Tamil Futures 2020
Brought to you by Tamil Archive Project
The editorial team of Tamil Futures worked on this publication on Turtle Island, and more specifically on the traditional territories of the Anishinabeg, the Haudenosaunee, the Chippewa, the Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the New Credit territory. We acknowledge that this land has been stolen from its traditional caretakers, and acknowledge our own role as settlers in continuing the legacy of colonial violence against these peoples. We will not acknowledge the injustices faced by the Indigenous peoples of this land without taking action to support and empower them. As members of a displaced people, we empathize with the pain caused by the violence of displacement. The continued use of frameworks founded in colonization and occupation reinforce this violence every day in both our homelands and the lands we settled on.
This magazine was produced with the belief in empowering BIPOC voices. We call upon non-Indigenous racialized peoples to critically think about the impact of their actions on the indigenous peoples of the lands they live on. We call upon them to consider how the co-opting of Indigenous movements, terms, and cultural icons continues the legacy of colonial violence. We call upon them to recognize the injustices faced by the Indigenous peoples of the lands they settled on. We call upon them to centre Indigenous voices and take direction from Indigenous communities. We call upon them to stand in solidarity and take action to bring justice for Indigenous peoples at home and globally.
And finally, we call upon our readers to give their monetary, physical, and/or spiritual support to the following organizations, which take action on issues affecting the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island:
INDIGENOUS Environmental Network
True North Aid
Native Youth Sexual Health Network
About Tamil Archive Project
Tamil Archive Project combines archival materials, art, and knowledge translation into accessible community events that centre practices of communal care. Our collective work attempts to counter the erasure of racialized and displaced communities in neighbourhoods and history books.
Editor-in-Chief
VANESSA VIGNESWARAMOORTHY
Managing Editor
LAXANA PASKARAN
Editor
BANUSHA MAHENDRAN
Creative Director
LUXVNA UTHAYAKUMAR
Web Developer
KALYAN ODURI
Communications Assistant
VASUKI SHANMUGANATHAN
We would like to thank our anonymous reviewers who put in a generous amount of time to help edit this magazine.
Editor’s Note
VANESSA VIGNESWARAMOORTHY
Last March, while proofreading submissions for this magazine, I found myself stumped by a question that I did not expect to have. How does one write, with the English alphabet, the name of the straps lined with bells that Bharatanatyam dancers wore around their ankles? Multiple submitters had used different spellings for the same word, and these anklets kept appearing in submissions. The editor in me was tempted to ask that all these contributors use the same standardized spelling, but I managed to stop myself from doing so. What I had realized, and what I hope you come to realize when reading this publication, is that these small differences were exactly the point of creating a publication such as Tamil Futures.
Our collective future diverges into multiple different pathways, all influenced by factors of race, caste, gender, sexuality, class, faith, nationality, and mental and physical health. Each spelling was a reflection of dialects, accents, individual relationships with both Tamil and English. Standardizing the spelling of Tamil words written in the English alphabet implying a sameness between all of us was a disservice to the multiplicity of identities represented in this publication. The nine contributors in Tamil Futures are linked by their unabashed identification with Tamilness, and as you read through this publication, we hope that you can envision a Tamil future that is reflective of every piece. Tamilness, we’ve discovered, is difficult to define, but only because it changes shape in the hands of every person who identifies with it.
The discussion of what a Tamil future could look like in this magazine also asks us to consider several difficult, but important, questions: how does a displaced people create a sense of home? How do we tackle racist, sexist, classist, and anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiments in our communities? Whose narratives do we erase when we think that our personal definition of Tamilness is the only one possible?
As a Tamil youth-led editorial and creative team, we recognize how the answers to these questions have often been molded by existing power structures and the silencing of the marginalized. We hope that Tamil Futures helps redefine these answers to include the range of voices featured in this publication.
We recognize that every nuance of our global community cannot be captured in our magazine. Our publication being mainly in English can serve as a barrier for those wanting to read the work. Much of our work was written on or produced in or inspired by land that has been stolen from indigenous peoples, both in the lands we have settled on and our homelands.
Our magazine does not fully acknowledge the variety of identities found in the global Tamil community, and we ask that you read with that in mind. In turn, we hope you find joy in these imaginings of a Tamil future, and continue forward with a more complicated, nuanced picture of what the future looks like for the Tamil community.
PRIYA GUNS
A Letter to my Unborn Child(ren)
ABOUT PRIYA
Priya is a writer, teacher, actress, and founder and creative director of arts charity, Capokolam. She was brought up in Toronto but has lived in the UK, UAE, Turkey, Palestine and Lebanon. She is currently completing her MA in Creative Writing at Kingston University whilst writing her novel.
Dear chellum(angal),
I've come to know a Syrian boy named Ahmed, here in Beirut. He has these warm eyes and mischievous grin. He first started asking for money, but now he comes just to say hi and chat for a bit – I suppose to break up his day. He's usually with his cousins and little brother. He doesn't have his mother, he says, and his cousins don't have their father. Today I saw him scourging through the bins looking for food and cans to sell. The bins are by an abandoned garage where an old man sleeps even though it smells like piss and sewage.
In Batticaloa there is a girl I know named Mythili. She is eleven years old and reads the paper every morning. She's been waiting for her mother to come home from working abroad. It has been five years already. She asked me one morning what I thought of Idi Amin after reading a column about him. She doesn't ever talk about her family or her future, but she asks a lot of questions. Many of which, I don't have answers for.
There is a crisis of homelessness in London and Toronto. There are climate concerns and global warming, over consumption and mass production which all negatively impact our planet. We are in a time where we are noticing more environmental devastation. There's an ugly world portrayed through the media and then an even crueller reality carefully hidden. When my Amma asks when I plan on having a child, I tell her all of these things.
