Aparita

The Toronto Star,

Sri Lankan Tamil writing finds a young audience

Here, in the front courtyard
the jasmine is in full bloom.
Honey birds by day
and the scent-laden breeze by night
reach as far as our room.
All sorts of people whom I do not know
walk past our house, often.
Yet, till now, no one has come
to interrogate me.

- “Do You Understand What I Write?” by Oorvashi

When Matangi Thillai read and re-read these lines the first time, she connected with a country she barely knew. Thillai was 3 when she left Sri Lanka with her parents.

The 20-year-old business student didn’t know about the country once called Ceylon. Or about the wars fought more than 200 years ago by the Dutch and Portuguese over the cinnamon cultivated in Sri Lanka.

She did know of a more recent war - the ethnic strife that’s torn the country apart, the reason why she had to leave.

“Growing up in North America, you hear about war going on here, war going on there,” she says. “But you leave it at that.”

But recently she got a deeper glimpse of Sri Lanka.

Thillai was one of seven young people chosen to read selected works at the launch of Lutesong And Lament. The first major anthology of Sri Lankan Tamil writing translated into English and published in North America is available at Chapters, Indigo, Amazon.com and small bookstores.

Thillai didn’t know about the book much before the launch at the Scarborough Civic Centre. Neither did she know about the Tamil Literary Garden, the group behind its promotion.

Made up of six people, the two-year-old group’s aim is to promote Tamil literary activities in Toronto. One of its members, Chelva Kanaganayakam, an associate professor of English at the University of Toronto, edited the collection.

The book was to be called Lutesong because of the lyrical style that marks Sri Lankan writing, he says.

“But (author M.G.) Vassanji suggested it also has to be a ‘lament’ because the writing is laced with grief and has to do with conditions of exile, the anguish of transplantation.”

It took two years to put together Lutesong And Lament, which was published by Vassanji and his wife Nurjehan Aziz’s TSAR Publications.

“Sri Lankan writing has always been defined by the local - Sri Lanka,” says Kanaganayakam. “We needed to evaluate Sri Lankan Tamil writing on an international level, against world standards.”

The richness and vibrancy of contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil writing became the focus of Lutesong And Lament. Tamil writers and poets from northern, eastern and the “hill country” of Sri Lanka as well as from Britain, Norway and Canada are included.

Despite its modernism, the pieces in the book are unfamiliar to many readers such as Thillai because of the strong language barrier. Most Sri Lankan writing is in the vernacular, with the exceptions of writers such as Shyam Selvadurai and Michael Ondaatje.

Lutesong And Lament, then, became an important first step for many such as Kanaganayakam. He speaks of the need to demonstrate the different phases of Sri Lankan Tamil writing.

“Until the ’70s, the emphasis (of the writing) is on the cultural - themes like caste, class, region dominated,” he says.

“After the ’70s, there was a rise of a political slant that gathered momentum after the ’80s, when ethnicity became a part of Sri Lankan consciousness - effects of political upheavals in terms of social displacement, stress on nuclear families, mass migration or identity politics.”

As for the matter of translation, Kanaganayakam sees it as an attempt to reach a wider readership.

The presence of a large group of Tamils around the globe who can’t read Tamil with fluency and have no access to the culture through language was another important factor.

“We thought it would prove to be that conduit,” says Kanaganayakam. “We’re going with the assumption that translation is not a substitute, but a transformation.”

Besides the attempt to educate young Sri Lankan Tamils about a country and a culture that’s inaccessible to them, he hopes the book will allow them a sense of pride.

“It’s easy to be dismissive of everything that belongs to home,” he says. “Especially in a technological country where premium is on reason or rationale.”

Dimitri Edirmanasinghe, 18, appreciates the opportunity he got to explore the richness of Sri Lankan Tamil writing.

“You don’t get to read these things in school over here,” he says. “It gave me a greater sense of who I am.”

Thillai, too, was moved by the emotive writings. She especially likes the poem she was asked to read at the launch, “Do You Understand What I Write?” by Oorvashi.

“I rehearsed the poem over and over again, more to get the feeling,” says Thillai in her lilting voice. “I understood every word, what it would be like if I were in that position.”

Inspired by the book, Thillai says she wants to learn Tamil and gain a more in-depth knowledge of Sri Lanka. Already versed in Tamil, Edirmanasinghe hopes to keep in touch with further literary endeavours in Sri Lankan Tamil writing.

