A Sri Lankan masala of villanelle

By Rushda RAFEEK

Anything with a ‘pottu’ charm pressed onto something close to home keeps me entirely enthused. Especially when looking back at both our lines of ancestry it is somewhat a similar anecdote in reverse; the only difference is that my maternal grandmother's memory seems rather dim when asked where exactly in Kerala.

Born in Chennai in 1985, raised by Ceylonese grandparents splitting her childhood between Sri Lanka(her mother's home) and Malaysia because of her grandfather who served as High Commissioner there, innocent maybe the appearance but it seems that it invites us to go beyond the nature imposed by human terms with a very few following it.

If not dangerous, then this is the enchanter who churns poetic spells. The love- child of Frida Kahlo nourished by the fables of mystical Indian deities young Sharanya Manivannan's colour-kissed writing has spurred me to recommend. A poetess who artfully picked up the pen and began writing at seven, who holds together the wand of a dancer, photographer, activist, journalist and a theatrical knack kissed in her palms, Sharanya is beautifully long haired with a bohemian tang to her like the last leaf that comes free.

culture

She is one rare knife who equally saws through various loaves of cultures

evidently proclaiming they tease that nipple of precocity lunched by the clouds of her mind.

Having surfed through her flower bitten foyer of generous poetry entwined with prose that is widely reachable a mouse click away, she leaves me more than hungering. It was then that I felt she deserves one remaining push or plucked out and dipped into our country's literary cosmos for some of us to see, hear, feel and frame it against that moon sucking window of our hearts.

For a quite a moment she has been remembered as the spoken word performer in various poetry events sometimes for her choice in selecting uncommon spots; having read her poem ‘First Language’ inside a saffron enrobed cycle rickshaw thus far has been the most oddly remarkable stunt, among reading sessions in one of Chennai's cemetery, an abandoned pier and the Borobudur temple marrying the vein of Buddhism. Her poems are well fed by the land of sheer honesty and the sunsets of nature yoking themes to capture a vivid poignancy.

Very Sri Lankan by cultural ways, with a daub of compunction in her voice,

she tells me in an email interview that it has converted to a space compounded by loss and disconnection. “I would have given anything to have spent the entirety of my growing years there - the sense of something having been wrenched from me, however self-pitying that may be, has stayed with me. Of course, such powerful sentiments have a deep influence on my writing”.

In considering a compendium, armed with cherished style than the usual, Sharanya has cleanly shaped a Lankan version of the original Sandra Cisneros’ (one of her heavy influence) ‘You Bring Out The Mexican In Me’ where we are moved much closer to the striving fracas of cultural identities. She declares:

You bring out the Sri Lankan in me.
The accent like the surprise of sweet in mango pickle in me.
The lion emblem on all the embassy cutlery in me.
The dreadlocked snake charmer under a dreadlocked banyan in me.

And then of course with a finishing poured into the concluding line that renders to the hissing rally of her lost other home far more powerful than memory alone:

Love the way a Sri Lankan woman loves. Let me show you. Love the only way I know how. Perhaps it is crystal clear the well of her language tossed between two nurtured homes is thirsty as it smokes out the emblematic in ‘First Language': There's a ghost of another language shadow-dancing under my words.

Including: I need this language I need its weight; history, memory, tyranny, art.

I need to be reminded what impostors my words are to the spirit that births them, the spirit that thrums in them, taut, deep, echoing.

I breathe in one language and exhale in another.

The ethnic dance in this applies to how deep the Sinhala oor plays in the shade, similarly dwelling within her. The bearing although painful provides a search for belonging through her ripening aesthetic. As part of an acute assignment, one immersed in migratory crisscrossing find themselves utterly clashing with identity that offers a relevant mind the quest for a home to call.

Sentimentality

Tearing myself concretely held in arrestive sentimentality that blots out across her work, I sailed my thirsty boat in the river of her writing and discover her other poem purely echoing the spirit of Ondaatje's renowned ‘The Cinnamon Peeler's Wife’ which is none other than ‘The Mapmaker's Wife’ published in the SoftBlow magazine. The structure of this particular free verse lyrically hunts down accurate technique in word choice that sweats the message: it is how one's shining examples execute effectiveness. In fact analysing a rich frieze of metaphor where her weapon in each illustrated line throbs worship:

You kiss your way down a

longtitude of skin, blaze frontier trails along the cuesta of vertebrae, enter my navel as though the tip of your tongue places a continent upon it.

You discover and, one by one, name my archipelago of scars and moles. Sharanya's voice could be easily passed as if it's been caught in a shuddering cyclone or the image that shatters the mirror in its frame. The lashed wound bleeds from the lips of rhythm and stanza exploring emotion through achingly sensitive devotion which I am sure finds the road to one's relatable soul.

Moving to many of her published short fiction is no light read rather the amuse-bouche. Having grasped the combination of a painter's arm and a sculptor's fist, there is more of a hammer work, a prodding cry, an arching feminine and a dark carnival of emotions plugged in to keep readers fogged in their seats refusing to melt back to being after a good drink of bittersweet belted with swaying power.

Take for instance “The High Priestess Never Marries”. More like the fictional kiss of the poet which immediately struck as a personal

favourite. The setting is washed in the pure of Chennai until the words wring out a wine of sourness good short fiction carry to the reader's plate by the shore of the story which I must say is cleverly infused although I am corrected the author seems impressive behind the kitchen counter as well.

Although seeking higher formal education weighs under a closed book and having lost it to the thickets of specific events it rather would be too much to ask inasmuch there is certainly a long line of published poetry that hums prestigious honorary and shortlists on the shoulders for Sharanya.

She has received a place as recipient of the Lavanya Sankaran Fellowship for 2008-2009 from Sangam House International Writers’ Residency in Pondicherry also running as finalist for both the 2009 Srinivas Rayaprol Prize in Poetry and the 2010 and 2011 Toto Funds the Arts Awards in Creative Writing adding lately a poem that goes under “I Will Come Bearing Mangoes” conceiving a nomination for the Pushcart Prize of 2011.

It was in 2008 Sharanya published her first collection of poems that lent the cover a title as ‘Witchcraft’ where again the noted spin of charisma is delivered.

Fans

This has only been the one printed in paperback after a handmade chapbook

drunk on a title ‘Iyari'. However, the queued fans of Sharanya are promised the ‘Constellation of Scars’ a novel that is currently under dragged construction along with a collection of short fiction that will conceive a title ‘The High Priestess Never Marries’, two collections of poetry titled ‘Bulletproof Offering’ and ‘Cadaver Exquisito’ keeping her knees pricked to the writing attic whilst frequently contributing for The Sunday Guardian and sometimes Times of India.

Dealing with diverse cultures of course, while her poems battle like a living bruise in the celebration of carnal darkness and accidental discovery, I strongly feel Sharanya Manivannan, who sweeps a fair share of Sylvia Plath to her tongue is worth a splurge headfirst because she has been chewed throughout India and Malaysia spreading wider, drawing the well known Indran Amirthanayagam among other notable figures who have read her literary anthems stomached by various online journals and magazines, fairly to keep up with Sharanya's cinematic flame which cannot be easily blown off by a shuttered hand.

Rushda Rafeek is a freelance writer and can be contacted through her email at:[email protected]