If you are born, I trust you will understand how much I've had to think about whether to have you or not. I don't know what the world will be like by the time you can read this, and I don't know what my world will be like tomorrow or the day after. An hour later and I may be lost for words. You see, amongst many things I could share with you, there's my diagnosis. Balancing between manias, appearances and realities; depression, anxiety and this desire to run far, far away. I am prepared to give you the tools to manage it. We carry the effects of inter-generational trauma from years of wandering and wondering, loss, tragedy, and persecution. Things happened on a beautiful island even before the riots started in 1956. But thankfully we know strength and resilience. Kindness, compassion, ambition, greatness and drive flow through us with force. We are survivors bound by Love.
Our people are scattered around, amongst other Runaways. We are dotted across the world: top chefs in the kitchen, doctors driving cabs and doctors in lab coats, smoking stuff our Ammas warned us not to smoke, forgetting things we shouldn't be forgetting, remembering too much of what we should let go of, and still on edge about the aunties that are watching our every move. Generalizations, that only we can make. You will be part of that We.
If you are born, you will be born with the help of the person I love, the only person I could imagine to be your father and my life partner. You will be half white, English, with maybe some Irish and Swedish in you. Regardless, you will be Tamil. You won't know privilege like your father does, though you will know it more than your cousins do. You will be you, and though your father is white, he is an ally. When in doubt about anything, ever, remember the tattoo on his back.
Though it doesn't matter to us how you will look, I still find myself curious as to how much “Tamil” will seep through your skin and features in the many ways it will. Your face will be a map of our ancestors' journey to The Island, our migration out, Diasporic Blues, Balance, Love, and Rebirth.
If people say your skin is 'fair and lovely' or that you're not as dark as your mother, that you tan so beautifully, please don't revel in their comments. If they point out that your nose is pointy like your fathers and your lips are full like your mother's or that they aren't, again please don't revel in how they describe you. Those ideas are Euro-centric and Orientalist, in awe of European features and those of the sexualised Black and brown woman. Beauty is actually in every so-called imperfection. It is this glorious inner light of vulnerability and strength. I worry what the standards of beauty will be when you're a teenager. I trust you'll see through all the crap. Redefine, and don't be afraid to be different. That's what my Appama used to say, and she was a mighty woman. Live your truth.
If you are born, I wonder if when we are in Sri Lanka, you will feel Home. I wonder if when you stand at Mullivaikkal you will feel what I feel every single time I go back. I wonder if the smell of driving on the A9 and taking the train to Eastern Province will send a shiver of excitement down your spine too.
I've moved a lot. We don't hang on to many material things, but I've been keeping all of my favourite books for you. I walked through road blocks during the Beirut demonstrations to the airport, with a bag of about thirty books thinking how much you'd love Noam Chomsky, Gayatri Spivak, Arundhati Roy and James Baldwin, just to name a few. I have a scar from the chaffing to prove it. I hope you don't mind how much we travel for work. The world is worth seeing but you see more when you are somewhere for a purpose as opposed to pleasure. I wonder if you will notice how people stare when I am with your father, or when I am alone with you. Sometimes the first words I learn unintentionally in a foreign language are 'Black girl'. I wonder what your experiences will be when you travel.
Frantz Fanon said, when you learn a language you take on a culture. We are learning Arabic though I need to spend more time with Tamil for you and me. Vowels that start from the back of the throat and flick off the tonuge, R's and Ah's, words jumbled in my mouth. I'll do my best to speak more eloquently so you can learn. Would you want to if I'm still struggling? Will the long melodic syllables flow from you as if you've studied the Thirukurral. Or will you pause mid-sentence and smile because the words are there, running through your veins, just stuck on the tip of your tongue.
There are many songs I hope to sing to you. Growing up we were taught how important it was to sing and enjoy music. Some days when we aren't dancing, I may sing,
Naan yen piranthen?
Kan yen thiranthen?
Enakkey theriyaathey.
I don't have all the answers, and sometimes I feel this never-ending well deep in my being. The answers I have about life and our meaning change with each passing day. Maybe we can exchange notes or find the answers in each other, as my Amma and Appa have given me purpose on the many days I yearned for reason. They left the war and started a new life with very little but their faith and love. I hang on for them. I do everything I can for them. Regardless of how different we may be, they deserve it all.
Amongst many things I think about, I hope you aren't allergic to peanuts or cats because I rely on them both tremendously. Cats are protectors and as a vegetarian, peanuts are a gift from the gods. The thought of living without them seems impossible. But, we can make it work. Whatever comes our way, no matter how big or small, we will always make it work. As my Amma says with great conviction, “Everything will be okay, kunju.”
Whether you are born or not, I want you to know I see you in Ahmed and Mythili, in every child I work with, in every cat on the street, in the birds that perch on the olive tree close to our balcony. I see you in frangipani and palms, in your father's smile, in young men and women. I feel you through the smell of falling rain and from the heavenly taste of peanut butter, I feel you too. It's this strange sensation of Love that courses through my veins, and the thought of you excites me, if I should be so lucky to have You in my life.
If we meet in this life or not, I am reminded of what my Appama said, “I did it for my children, and they are doing it for theirs, and you will for yours. It is all for my children and their children's children.” My Amma and Appa say the same. I've wondered what 'it' was for a long time, they never really said. But from our history, and our journey it is something we are still building, something we are still understanding. For our future, we can build it with our communities, fighting for the radical change we are going to need in the future for our planet and the most marginalised in our societies. It can be revolutionary, revolutionary from what my generation has come to know. It must be better than what it is now, for your sake and your generation's. It is not just about our people and our ancestor's journeys, anymore.
I can't imagine what the world will be like when you are my age, but I think about it, when I think about you.
Whereever you are, if you ever read this,
Enjoy this life.