“There’s great beauty in the writing,” he says. “Even if something is lost in translation, the emotions come through. And the words will last forever.”

Mandy Moore’s not just your singing, acting girl next door

Wanna see a Popstar? Forget the TV show - the real deal’s here.

Mandy Moore was in town yesterday to promote her latest single, “Cry.” She’s a month shy of turning 18 and she’s already working on her fourth album. She’s had a show on MTV and is a spokesperson for Neutrogena.

Want Moore?

She starred in A Walk to Remember - a small but surprising box-office hit that was released late January and raked in $30 million (U.S.) in its first month.

In the love story like Love Story, Moore played Jamie Sullivan, a plain-Jane preacher’s daughter who is ostracized by the cool crowd. The Bible-carrying Sullivan reforms the local Lothario, Landon Carter, marries him and dies.

And that’s after she debuted in The Princess Diaries last year, in which Moore played the rude, popular arch-nemesis of the lead.

Sitting comfortably in a conference room at Sony Music Canada and munching on Jelly Spellies “for a sugar kick,” Moore looks more like the squeaky clean Jamie Sullivan.

“Want one?” she asks. A small cross dangles from her neck.

Much like her character, Moore is a “pretty spiritual person.” She was raised a Catholic and has a strong relationship with God, she says. So, yes, she could relate in many ways to the character she plays in the movie. Of course, an outfit more worthy of a teen idol - a low-cut aquamarine top and jeans - has replaced the dowdy duds of Jamie Sullivan.

But don’t compare Moore to the other singing, acting starlet, Britney Spears.

“Well, I am a brunette now. So that’s different, right?” Moore flashes a beatific smile.

“If you have blonde hair, you’re a woman and you sing pop music, for some people that means you have to be like the person before you. But I am a different person.”

She’s been called the anti-Britney, but Moore says she’s never been anti-anything.

“It’s not to say that I am better. No offence to Britney, but I am not her.”

The brunette look was a proviso for playing Jamie Sullivan, but Moore has retained it, even sporting it in the video for “Cry.”

“(’Cry’) represents me and my music and the direction that I want to go into,” she says.

Moore says she wants to move away from the synthesized sound and choreographed moves that have come to represent modern-day pop, instead preferring the more organic element of live guitar, bass and drums.

But eventually she wants to get into Broadway.

“Broadway is my main goal,” Moore gushes. “One summer I will just take off and do a show.”

After all, she’s wanted to be a performer since she was six years old. She was all of 15 when her debut album So Real, which included the hit single “Candy,” went platinum three months after release.
Fame has its price.

There are “no football games, or sleepovers, or shopping in malls with friends.”

But, “at the risk of sounding cheesy,” Moore says she feels lucky to have had the opportunity to roam the world and learn life first-hand, not through textbooks.

Moore credits her parents and friends with helping her survive the highs and lows of the industry.
“At the end of a bad day, you can go back to them and it’ll be okay. There will still be tomorrow.”

Toronto Star

Director Mira Nair’s new movie takes a light hearted look at her homeland

Filmmaker Mira Nair calls her latest movie a love song to her hometown of Delhi.

But it’s a very contemporary Delhi, and by extension, India, she’s talking about - where the “Guccis and the Pradas meet the power (outages) and traffic jams, and everyone has a cell phone.”

For Nair, capturing the multiplicities of a globalized India was the impetus behind Monsoon Wedding, which opened in Toronto yesterday.

The film, about a wedding in a Punjabi family, is replete with the tradition, fun, ribaldry and chaos that accompany the event.

“It’s a masti movie,” says Nair during a recent interview in New York before launching on a whirlwind tour of the Sundance and Berlin festivals. “It shows the incredible zest for life that Punjabis have. We have.”

Despite the funky South Indian spelling of her name, Nair says she’s proud of her Punjabi ancestry.

“This is my family,” says the 44-year-old director, resplendent in a coffee-colour raw silk churidaar kurta (an Indian outfit). “It’s totally close to home.”

The paintings, the furniture in the house, the saris, even the jewellery worn in the film were borrowed from friends and family. The food was catered from the family kitchen.

Nair, the daughter of an administrative service officer, grew up in the Indian state of Orissa. She studied at Delhi University’s Miranda College, and worked as an actress with a Delhi-based street theatre group. In 1976, she won a scholarship to study at Harvard, where she “stumbled upon” documentary filmmaking. Now Nair divides her time between New York City, New Delhi and Kampala, Uganda, the home of her husband Mahmood Mamdani.

