An hour before the launch of his latest book, Samanth Subramanian sits down for an interview, but not before greeting a known face and exchanging pleasantries about the forthcoming Landmark Quiz of which he is more than just a known face.
Samanth’s second book This Divided Island (his debut was a travelogue titled Following Fish ) explores the grave issues of post-war Sri Lanka through a narrative history of the country’s residents, and those who left the country during the war.
Starting research in August 2010, Samanth visited Sri Lanka on a recce to discover the focus of his book. He then followed it up by reading about Sri Lanka. Finally, in 2011, he moved to Sri Lanka for 10 months to unearth stories that were buried, thanks to the war. “I took a leave of absence from work; in fact, I was prepared to quit if I hadn’t been sanctioned leave,” he laughs. Although he thought that research would be the hardest part of writing a book, Samanth says that he found the writing part to be more difficult as he “wanted to capture the texture of daily life in a war-ravaged country and at the same time get a literary character and include myself in the mix as well."
For Samanth, writing about post-war Sri Lanka seemed the most obvious thing to do. “If you grew up here (Madras), the Sri Lankan issue was always in the air. But more than that, it was a journalistic impulse,” he says, adding that he remembers thinking in 2009, when the war ended, that a wide range of areas and people to write about had been thrown open: “There were stories waiting to be told; it was the perfect time to go there.”
Having interviewed more than a 100 people out of which came several stories that were previously untold, getting the subjects to open up was quite tough, admits Samanth. “There were tons of people who didn’t want to talk about the war, so I would talk to them about other things under the sun,” he says. While Sri Lanka probably misses a uniting factor between the Tamils and the Sinhalese, the one thing they had in common was the reluctance to talk to a stranger. “They were equally withholding; but once I met them for a few times they’d start to think of me as a person and gradually open up," says Samanth.
The fact that he is a Tamil did help him talk to the Sri Lankan Tamils but the language spoken there, Samanth confesses, “is really classical Tamil. It took me some time to get used to it; their way of speaking is similar to Malayalam speakers. I would just squat there and wait.”
During the launch, in conversation with Dr. Navin Jayakumar, who is undoubtedly Chennai’s favourite quiz master, Samanth is at ease, reading passages from his book and patiently answering Navin’s questions. Samanth says that he assumed that there were clear divisions in Sri Lanka and until he actually went there, he says, he wasn’t aware of the presence of Tamil Muslims, a small and an overlooked community. “There were more divisions than I thought,” he says.
He then reads a passage from his book that details an incident that signalled the beginning of the crack between the Tigers and the Muslims: On August 3, 1990, four mosques in Batticaloa were surrounded and attacked by the Tigers, who were armed with automatic weapons and hand grenades.
While the sudden mistrust of the Muslims by the Tigers appeared mysterious, and although the war between the Tamils and the Sinhalese is pointless according to Navin, Samanth had an unusual approach to this topic. “Sri Lanka narrates its history from an epic that has been written and shaped by Buddhist clergy; it’s disturbing and strange, and frictions are evident since then,” he elaborates. Samanth goes on to narrate a story about King Dutugemunu in the Mahavamsa, a chronicle of Sri Lankan Buddhism, who slew the King Elara only because he is a Tamil King in Sri Lanka.
For a book that is mostly grim, Samanth’s addition of peculiar and quirky observations is refreshing. This includes spotting vintage cars, which he says are, “the most visual aspect of Jaffna,” and the story of a “displacement expert” who hides his cycle by coating it in grease and throwing it into a well so he can retrieve it when he comes back. The second story was narrated to Samanth by his late friend Sanjaya (to whom the book is dedicated) and it's to this that he attributes the thirst for more such stories.
As with all book launches, this one too had its share of eccentric questions from the audience. One gentleman’s doubt: “Can people who have moved to a new land claim that the place they live on is theirs simply because they have lived there for many years?” He insists that Samanth simply answers either yes or no. Samanth’s answer quite sums up not only the event but also his book quite aptly. “How long do you have to live in a place before you can call it a homeland?”