It is yours.
Take good care of It.
Love you always and forever,
அம்மா
"We Do Not Have Enough to Satisfy Our Bellies" exhibition at SEVENTH Gallery in Melbourne, Australia (2019). Collaboration between Esha Pillay and Quishile Charan about Female Girmit Resistance during the 1920 labour strike in Suva, Fiji. Quishile highlighted key points of the 1920 strike onsite through hand-made textile banners that adorn and memorialise acts of resistance. The extended text/essay co-written by both Esha and Quishile is available online.
ESHA PILLAY
Island Kuli
ABOUT ESHA
Esha Pillay (she/hers) is an Indo-Fijian researcher and writer living on Ohlone land, California, U.S.. She is a descendant of low-caste Madraji (Tamil and Telugu) indentured labourers from Fiji. She works to understand the gendered and caste-based violence(s) of indentured labour and how they intersect with intergenerational traumas, including alcoholism, death by suicide and intimate partner violence, that Girmit descendants experience at high rates today. Esha focuses on the stories that bring back the experiences and journeys of her grandmothers and great-grandmothers—all the ammas. You can follow @coolie_returns to learn more about movements/displacements, histories and stories from different indentured labour communities.
What does being Tamil mean to me?
In September 2017, I presented a part of my family’s history at The Tamil Studies Symposium in Toronto, Canada. I spoke about what being Tamil means to me, and how my family identifies, which is connected to our religious practices, language and food. But ultimately, our histories of labour-based movement and displacement is what grounds me and surpasses any “culture” talk.
I don’t speak Tamil. And while I understand that language is an important part of community and family identities, even if we spoke Tamil today, it would be Fijian Tamil. Which would be very specific to the regional places my family might be from in the subcontinent, and also influenced by our caste location.
“You don’t speak Tamil? How can you call yourself Tamil?” A man approached me after my presentation, to remind me that claiming to be Tamil wasn’t possible if I didn’t speak the language.
With family in Labasa, on the island of Vanua Levu, Fiji. Image Credit: Esha Pillay
We only talk about caste to build communities here.” I began to wonder what bothered him more, that I didn’t speak Tamil, or that I spoke about caste violence in the diaspora.
What if I said that caste was the reason why my communities have been displaced? That caste is the reason we can’t build communities, or connect with people supposedly like us. That caste and labour and gender and identity and language, all of which seem to be uncultured from where I come from, is very much part of my Tamilness?
“Do you know kuli means wages in Tamil?” I am a fifth generation coolie. Before being Tamil, or racialized as “South Asian” or “Indian,” I am a coolie.
I met my great grandmother when I was around 8 years old and she was almost 100. Applamma, or Poni nani as I called her, was in the belly of my great, great grandmother as they came on the ship from Madras to Fiji. Apparently, she told one of my cousins that she was actually born on that ship. This is one of many stories that have shaped my identity and sense of belonging while growing up, and even now as I learn, and understand, more stories.
The history of over 3.5 million people from the subcontinent was impacted by indentured labour. I knew it wasn’t just us who ended up in Fiji, others had even much longer histories in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and South Africa to name a few. Even though the histories of these communities, nations and islands are very different, there are enough similarities for us to connect over how these movements, displacements and our labour shaped our futures.
I can usually share something meaningful with other coolie folks about family stories, food or music that came out of our specific indentured backgrounds. The historical violence of indentured labour, displacement and trauma to our bodies and communities are both in our stories of the past but also what we continue to see today. And for me, it’s also those stories of movement, loss and trauma that place me in community with other descendants of indentured labour.
Low-caste and low class. I am the first generation in my family to not grow up in severe poverty. My parents, grandparents and everyone before them did. It’s a marker of my community and where I come from. My family moved to the U.S. after winning a lottery visa in the early 90s. Migration out of Fiji was heavy during the late 80’s to early 90s, especially after military coups on the island. If you didn’t have the resources to migrate out, the lottery visa to the U.S. or seeking asylum in Australia were other ways out. This movement has afforded me a U.S passport. Today, I have class privilege, even though generationally and historically, that hasn't been the case for the communities that I come from. At the same time, this isn’t the same story of success for many coolie communities in the “second” diaspora. It’s something many people aim for however, moving forward and moving up- away from the histories and generational traumas we come from. For my family, it wasn’t just moving away from our class background, but also our caste background.
“We Fiji Indians don’t believe in caste.”
Caste violence is shaped differently in indentured communities than it is in the subcontinent and varies from different indentured diasporas throughout the world. But caste is still there. Caste is in the racial slurs we use. Caste is in the way we describe people, especially women in derogatory ways. Caste is in the temples where the priests are imported from India because they are better suited to sustain casteist practices. Casteism is looking down on our indigenous religions and customs as backwards and “savage” in order to worship dominant Hindu gods and ideologies. Caste is erasing our food traditions, which don’t fit neatly into ideas of purity and upper caste Hindu practices.
We carried it with us across the oceans. I know, because I am reminded constantly that my family is “crazy” because they are low-caste. That people know how the women and girls in our family are. Or how our families ate beef and slowly stopped when they started marrying into other families.
These are also stories that I want to carry forward because they teach me more about my family’s history than just claiming to be Tamil. Stories about how our families ended up in Fiji and how they built their lives after indentured labour. These stories are intertwined with my Tamilness. And I cannot separate being a coolie, from being low caste person, to being Tamil. Because any sense of my Tamil “culture” is derived from these histories and identities.
For me, being Tamil does not mean Carnatic music, or Bharatnatyam, or eating idlis.
