Catching Up With Rizvina & Ayathurai : Joint Winners of the Fairway National Literary Awards 

The first ever Fairway National Literary Award - which aims to recognize Sri Lankan novelists of English, Sinhala and Tamil mediums - was held this year. The winners of the awards were announced amidst much fanfare and a distinguished gathering that included Chief Guest Maithree Wickremesinghe in Galle. 

Daily Mirror Life caught up with the joint winners of the English novels, Rizvina de Alwis and Ayathurai Santhan, who shared their stories with us.

Rizvina de Alwis 
Book - It's Not In The Stars 

Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

I always find that question really hard, wondering where to start. But let me start with what I love to do most, reading. I think it is this passion I have for books that made me want to write. I confess that my literary aspirations probably began when I was a child, when I would write poems and short stories for the junior page of newspapers and magazines. But as I grew older I kind of lost that confidence, but the desire to write did not diminish completely, it just lay dormant for a while until I found my voice in this novel. But apart from reading and writing I have many other passions, among them, my work in the development field for nearly 20 years, focusing on issues of gender equality and reproductive health and rights. I work for the United Nations Population Fund and am currently based in Lao PDR as the Deputy Representative. I have a Masters degree in Gender and Development from the London School of Economics and read for an English degree at the University of Peradeniya. 

Like one of the main characters in the novel, I had a fairly conservative upbringing, but unlike that character, I married outside my community. I come from a close-knit family and have 3 sisters and a brother. Family is very important to me and growing up in a large family with so many siblings has given me a reservoir of memories and experiences to draw inspiration from for my writing. 

What is your book about? 

It is about friendship, love and family ties. It tells the story of two strong women, Minu and Sam, who come from very different backgrounds and share a strong bond of friendship. Minu who had a conservative upbringing, finds herself caught between her family’s pressures to marry within her community and her desire to become independent. Sam, on the other hand is the perfect foil to Minu with a more liberal and privileged upbringing. She is more confident, feisty and unafraid to break the rules and becomes her own woman, but not before she experiences, love, heartache and betrayal. She’s very much the modern woman. Pradeep is the other central character, who in many ways serves as the thread that intertwines the lives of these two women from childhood to adulthood. 

In this novel, I try to explore the notion of ‘truth’ and ‘knowing’. As the story begins with Sam and Pradeep trying to understand the reasons and the truth behind Minu’s death, the narrative unravels the impossibility of knowing another person completely, regardless of whether he or she is your best friend, lover or partner in life. I am interested in exploring the complexity of relationships in this context of ‘unknowing,’ after all how can we expect to understand another complex human being when we are mysteries to ourselves? 

What prompted you to write it? 

That’s a hard question to answer. I can’t say that a particular event, incident or person prompted me to write this book. For me writing is an act of self-reflection, so I have this habit of jotting down my thoughts and reflections whenever I find myself alone. Often, it is some mundane thing or incident that would trigger a memory from my childhood or past and fill me with this compulsion to put it down in writing. So, I had this collection of pieces - thoughts and reflections about my memories of things and events that actually happened mingled with my imagination. Eventually, I started elaborating these vignettes into a story which culminated into this novel. My experience of growing up in a politically volatile time with the ethnic conflict as well as the JVP insurgency in the 90’s gave me the backdrop to the story. Also, since there’s no book of fiction, as far as I know, that deals with the Malay community in Sri Lanka, I felt a strong desire to locate one of the main characters in this community and highlight some of the challenges the community faces in maintaining its unique identity and culture amidst modernity on the one hand and religious conservatism on the other. 

What was the process like? 

It was a very long process. I am a slow writer by nature and circumstances. Writing is a part-time occupation for me as I have a day-job. So, I didn’t have the luxury of time or the discipline of writing 1000 words a day (like some writers are known to do). Once the idea of a story germinated in my head I thought it would be easy to write it down. But it wasn’t. I wrote this book in fits and starts over weekends and holidays depending on my mood, and then spent years tinkering with it. But this also meant that the story evolved as I wrote it. It turned out to be quite different to the original story in terms of plot. But I must say that the original essence of the story I had in mind remained. 

What’s next for you? 

Well, I want to continue writing. The Fairway Literary Award I received recently boosted my confidence as a writer. So, I would like to continue on this path. I think I have many stories to tell. I am currently writing my second novel called The Memory of Loss. In this novel, I am interested in exploring how memories of our past can both spur and paralyse our growth as human beings. It deals with the fragility and obduracy of memories. It also questions the reliability of our memories, because often what we remember may not be what actually took place. 

Ayathurai Santhan 
Book - Rails Run Parallel 

Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

My avid reading from very young days tempted me to write in Tamil and my first collection of stories got published while I was a student at the Ceylon College of Technology, Katubedde. This was followed by more than 15 books up to now, collections of stories, novel, and travelogues etc, published locally and in India. Since the 1990s, I started trying my hand in English, simply because to let the outside world hear a true to life voice of a commoner from the North who underwent all trauma and the hardships during the ill fated period. I lived through 1977 riots, war, bombings and shelling, curfews, IPKF invasion, displacement… underwent everything along with my fellow beings and now wonder how much of all those  would I be able portray in my writings. 

What is your book about? 

The book you mention, Rails Run Parallel, is about the ‘parallels’; touching on 1977 riots and the couple of years that followed immediately after. What we think the opposites are indeed pairs; one cannot exist without the other, like the rails! Love and hatred, understanding and misunderstanding, the good and the bad, harmony and discord run parallel in our lives; even the past and the present and Sinhalese and Tamils! 

What prompted you to write it? 

The purpose of any writing should be to foster better perception about humanity and the human life, which always remain the same despite distances in time and space. The most urgent need of our country is the mutual understanding among its all people. This awareness prompted me to write the story. Further there was the reason I mentioned above, as well. 

What was the process like? 

I firmly believe in mood. It’s a dilemma often that mood and time coincide rarely. That moment is important for my first draft. I put whatever I feel in writing; keep that aside for days, months. And when I again go through that raw version, the whole thing will look anew, giving an opportunity to look at it objectively. This enables me to cut, chop, add, alter, edit and polish with every repeated draft. 

I always type straight away, even though I do not know my proper keyboard and generally prefer mid mornings and mid evenings to write. I enjoy the whole process because writing a novel gives me the pleasure of re-living that part of my life again. 

What's next for you? 

All these long years I remained only a freelance writer, dedicating less than half of my time for reading and writing as the rest of it was always taken up by my job. There were times that I have not written a single page for months. But, now I have decided to set aside my full time for writing as I realize there is huge lot for me to record; ‘miles to go before I sleep’! Thus, I left my job two months ago. The next work will also be a novel, may be with a related theme but with an entirely new setting, which I have already started writing. 

Interviewed by Rihaab Mowlana