Writers on Reading. Part Sixteen, Sharanya Manivannan.

Collage by Harshita Borah

Sharanya Manivannan is a poet and dreamer  whose poetry informs her prose and dreams guide her ideas (her debut novel was born when the titular Andal/Kodhai asked Manivannan to write her story, in a dream). Manivannan calls her life chaotic and whimsical, and true to her nature, she has set a firm foot in the many forms that a pen yields : short story collections (The High Priestess Never Marries), poetry (The Altar of the Only World, Witchcraft), children’s books (Ammuchi Puchi) and a novel (The Queen of Jasmine Country). Her pandemic routine involves three works-in-progress : Mermaids in the Moonlight — a picture book about a mother telling mermaid stories, Incantations over Water — a graphic novel about a mermaid’s soliloquy, both to be released in 2021, and Constellation of Scars — a book she has been working on for fifteen years. In this slightly edited email exchange, we talk about myths, women—both with large wingspans and small— and about her towering reading piles.

In the poem Circle from The Altar of the Only World, you write

“So much came to pass in a single trespass.

I stepped across the line.

That’s how I made it mine”

 As a writer and poet, do you often cross lines?

I think of myself, for the moment, as someone who lives within boxes, a feeling that has set in because my thirties have been quite desolate and I no longer seem to have the joie de vivre and other resources I had when I was younger to surmount this. The writing I’ve been doing in recent years reflects this: in The Queen of Jasmine Country, notably, there is Kodhai’s sense of being weighed down by her passions in the way that a peacock is weighed by its plumage. She knows that she feels the constraints of her life because of who she is, not because of what they are. She seeks to transcend them, but that transcendence is only possible through honesty.

 Always, despite the cloudiness of my mirror (or indeed the reflections I’m drawn to), the truth of my nature remains. My writing reflects the same.

You’ve been fascinated with mermaids this year. Tell us more about these mermaids and your feelings for the sea.

I’ve been fascinated with mermaids for a long time, and in this strange year I’ve been bringing them into my work through a linked picture book (Mermaids In The Moonlight) and graphic novel (Incantations Over Water). I am both writing and illustrating them, which is exciting and daunting.

My mother’s side of the family is from Batticaloa/Mattakalappu in Sri Lanka/Ilankai, a beautiful region that carries a palimpsest of pain. The geography is part land and part lagoon that opens onto the sea, on the east coast of the island. There is a phenomenon in this place, particularly in the area called Kallady: on full moon nights, if you enter the lagoon in a boat and place a wooden oar into the water and hold the other end to your ear, you will hear mysterious sounds from under the water. Scientists say that certain species of singing fish, or perhaps certain shells, make these sounds, but no one really knows. I’ve heard them: they sound a little like croaks, a little like pulsar songs, and different parts of the lagoon have different ones.

When I was little, I’d been told there was a mermaid in my mother’s hometown, and when I finally went there for the first time at age 27, I was surprised by how prominently the mermaid iconography is a part of Batticaloa’s public aesthetic. But there was no mermaid-folklore, which I found very unusual. I wrote about this experience in the short story “Conchology” in The High Priestess Never Marries, but that wasn’t enough. The question of how a mythical figure existed without lore continued to compel me.

Being a part of a traumatised diaspora is a very complex thing, and my draw to the mermaid mystery became a way for me to return to where my roots are, and water them.

In Mermaids In The Moonlight, a diasporic Ilankai Tamil mother takes her daughter to the lagoon, and as they listen to the sounds from underwater, the mother tells mermaid stories from around the world. They also imagine a mermaid just for the lagoon, whose name is Ila, half the word for the island. In Incantations Over Water, Ila tells a soliloquy spanning centuries about why mermaid-lores are a rarity in Batticaloa." These books will not be all I create about this place of my origin. Recently, I’ve also been working a lot on the novel that I’ve been trying to write since 2005, called Constellation of Scars. Our creative journeys are circuitous, full of detours, and hold pockets of wonder we don’t even imagine until they’re already in our hands.  

(As for my feelings for the sea and all water – rain water, river water, lagoon water, the water that composes most of our bodies and spill from us in tears and kisses… they both contain and go beyond mermaids.)

How did the idea of trying your hand at illustrating begin? You’ve written short stories, poetry, a novel and a children’s book and  you are now exploring your artistic creativity.  Was working on illustrations for two books simultaneously different from your usual writing routine?