I am a Tamil from Fiji. I speak Fijian Hindi, which is a mix of different northeastern dialects such as Bhojpuri and Awadhi, Urdu and iTaukei (indigenous Fijian) words and some English words. You might be able to identify my Tamilness only when I speak about my athas, or describing how dal tastes good with karuvadu or crispy nethili. Or if you’re a descendant of North Indian indentured labourers, you can catch that I am a Madraji just by the way I speak Fijian Hindi.
My family had to lose their local languages to pick up Hindi, so they could survive and work among other labourers on the sugarcane plantations in Fiji. They also faced racism when they tried to speak Telegu or Tamil among themselves. Losing a language to pick up another one was necessary. 100 years later, you can still tell we aren’t “Hindustani” because of our tongues.
Being Indo-Fijian also means sharing stories of how we have built community with, and alongside, iTaukei communities. Offering kava to our ancestors for protection are indigenous practices that have been shared with indentured labourers in Fiji. It’s something that has been passed down through generations in my family. This too is a part of my Tamil identity. This is valuable because there are connections and similarities to our caste/indigenous practices. Not all descendants of indentured labourers share iTaukei customs, especially when dominant religious practices in the Indo-Fijian community look down on these traditions.
Quishile Charan. We Do Not Have Enough to Satisfy Our Bellies, SEVENTH Gallery. Melbourne, Australia, 2019. Image courtesy of gallery. Oral History: Glass Bangles Broken in Protest at Police Barrier, Nausori 1920. Installation: thread, handmade Mohar coins, cotton. 1100mm x 1000mm
As a coolie person, labour is what resonates with me.
Building solidarity and trying to understand other Tamil communities who have faced systemic and state violence and marginalization, over generations, is something that is more tangible.
I can’t connect with others simply based on “culture.” Especially when I come from cultures that are not “pure,” idolized or respectable. And when it comes to labour, you cannot ignore caste. I speak about about caste violence because I cannot separate it from both my Tamil identity and my coolie identity. My caste background is the foundation for my family’s displacement out of the subcontinent and it shaped their experiences during the indenture period and spills through our daily lives and identities today. Because it does exist. From how we speak, to what we eat, how we pray and how others perceive us. It’s in our stories. And how our stories will be carried forward. Sharing my stories as a low-caste coolie from Fiji is my vision for a Tamil future. It’s not new or revolutionary, it’s the reality of how my ancestors have survived. What I hope to build on is deeper solidarities and understanding of different marginalized identities around being Tamil. To ones that don’t cater to dominant groups and oppressive histories. Or aren’t based on culture, which is usually code for “cultured” and casteist.
The future needs to be just as complicated as it already is. And I don’t want to fit into any digestible ideas of being Tamil. Simply, because I can’t. And because it won’t do any justice to the communities and people that I come from. Which is the hope that I have for their stories, and mine.
POEMS BY KURU SELVARAJAH
Two Poems
ABOUT KURU
Kuru Selvarajah is a filmmaker/photographer/writer. When not indulging in mindless hours of anime, he likes to walk around and stuff. Sometimes, his works involves interrogating the mundane realities of the self/relationships and how it relates to our collective realities. Other times he’ll do stuff he gets paid for. He is also interested in representation in media and how it shapes marginalized folks and their ideas of who they are and how they belong in a world that doesn’t necessarily give them the power, opportunities, or agency to tell their own stories.
His first short film “Chance” (2012) was selected to play at the Scarborough Film Festival, and The National Screen Institute’s (NSI) online film festival. He is currently working on his first chapbook of poetry and shooting your cousin’s wedding.
Chase a moth around a room
unmeasured nei melts in
two eggs in a glass
broken chillies pour over a whisking fork
wash your nails before
before you think about all your faults
the ones people leave you with
scratching your chin over
a basket of onions dead skin falling,
the difference between dust and smoke
might just be a sneeze and a cough,
skin and blood.
When the river meets your palms it gives and goes
you can
spend days coming home in conversations
recite history to remember where your heart lies-
when the sun finishes its search
your skin is a witness.
SAGI THILIPKUMAR
Arangetram of Rethuga
ABOUT SAGI
I am Sagi Thilipkumar and a Swiss-Eelam Tamil law student at the University of Zurich. My passion for photography started in my youth and still continues. As a child of Tamil refugees, it is important to me to capture and document the faces and the stories of the Tamil society. That’s why on the one hand my photographic work focuses on Tamils in Switzerland, who are torn between two different cultures. On the other hand, my work includes the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, who, without their own state, still have to deal with discrimination and oppression even ten years after the armed conflict.
Rethuga Jeevakanthan is one of the few Tamil speech and language therapists in Switzerland, and she works with children and youth with difficulties in speaking and/or reading. Another way she translates language is through Bharathanatyam, a style of classical Indian dance founded on three principles; thaalam (rhythm), raagam (melody), and bhaavam (expression). She has been dancing since she
was four.
I accompanied Rethuga for a full year leading up to her Arangetram – the first great solo stage performance of a Bharathanatyam dancer after years of disciplined training. She danced for about five hours during her Arangetram to different compositions, often depicting the epic narratives of Hindu mythology. The accompanying orchestra and her Guru, Nimalini Jeyakumar, established an intimate environment, delivering the beat and the tune for her performance. Hundreds of friends, relatives and rasikargal (fans of the art) came to Märstetten, Switzerland to see Rethuga perform on September 22, 2018.
I took this photo with my analog camera to fully focus on the relationship between Rethuga and her Guru. The arangetram is typically the catalyst into shaping a dancer to become more secure and independent with her form. I liked the way Rethuga’s teacher observed her, while Rethuga stared into a distance -- connecting the realm of Guru and dancer.
About the Reportage Project
Bharathanatyam arangetrams by Tamil people are quite common in Switzerland. While they are generally heavily photographed, they almost exclusively show the dancer on stage on her arangetram day. I have never seen photos that capture the intricacies of the process, such as the support stage or the tears during practice.
