political and family heritage.
Yalini, the daughter of Sri Lanka [Images]n immigrants who left their war-torn country and married in America, is caught between the history of her ancestors and her own little world. As she looks after Kumaran in Toronto, she begins to see that the violence that has been consuming Sri Lanka for over two decades is very much a part of her present. Slowly, she traces her family’s roots and the conflicts facing them through a series of marriages. Adding tension to her investigation is the impending politically motivated wedding in the family.
As the British newspaper The Independent pointed our recently, Michael Ondaatje visited Sri Lankan brutality in Anil’s Ghost, a story about a forensic pathologist returning home to investigate abuses. Romesh Gunesekera dealt with its pain obliquely in Reef and The Sandglass. And Ganeshananthan focuses on the journey of one family, in the process painting a broader truth.
A 2002 graduate of Harvard College, Ganeshananthan, who was born and raised in America, received a Master of Fine Arts in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2007, she graduated from the new master’s programme at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She has written and reported for The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She is the vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association.
She spoke to rediff India Abroad Managing Editor (Features) Arthur J Pais.
What are some of the things that the world does not understand about the war in Sri Lanka?
I don’t know if people understand how hard it is to have a conversation about Sri Lanka, which has a complicated population and history. If you don’t acknowledge those nuances, the conversation isn’t inclusive and can’t move forward.
What are some of the most important things you are conveying through this novel?
I intended to write about the love of families, morality, and how war affects civil life. We reduce things: Arranged marriage versus love marriage, good versus evil. Very little actually works that way.
What kind of stories about the Sri Lankan civil war did you grow up listening to?
It’s hard to remember. The war technically started after my parents were in the United States, so I suspect that a lot of what I originally heard was from the news. It wasn’t something relatives would have offered to me directly — I was young. Of course, I heard people’s various stories of immigration after 1983, and eventually I was able to put those into context.
You wrote the novel over a period of several years. How did it change from the first draft to the last?
The version I turned in as my Harvard thesis was missing a character, Kumaran. He showed up the year after I graduated. The book became more political as the world did.
To what extent did your perspective change following the research?
I became more aware of the complexity of Sri Lanka’s population, history and politics. The standard line about Sri Lanka says simply that the Tamil Tigers are fighting the Sinhalese-dominated government. But that leaves out the histories of both groups — not to mention the other people who are involved, including civilians. In recent years, I have read a lot about Tamil civilians, journalists and aid workers disappearing. Investigations of these disappearances are never concluded. The people who are left live with a high degree of uncertainty. What could happen to them? Who would be responsible? How is this happening in areas under government control? The Tigers and the Sri Lankan government have both been criticised for human rights violations.
I also began to learn how the war had affected other minority populations. For example, in 1990, the Tigers expelled some Muslims in the northern areas from their homes. That displaced group has suffered tremendously. And I started to understand more about upcountry Tamils, whom the British brought from India to work on tea plantations. This population’s history is different from that of the Tamils who were there before them. I also learned more about how caste functions in Sri Lanka. It’s different than it is in India. I’m still studying all these things now. Not all of them ended up in the book, but it’s important for me to know.
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