 I’ve been painting since my teens, and about seven or eight years ago I began making art for friends’ homes. It was the idea for the graphic novel that first came to me, and I had actually believed for years that the picture book would only be a spin-off of the same. Then last year, Moonlight’s storyline revealed itself to me as its own fully-formed entity, and the little one is the one that actually leads the way both in terms of publication schedule and even creative decisions!

Mermaids In The Moonlight and Incantations Over Water have very different palette schemes: the former is brighter and colourful, while the latter is more stylised. I haven’t been working on the two simultaneously, as that’s just too difficult. One thing I did not know until I began painting digitally is how taxing it is physically, especially for the wrist. This is in large part why the styles differ, because doing 36 vibrant pages showed me that there’s no way I’ll be able to replicate the style over 160-odd pages unless I had a lot more time, or as many hands as Ravana.

Has the pandemic and self-isolation affected your creative process? You mentioned in an interview that you miss hugs the most.

 I really do. Even when I experienced a bereavement, as so many have this year, no one held me. This is not a unique situation; and indeed, many experience isolation at all times, not just in this pandemic or any other exigency. There was a point about two months into the lockdown when it became clear to me that I had to create in order to keep sane, and so I dedicated myself to the same, working on the three books I mentioned earlier.

Can you share some titles you have enjoyed this year?

Some of the books I’ve enjoyed recently include: Hellfire by Leesa Gazi, translated by Shabnam Nadiya (freedom and cages; a theme we’ve talked about); The Pisces by Melissa Broder (hilarious then dark, about love and sex between a human woman and a merman), Ammachi’s Glasses by Priya Kuriyan (who needs words, when wordless picturebooks can do so much?), The Gloaming by Kirsty Logan (more mermaids, and more romance), Sharks In The Time Of Saviours by Kawai Strong Washburn (on the ways myths make and break us), The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See (friendship, betrayal, and the diving women of Jeju Island), Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (a fantasy with chthonic deities about what it means to be human); Keep Moving by Maggie Smith (self-help in digestible bites – we could all use a little help now) and The Desert Mermaid by Alberto Blanco and Patricia Revah and translated by Barbara Paschke (a beautiful story, uniquely illustrated with embroidered pictures). The last one is out-of-print, and I read it on OpenLibrary.org. To readers, a request: please use ethical resources when you read without cost. The cost (which goes far beyond royalties, which we don’t see as much as you think we do) is often borne by the author when you don’t. I’m currently reading Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras and Queeristan by Parmesh Shahani, and enjoying both.

Do you annotate your books or are you more of a person who loves to keep them untarnished?

 Untarnished! Whoever reads that copy after me shouldn’t have my thoughts impose on them as they read. 

Mythical beings find a way into your poems and stories—Sita, Draupati, goddess Inanna, Suvarnamaccha, Lucifer, Hanuman. You also write about women in the contemporary world unabashedly exploring love, engaging in adultery, losing lovers, and eagerly accepting the consequences of their actions. How does myth and reality balance?

If we don’t treat myths literally, they are very very real indeed. That’s where the core of their hold over us across centuries lies – something about the mythic speaks directly and deeply to the human experience. I absolutely cannot get into the head-frame of someone who thinks of myths as having nothing to do with people, or who thinks only the version they subscribe to can possibly be the only one. I don’t think the function of mythology is to create objects of veneration. A truly spiritual life, especially, cannot be about veneration alone. Even otherwise, you don’t have to believe in the existence of the mythic figure in order to have a relationship with that figure, one that helps you navigate your own life meaningfully.

Instagram poetry is something that has invited differing opinions. Some hate it, some love it. What do you think?

 By this point, the social media sphere is so saturated that it’s not possible to organically break out as a creative person. When money or manufactured drama create influence, those who care about their work must return to what is real, and what will still be real if the account is deactivated. Otherwise, the absurdities of capitalist-driven validation will overshadow the rest, and cloud the ways we see ourselves (speaking as someone who knows those clouds).

Shadow puppets adorn the front cover of The Altar of the Only World; performance artists like therukoothu dancers, theyyam dancers, and chauu dancers find mention. In your novel The Queen of Jasmine Country, traditions and celebrations—jallikattu, Pongal, Pavai nombu— in medieval Tamil Nadu are described.  What challenges did you face in the research?