When I heard that my friend Rethuga wanted to do an arangetram, I asked her if I could accompany her with my camera during her practices, her rehearsals and even her day-to-day job as a speech and language therapist. I was keen to witness the process of an arangetram, and the nuances of preparing for such a large scale event.
I also wanted to highlight that in Switzerland, all dancers commit to training for their arangetram while maintaining a full-time job or studies.
Between her speech and language therapy sessions with Tamil children, Rethuga tries to stretch and rehearse some of her arangetram steps.
Rethuga during a photoshoot for her arangetram booklet holding the Meenakshi pose.
Rethuga and her Guru during a practice of her arangetram dance, months before her performance.
This is one the first images of the reportage, because in Bharathanatyam, each dance session starts with the dancer taking a bow to the nattuvangam in respect of the art.
Rethuga during a playful speech and language therapy session with a Tamil girl.
Rethuga’s parents consistently supported her during the entire arangetram process. They are very proud for their eldest daughter’s passion.
An arangetram needs professional and well-versed orchestra who can accompany and support the dancer for several hours during the performance. That’s why Swiss Tamil dance teachers fly in experienced musicians from Tamil Nadu.
Rethuga’s friend adjusts the flowers for the Hindu dance god Nadaraja during the photoshoot for the arangetram booklet. You can see the details of her makeup on her feet and the Salangai, the traditional ankle bells.
Multiple hands are needed to quickly change Rethuga’s dress and makeup in between the different dance performances.
A photo of Rethuga’s mother nervously watching her perform a difficult dance. She was in tears after when she realized her daughter mastered it.
In this scene, Rethuga danced to an emotional Barathiyar poem. After the piece she sat on the edge of the stage and her teacher recited a poem by Rethuga herself about Tamil culture and identity.
All friends and family members sign a photo of Rethuga from the previous photo shoot to wish her all the best in her dancing career.
This was my first planned photo reportage, so Rethuga taught me a lot about the Bharathanatyam art itself but also about all the work required to organize an arangetram.
I tried to accompany her as much as I could but unfortunately I wasn’t able to accompany her all the time while maintaining other commitments.
Thanks to Rethuga I had free reign and was able to take photos during her practices, her job and behind the stage. I didn’t stage any photos with the exception of the portrait of Rethuga in the library.
Rethuga says, “For many dancers, the Arangetram marks the end of their Bharathanatyam career. I see my arangetram as the beginning.”
After the end of her last arangetram dance, Rethuga walks back to her teacher and thankfully bows down to the Nadduvangam to close her performance, in the same way she would before each rehearsal.
TAMIL LETTERS
Two Letters
ABOUT TAMIL.LETTERS
TAMIL.LETTERS is the pseudonym of an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto specializing in English (HBA). Raised in Scarborough, she is the writer and creator behind the @lettersforyu Instagram page focusing on intersectionality, experiences, and trauma within the Canadian immigrant community. She intends to bring awareness to the struggles of first-generation immigrants, and the children who take part in the journey with their parents. As one herself, she can speak upon the issue at a more personal level. As an undergraduate, she realizes throughout her academic career she has only read one book regarding Scarborough and the community. Due to the lack of 'the 6ix' within academics, she decided to start small with her Instagram page and bring to perspective why more books of this topic should be put on the list at university and should be known to Canadians.
Eastbound
Living in this apartment complex by Markham and Lawrence, Unit 403, she understands this will be the norm until she gets out of here.
It’s been two weeks, and the police still have not found out who shot that man in her building. She’s terrified to leave her unit.
She ponders to herself,
how is this any better than Mullaitivu. I’m still confined in my ‘home’ fearing for my life.
Late Night Sleepovers
Doors locked?
Check.
The oven turned off?
Check.
Make sure you don’t
answer the door.
Okay.
No fighting …
Okay.
Remember, DO NOT open the door for ANYONE.
Yeah, we know, we know.
We said bye as they walked out for their night cleaning shift. We ended up having a sleepover in my room, we were too scared to leave any one of us by ourselves.
R.J.
Hand-Me-Downs
little brown girl
in her brother’s oversized hand-me-downs,
her father’s second son.
thick gold stems weigh down little ears,
her mother’s obligatory attempt at “girlhood”
leaving holes where her influence should be.
her father’s second son
in oversized hand-me-downs
following anna’s lead, inheriting appa’s rage:
his need to be right.
lacking amma’s concern,
but I know it’s not your fault.
tamil children never outgrow hand-me-downs, one size fits all
until
until boys peacock into men
until girls blossom, reluctantly
in shame and secret,
pretty flowers picked and pruned through the looking glass
reflecting you, through me
but you don’t see it.
“all families are like this”,
because you never outgrow hand-me-downs.
tough love hurts and lingers
hopelessly black, despairingly blue.
sticks, stones, these aching bones
your words left cuts and my loved ones are noticing,
now.
and I know it’s not your fault but
I blame you, still.
your second son, yesterday,
your only daughter,
today.
less than proper, today
aggressive and anxious, today
a “sinner”, today
living in sin with sinner’s thoughts
and a sinner’s lack of fucks for your regard,
just trying to outgrow
your hand-me-downs.
S.S.F.
Excavation:
A Body Study
roots
My first name was given to me by my Tamil emigrant parents with acculturation in mind; a name easy to pronounce and ambiguous in its ethnic roots. My last name honours
my partner’s Yoruba Nigerian heritage. My middle name commemorates my activist grandmother who offered free Arts education to youth from underserved Tamil communities in Karaveddy, a village in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, for cultural affirmation and preservation. Due to the love her community had for her, she was called Saraswathy (Saras for short), a Hindu goddess worshipped for the Arts, knowledge, and learning. I was born around the time that Saraswathy was tragically killed in Karaveddy by the Sri Lankan army. In honour of her legacy, my parents found a Carnatic melody with Saras embedded in it. My identities, stories, and learning have prompted me to share my ongoing excavation of Tamilness as a womyn born and raised in the Toronto Tamil diasporic community.
