The coming together of caste forces in Tamil Nadu looks dangerous, says bilingual Tamil writer Ambai (C.S. Lakshmi), who had written a long article upholding freedom of expression in the wake of caste Hindus silencing writer Perumal Murugan.
“They form their opinion before reading a book. The tendency to tell someone not to write is a real threat to society. There should be no censorship at all; if you stop someone from writing what he/she wants, what kind of discussion we can have?” she asked in a chat with The Hindu .
Ambai —who punctuates her stories with a tinge of humour, sarcasm, irony and mythology — was in Kerala for a literary meet at Chengannur.
Her brand of feminism doesn’t rest outside her own life.
“Feminism for me is about not degrading myself and not allowing myself to be degraded. And I wasn’t the first to do this.”
There were just about four stories on women in her second anthology of 13 stories but the book’s blurb said they were on women’s issues. “I took it up with the publisher who changed it in the second print,” she reasons her point.
Language, both verbal and non-verbal, to express one’s experiential life has always intrigued the writer, whose brush with narrative language began when she took Bharatanatyam lessons as a youngster.
But soon she found the angularities of Bharatanatyam dance restrictive and still prefers Odyssey over Bharatanatyam. An atheist, in view of the restrictions religion has imposed on people, Ambai takes exception to being called a bilingual writer. “While I can write non-fiction in English, I prefer Tamil for creative writing.”
And, she laces her works with dollops of humour to make life easy and endearing.
