Under the boot

Growing up in the 1980s in small town coastal Andhra Pradesh, I often played cricket with children who had conspicuous Tamil names. I didn't know much about them except that they all loved cricket and lived in a humble 'Lanka colony'. Later I realised that they were Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka.

After reading Shobasakthi's Traitor, I hoped that their stories weren't remotely similar to that of the book's protagonist, Nesakumaran. The story begins and ends in an unknown European city where he's taken refuge. But the civil war that began in 1980s Sri Lanka, with the minority ethnic Tamils fighting for a separate state, gives the story it's flesh and blood. Literally.

It is written as a memoir where the personal and the political and the minute details and the big picture merge. It is about Nesakumaran's journey out of the tiny Palmyra Palm Island through various army camps, interrogation chambers and a nightmare of brutalities with its Shawshank Redemption-like moments. Anushiya Ramaswamy has done a brilliant job of translation.

Full report here Hindustan Times

‘There is no justice, no press freedom’

Oh, call whenever you like. I am like A R Rahman. I work through the night and don’t sleep till morning,” he chuckles over the phone from Paris. Having just read his new novel Traitor (written in Tamil in 2004, translated into English this year), the levity in Shoba sakthi's voice is like nothing his writing leads you to expect of him.
But that’s the man. Part of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, a former LTTE child soldier, now Parisien and refugee, world traveller, blogger, former dishwasher, supermarket employee and writer.

The stories he tells are the unexamined realities lost over the years in the war of propaganda fought between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Understandably, his views are unpopular with the state as well as large sections of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora.

Full report here New Indian Express

I was a writer even as a militant: Shobasakthi

Erstwhile LTTE fighter turned author, Shobasakthi admits he would like to be known as more than just a former militant. Now Parisien and a refugee, he says he always knew he could become a writer one day.

In an email interview from Paris, the author of novels like Gorilla and his latest, Traitor, writes, “I was a writer and dramatist even as a militant. I wrote propaganda poems and pamphlets about the liberation of Tamil Eelam, and created the theatrical performances that were played in the villages. I had more than my share of the imagination needed for a writer. I should admit that the height of my imagination was my hope that we would gain a socialist Tamil Eelam through militancy.”

In his latest novel Shobasakthi walks the reader through the most tumultuous times in the history of Sri Lanka, when gore, torture and murder were everyday occurrences — details that were perhaps lost between the tug of war between LTTE and the Lankan government.

Full report here DNA