“Close your legs, sit like a pombulai.”
dancing while tamil
I grew up dancing Bharatha Natyam. I loved it, it shaped my identity and centered my spirituality in a time when representation outside of my community was grossly limited. But, the culture & community around dance, being a majority female space, was also a vehicle to indoctrinate young minds with notions of gender identity, sexuality, body image, race relations and ultimately that our bodies didn’t belong to us but to the community and cultural values they dictate.
“Stay out of the sun, you don’t want to be dark for your upcoming dance performance.” Evidently attributed to historical experiences rooted in enslavement and colonialism. There exists a binary to uphold fair skin as beautiful and darker complexions as undesirable. “Don’t move your hips like that, you’re a Bharatha Natya dancer.” Communicating that tradition and culture have no place for self-expression of gender identity, and specifically, that hip movements are correlated with promiscuity.
“Close your legs, sit like a pombulai.” and “‘Everything is moving around when you dance, it looks allunggollam. Next time wear two bras or go buy something with more control.” Insisting that females are to minimize themselves (even their breasts), limit the space we occupy (the opposite of “manspreading”), and police how we express our bodies as womyn to repel unwanted attention.
“Why are you dressed like a karruvel?” Wearing oversized clothing through my connection to 90s Hip Hop & RnB made me look like a “Black criminal”. My resonance with Black cultures was really a result of Blackness being the closest representation of my richly melanated skin that I saw in mainstream media- the same platform that has and continues to criminalize and dehumanize Black people. Unfortunately, these are notions that many from my Tamil community believe(d), including myself, until I engaged (and continue to) in deep metacognitive and bias awareness work. Hence, the existence of anti-Blackness slights in Tamil (like karruvel) to maintain anti-Black racism and by extension, contribute to upholding white supremacy.
These everyday exchanges as a young girl shaped how I understood my body, race relationships, sexuality, and dark brown skin. The outcomes of this socialization made me excruciatingly conservative in how I expressed my body. It asserted that I only consider intimate partnerships with non-Black cisheterosexual males. This socialization also made me a prisoner to my complexion based on colonial-rooted beauty standards. Ultimately, this was a machine that churned out clones replicating indoctrinated colonial thought of past generations with no understanding of the harm it was causing both individually, societally, and intergenerationally. There were beautiful cultural gems that we learned through this same process, but, I need to call out the harm.
The assumption was that all the dancers identified as cisheterosexual females. So, dance class was the forum to address any cases of dancers spotted with boys in the neighbourhood, and these moments were painfully embarrassing. While intergenerational conversations about boys were unwelcome (unless an intervention), young cisfemales who were attracted to cismales were able to find safety in this community to share experiences with each other. As dancers and young girls, we had the opportunity to talk about our stories experimenting in the forbidden grounds of sexuality, which was really just part of the experience of coming of age.
There was a time when I was the messenger of a love note sent by an akka from our dance school to an anna who was loitering at our annual dance performance. I remember her getting caught. I didn’t understand how because I was the messenger and didn’t tell anyone. We were scolded about it at our next dance class. So, lesson learned, we still needed to be cautious about which girls were hearing these conversations because some had a track record of telling their caregivers (which meant the news would spread like wildfire).
tensions with tamilness
In 2014, I married my sweet partner. A gorgeous and brilliant Black man. My journey as a Tamil womyn, not only marrying outside of my community, but to a Black man, really made me realize the pervasive, violent and unapologetic anti-Black racism that exists in our community. You get a trophy if you marry white, but are ruthlessly disgraced if you marry Black.
The benchmark social construction of credibility is based on the professions people occupy, traits practiced in alignment with the “model minority”, and living by traditional Tamil cultural values. It is a simple and flattened understanding of our complex society. For example, meritocracy is experienced differently based on our many social identities. In fact, I’ve witnessed how the belief that ‘working hard equates achievement’ operates differently even within the Tamil community based on neurotypical or class privilege, for example.
However, I do understand why our community values professional titles. It is a measure of our resilience as emigrants and refugees who have and continue to be systematically minimized and oppressed as Eelam Tamils. It can also function as a loose predictor of our well-being and stability, something that was robbed from most Eelam Tamils in Sri Lanka. But, there is more to our identities that make us who we are. As a first generation diasporic Tamil, I understand my privilege when I make that statement. However, from my lived experience, we hold roles and responsibilities in the larger society we live in that are beyond profession, education, and alignment with traditional Tamil cultural values.
Following our marriage where I was seeking belonging in my community while experiencing judgement, I realized there was a lot of excavating I needed to do within myself. I needed to examine my values; self-determination and self-actualization on my own terms and outside of what is popularly revered as identity & worth in our Tamil community.
excavation
In 2015, I embarked on my excavation journey. One that challenges the notions of gender identity, sexuality, race, notions of beauty, and doing all of this while redefining what it means to be Tamil. I knew this work involved something outside of my profession. As an educator, former instructional leader, writer, and doctoral student, I am easily accepted as credible. These “labels” jive with my community’s values and traits of an outstanding “model minority”.
I wanted to excavate my body through a process that was out of my comfort zone and definitely novel in my community. This excavation would hopefully teach me about both my internal and external self within the context of my Tamilness in Toronto. So, I enrolled for a body-building competition and trained for four months.
The discipline I needed to develop in order to achieve this was incomparable to anything I had done before, not even my Bharatha Natya arangetram. I didn’t know anyone in my community who had done it. I knew I’d ultimately be 90% naked on stage. This act was “provocative” and challenged the boundaries built to sustain a way of life that “honoured” the cultural values I learned as a young dancer.
