Song of the Sun God by Shankari Chandran

I feel as a lawyer and a storyteller, and most importantly a Tamil person, it is part of my responsibility and duty to explore this - whilst bearing in mind the ethical framework around it. And when you speak to people outside the boundaries of Sri Lanka, so much information and disinformation exists.

When you speak to people from Sri Lanka, there is a fear of telling the Tamil story and experience, and exploring justice for Tamil people. One of the metaphors I use in some of my work is the idea of ‘hiding the truth with the bodies,’ burying it deep in the jungle. So much of the Tamil story has been silenced - our people have been marginalised and silenced in their own country: their narrative has been manipulated, controlled and, in many places, hidden. To retell these stories is incredibly courageous and requires resilience. What people have endured, suffered and survived - and still thrived through - is quite extraordinary. People are so generous and brave in their storytelling - they want to have their story told. One of the wonderful privileges of being a writer is that the universe brings people into your path. It is with this excitement that I approached the interview.Ī quote from your book is ‘History is like your shadow, it follows you everywhere.’ How important is it to ‘write what you know’? So when I read ‘Song of the Sun God’, where the character Nala watches the 1964 film ‘Karnan’ seven times in the cinema to vicariously alleviate her emotional pains, I felt exposed from such a specific level of representation I had not experienced in the English language before. In times of emotional distress and crisis, I often watch YouTube clips of the 1991 film ‘Thalapathi’, a film which is a modern retelling of one of my favourite character arcs in all of literature: Karnan from the Hindu epic, ‘The Mahabharatham.’ It has become a ritual to cathartically cleanse my tear ducts more often than I would like to admit. I will begin this piece with a confession.

Song of the Sun God by Shankari Chandran