Cultural chauvinism is something that anyone exploring heritage would do well to avoid, and while with The Altar of the Only World my attraction to non-canonical Ramayanas naturally helped me sidestep that problem, it was trickier with The Queen of Jasmine Country. I find some iconoclastic writing lazy, and wasn’t interested in doing that. At the same time, I wanted to reassemble the classic myth and layer it with human pathos. I spent a lot of time thinking about what a teenager in medieval Tamil Nadu would be like, what she could be exposed to and how. She is taught the pavai nombu (the ritual to bring her a husband) by a liberal-spirited, older cowherd friend of hers; she watches jallikattu when she visits Madurai and is extremely excited about being in a big city for the first time; crucially, she is taught to read and write only because her own father is a poet. From the point of view of research, we don’t know much about ordinary people in that period, just kings and glories and other fictions. Many of the world’s problems would be closer to resolution if we stopped harkening to illustrious pasts and learned to see that people everywhere, across centuries, are as similarly flawed, moved, confused and skilled as we are.

Once when we chatted, you spoke of a love for the works of Isabel Greenberg. What are some other favourites amongst  graphic novels?

The existence of Amruta Patil’s work made it possible for me to imagine the existence of Incantations Over Water, as a writer’s book of images. Vanni by Benjamin Dix and Lindsay Pollock lived up to all my expectations as a graphic novel that deals directly with Sri Lanka, and while feeling at sea with Incantations Over Water I’ve felt grateful that someone else had paved a way. Similar to Vanni in some ways is Munnu by Malik Sajad, which offers another side of the story of Kashmir. Some recent graphic novels I’ve really liked are Chhotu by Varud Joshi and Ayushi Rastogi and You Bring Me The Ocean by Alex Sanchez and Julie Maroh.

11.You have always been passionate about underrated gems. Your passion for the wonderful Song of the Sun God by Shankari Chandran made me find a new favourite book. What are some books that you’ve loved and you think deserve more attention?

I’m so glad my recommendation led to you finding a favourite, too. Sometimes, it isn’t that a book is obscure as such, just that public memory is a bit short-spanned. A few books I’ve loved that I hope more people will discover include Folk by Zoe Gilbert (lush lore from the British isles); Women With Big Eyes by Ángeles Mastretta, translated by Amy Schildhouse (delicious vignettes on colourful women), The Deep by Rivers Solomon (poignant and visceral, on merpeople who emerged out of trans-Atlantic slave trade) and Puu by CG Salamander and Samidha Gunjal (a brilliant rendering on caste-based labour, for children). I am very excited about my dear friend Nawaaz Ahmed’s novel Radiant Fugitives, which will be published next year, and I’m so privileged to have read this complex book on family, faith, sexuality and politics already. Another lovely novel I’ve had the privilege of reading early is Helen Burns’ Andal’s Garland; those who enjoyed The Queen of Jasmine Country may want to check this out too.

Nature plays an important aspect of your books. Your poems have sunsets, moons, islands and oceans; your stories have orange jasmines, virgin conch vine and tulasi. Do you find solace in nature? Do you have beloved books where nature was a prominent presence?

 So much solace in nature, and sometimes only there. More trees have witnessed my tears than I’ve had people look into my eyes. I have many beloved books in which nature figures strongly: the writings of Linda Hogan, Terry Tempest Williams, Mary Oliver and Jane Hirshfield are among them.

“There are no homes with rooms large enough for the wingspan of a woman like me,” says Kodhai in The Queen of Jasmine Country. Is this about every woman?

 I’m not sure. I circle back to your first question in some ways. Do I describe myself as being constrained because of the size of something – heart, ego, vision… (wingspan) – of mine jars against the edges of a space that another would find capacious? I’ve known some women who are content within their spaces, however small. I envy their contentment. Then there are others who are in denial; I do not envy them.

“To rewrite fate you must

be given a quill from

the wings of a fallen angel”

—from Meteorite in The Altar of the Only World.

Do you believe in fate? If you could rewrite parts of your story, what would you choose?

 I do believe in fate. I don’t believe in karma, though – not in any way that can be measured in human spans or human understandings, at least. I am 35 years old, and I would rewrite so many things about my story if I could. What Marguerite Duras wrote in the opening page of The Lover speaks to me: “Very early in my life it was too late.” But let me say this: I hope to live long enough to tell the tale, and tell it true.

Interviewed by Resh Susan