By competition day, I was so contoured by muscle that my Amma thought I had “crushed my ovaries”. I found her unfamiliarity with everything that was happening to be frustrating yet charming. My Appa just gave me an awkward smile and giggle, proud of my discipline but uncomfortable with the concept. While I was preparing my mind to compete, I was also processing the concerns of my Amma and the fear of challenging many of the cultural messages ingrained in my belief systems that I received as a young dancer. Nevertheless, I continued my excavation.
I hired a posing coach. I was so unaware of how to walk in stilettos I’d purchased from an exotic dancing attire shop that I needed to pay someone to teach me to see my body differently and thereby present it differently. The techniques I was coached through for my upper body was quite similar to how I was trained as a Bharatha Natya dancer. A firm torso, elongated spine and neck, and squared shoulders were akin to the symmetry, strength, and posture foundations used as a Bharatha Natya dancer. Where I was at tension with the messages I received as a dancer was having to move my hips as I walked in heels and arch my lower back to showcase my well-earned glutes. I had to unlearn the shame I felt as I was coached through these techniques. Here I was learning how to highlight parts of my body I was raised to censor. In this process of excavation, I was discovering what femininity meant to me, on my own terms, and it was a liberating experience.
I won in my category. Placing first in the bikini model category and 2nd place in the fitness model category. I posted pictures all over social media, knowing how uncomfortable it made people from my community feel. Thank goodness I didn’t have my dance teacher on my social media platforms though- I’m still afraid of her, respectfully afraid. I even received abusive mails from strangers calling me an “ugly gorilla” since my photos were posted publicly on Dilani Bala’s (my photographer) page. Consider the historical, contemporary, and racist connotations embedded in “ugly gorilla”- this is violence in my Tamil community that I provoked with purpose.
agency in tamilness
This photo series is a compilation of how I’ve learned to embrace my Tamilness as a dark-skinned, Bharatha Natyam trained, strong bodied & minded, social justice seeking womyn who cannot speak her mother tongue, but surely loves her Tamil-Canadian self.
intentionality behind my photos
Photographer: Dilani Bala
1. Juxtaposed my Bharatha Natyam accessories (arakku jewelry, red lipstick, pottu, challangai) with minimal clothing (lingerie, topless, my amma’s saree loosely draped): Challenges the messaging I received as a young dancer about how my body should be carried and clothed as defined by cultural values that were not my own.
2. Highlighted my dark skin to resist shadeism in my community.
3. Muscle Definition: Challenges representations of Tamilness, gender roles and toxic masculinity. Displaying my strong body as a womyn disrupts concepts of beauty and power as they pertain to gender relations.
4. Head Tie (called Gele in Yoruba) made from my amma’s saree: Honours my partner’s Nigerian heritage, embraces his Blackness and the hope for harmony of our races & cultures - in solidarity and across generations.
5. Choice of photographer: Bad ass & brilliant Tamil womyn disrupting popularized notions of Tamilness, it is her heartwork to reveal counter-narratives experienced by racialized and Tamil folx for healing and agency.
I gifted this series to my partner on our one-year wedding anniversary and my excavation journey continues.
Peace and Love,
S.S.F.
KATUSA MEDUSA
Renunciation
Artist Statement
The piece is titled Renunciation and is of a dialectic constructed to highlight the similarities in the political context of Sri Lanka. On one side, it looks at Buddhism and the process of Renunciation a bhikku undergoes - by themselves and of themselves, and on their own volition to reach enlightenment; and on the other, the process Renunciation by the state of people, that creates refugees, with no choice of their own. The renunciation of the self mirrors the renunciation of people.
This piece draws from the experience of some of my relatives having had to flee the country as refugees and my exposure to Buddhism/ Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka.
This was developed as part of The Many Headed Hydra (Emma Wolf-Haugh, Katusa Medusa, Sandev Handy, Suza Husse, Vicky Shajahan & A Collective for Feminist Conversations) on the occasion of Sea Change, Colomboscope Festival 2019, curated by Natasha Ginwala.
LUXSIYA SIVAKUMAR
Kudumba Kuthu Villaku
ABOUT LUXSIYA
Born and bred Londoner, Luxsiya is a British Tamil feminist who spends her days working for The Girls’ Network, a UK charity focused on empowering teenage girls from disadvantaged backgrounds through mentorship. Things that make her happy are naps, sticky toffee pudding, sunshine, board games, and grime music.
Kuthu vilakku. A term that describes the oil lamp that can be found in many Tamil Hindu households, often lit during prayers and on auspicious days. I have very fond memories from my childhood,
when Amma would let me light the kuthu vilakku every evening during our prayers. Although I didn’t know it at the time, this act was significant in instilling a sense of calmness in our chaotic family, even if it was only for a few minutes each day. The light represented hope. It is what kept Amma going and gave her the strength to raise her three children in this big scary world.
Growing up in London in the late 90s, I did not have the conventional nuclear family set-up. At the age of 7, Appa was incarcerated, serving a life sentence and being absent for most of my life. My fiercely traditional Amma, who had been completely dependent on my father since her arrival in the UK from Sri Lanka in the late 1980s, was th`rown out of her comfort zone and had to raise her three young children on her own in a country still alien to her. Her ability to bring up three kind, tough and emotionally intelligent kids without a proper grasp of English or support from family who had cast us off as a burden, is a huge testament to my Amma’s resilience and strength. However, my mother’s role as a reluctant matriarch was met with animosity amongst our relatives and the wider Tamil community.