When asked why she chose a lighthearted take on modern India, Nair retorts she’s always had fun with her movies.

“I think Salaam Bombay was damn funny,” says Nair. “Mississippi Masala was also funny in parts. And I wanted to make a movie about contemporary India. I mean, why not? I haven’t seen it (in films), and I live in it.”

Nair’s 1988 feature Salaam Bombay dealt with the street children of the city (now known as Mumbai). It was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign-language film and won the Camera d’Or for best first feature at the Cannes film festival.

Mississippi Masala, which came out in 1991, was about an interracial romance between an African-American man (Denzel Washington) and a South-Asian woman (Sarita Choudhury).
Nair also directed The Perez Family (1995) and Kama Sutra: A Tale Of Love (1996).

Monsoon Wedding, which was showcased at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, also won the Golden Lion award - the top prize - at the Venice Film Festival in September.
And last weekend, it premiered exclusively at two New York City theatres and grossed an impressive $68,546 (all figures in U.S.).

Before this Monsoon mania hit the city, Nair sipped a cup of tea inside the Essex House Hotel as New Yorkers enjoyed mild temperatures in nearby Central Park.

“If there is one country that can stand up to American cultural imperialism, it is India,” says Nair.

“Because time and again, we’ve taken, borrowed, stolen, assimilated, plagiarized and just squeezed the hell out of any society that has come into (India). But we make something out of it that is inimitably Indian.”

She calls it the miniskirt by day and sari by night phenomenon.

“It’s so much more different than my time, when things were still phoren (foreign) and desi (Indian),” says Nair. “But now it’s one big interesting navigation of criss-crossing languages, music - that kind of thing.”

Bollywood, India’s moviemaking industry, and the way it has pervaded all manner of life in India also fascinates Nair.

“Even one’s own wedding is slightly Bollywood-ized,” she marvels. “People who have money hire production designers from Bollywood movies to design their weddings.”

Monsoon Wedding indulges in the sensuous monsoon season - from mid-July to September - that’s often invoked in Indian literature and arts. But the decision to film the movie during this time, which coincided with her son’s summer vacation, was also a practical one.

“I love the monsoons - the sense of liberation you wait for after a crippling heat wave,” says Nair. “And I wanted to have my son with me when I work.”

The idea was to go back to something beautiful but basic, on a miniscule budget of $1.5 million.

“It was a small movie,” says Nair. “But then you’re working with 68 actors, and many stories, and 30 days in the heat and the rain, and it feels big.”

A handheld camera added to the naturalness and captured a feeling of immediacy. “The idea was to draw you into the wedding, into the choreographed madness,” she says.

“You had to become a part of them because when you go to an Indian wedding, you can’t remain an outsider,” says Nair as her throaty laugh reverberates in the room. “Inevitably you will be roped in to do something or the other.”

Monsoon Wedding centres around the nuptials of Aditi Verma (Vasundhara Das) and Hemant Rai (Parvin Dabas). Aditi’s father Lalit (Naseeruddin Shah) and mother Pimmi (Lilette Dubey) want to have a grand wedding for their only daughter.

Relatives from Dubai, Australia and the United States fly into Delhi. Bollywood music interweaves the traditional engagement and mehndi (henna) ceremonies. Scotch and gin-and-tonic flow as freely as orange juice.

Hemant is a recent IIT (the Indian equivalent of MIT) graduate and lives in Houston, Tex. Aditi is a Cosmo queen who figures her semi-arranged marriage will give her some stability in life that her married ex-lover can’t.

She could refuse to marry Hemant, but Aditi is looking for an escape from the heat and the inanities of Delhi. Yet she can’t seem to let go of her ex-lover until a midnight tryst in the back of his SUV goes wrong - they’re caught by two policemen.

“Oh, God. Almost everyone who lives in Delhi has a policeman story,” Nair shudders, referring to the police harassment faced by couples - a common affair in a prudish Indian society that frowns upon public intimate gestures.

“Sometimes (the police) are after a cheap thrill,” she says. “And it’s just so twisted - they make you feel like s—. These people (in the film) were getting off on it by abusing their power.”
In addition to Aditi and Hemant’s story, there are four other narratives going on in the movie, including one about incest and child abuse.

“These things happen,” says Nair. “Not just in Indian families. But we don’t have that Oprah-style culture that allows us a forum to talk about it.”