Like every other parent, Amma wanted the best for her kids and it was no different when it came to schooling. She would always remind us how important education was. Education was our ticket out of poverty. Our chance to prove people wrong and to shine in a world that was out to dim our lights. It wasn’t surprising then that the news Akka would be attending the worst secondary school in our area completely shattered her. She felt like a failure and our extended family would have her believe it too. One particular aunty was quick to point out this wouldn’t have happened if Appa had been around. As a single Tamil mother, Amma was always viewed as weak and incapable. But my mother wasn’t going to let the state determine her daughter’s destiny, so she did the one thing she was good at. She fought. With some help from a family friend, she repeatedly called local authorities until they agreed to switch Akka to the top-ranking state school in the borough.
Against all the odds, she did it, but there was no sound of applause from the community that thrived on the subordination of women.
Luckily for Amma, the state was in her favour when it was time for Thambi and I to transition into high school. In England, siblings have a right to attend the same state school, so that was one less battle my mother had to fight. My high school years marks some of my happiest days. It was one of the few times in my life when I felt like I belonged. I had great friends, teachers who supported me and despite being a proud nerd, I fortunately escaped the torment of bullies. School was my safe haven. It was my escapism from my turbulent life at home. Home represented pain, tears and turmoil. School was my distraction where I flirted with my crushes, had water fights with the boys and taunted the teachers I despised to mask the bitter realities of my life. But it wasn’t long before the two would intersect.
When I was 14, my best friend who was also Tamil, stopped talking to me. Initially, I didn’t think much of it. Like most teenage girls, we fell out regularly over boys, jealousy and MSN scandals, and would make up again within hours. Only the day before, I was at her house snacking on the delicious murukku her mum had made and teasing her younger brothers. Yet things were different this time. The silence went on for more than a week and some of my other friends had stopped talking to me too. I finally decided to address the elephant in the room and confronted her.
“My parents told me to stop hanging out with you because your dad is in prison”. And just like that, I was reminded I was tainted. As soon as she uttered those words, I ran home and straight into Amma’s arms. Without saying a word, I cried endlessly whilst my mother cradled me. It felt like it went on for hours before I could gather the courage to reveal the sad truth to Amma. I didn’t want her to feel my pain. She had been through enough in her life. But she already knew this day was coming. Our own family had stigmatised Amma for being the wife of an incarcerated man. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the Tamil community would do the same. In hindsight, Amma and I needed this to happen. It gave us the opportunity to share our grief and heal. It brought a sense of unity in our fragmented home.
The rest of my teenage years were peppered with many more instances that would remind me that I was tarnished. Whilst all my female cousins had marriage proposals flooding in once they turned 16, Akka and I received none. We were seen as undesirable because we didn’t have a father figure in our lives. The deep-rooted patriarchy within the Tamil culture forced its people not to trust the kids brought up by a single mother. But what they failed to recognise was that Akka and I were the lucky ones. Many of my young female relatives were banned from being in relationships and would inevitably agree to arranged marriages. This was not the case for me. Amma was seen as the cool mum amongst my cousins and South Asian friends because she allowed me to have a boyfriend as a teenager. I was proud to be the daughter of a progressive mother. However, that didn’t last long.
At the age of 17, I was in a relationship with a man who constantly made derogatory remarks about the way I looked and behaved. It reached a point when it became unbearable and was having a detrimental effect on my mental health. When I hit rock-bottom, I decided to confide in my mother for support, only for her to turn a blind-eye to the situation. Her reaction left me feeling helpless and that I deserved the abuse.
These feelings were exacerbated when she continued to stay in contact with my partner even after our break-up. She would have regular phone conversations with him, and he would still come to our house to have dinner. I was confused and angry. Why would my own mother want to be involved with a man who hurt her daughter? Her initial reaction to the abuse deterred me from confronting her. I was left completely broken by both the relationship and the way Amma dealt with the situation.
Things started to look up with my next partner, who picked up the pieces from the damage caused in my previous relationship and loved me for all that I was. Amma also adored him. Why wouldn’t she? He was the embodiment of the perfect son-in-law: Tamil, a civil engineer and with the added bonus of his family being from her village back home. However, things were not meant to be, and after two years together, we separated amicably and went our own ways.
My mother was not happy with this decision. She did not think I could find anyone better for myself and for our family. She accused me of infidelity, and still believes I drove my then-partner away, even though it was a mutual separation. This was heart-breaking, but not shocking. The Tamil culture is heavily influenced by misogyny and there is a constant pressure for women to carry the pride of the family. Amma just wanted me to marry into a respectable Tamil family so the Tamil community would finally view her as a good mother. What she failed to recognise is that it would mean that I would be unhappy, but happiness always comes second to family pride.
With the end of that relationship, the search for my happily ever after resumed. Having tentatively agreed to go on a date set up through a mutual friend, I found myself full of hope at the prospect of getting on with an ostensibly progressive Tamil man. My hopes were quickly shattered when I revealed the shocking truth that my mother chooses to consume alcohol. He frowned upon the thought of older Tamil women drinking, without realising the hypocrisy of taking a young Tamil woman on a date to a bar who would then inevitably grow into the very Tamil woman he disapproved of. Although his reaction initially startled me, I came to the realisation that this was in fact a blessing in disguise. I celebrated my lucky escape from a weak man by treating myself to a G&T.
While I wallowed in the misery of my dating life, things were quite the opposite for my Tamil male friends. Not a single one struggled to find fierce Tamil women to date. I pointed out there were not nearly enough progressive Tamil men to match the number of strong, independent and beautiful Tamil women in the world, only to be met with ridicule. One friend blamed my lack of success with Tamil men on my lack of being a kudumba kuthu vilakku. This was not the same kuthu vilakku I used to light as a child. This was different. It was full of spite. Kudumba kuthu vilakku is the embodiment of the ideal Tamil woman - pure, modest and obedient. But this expression is far from innocent. It carries expectations of women which are damaging and perpetuate oppressive frameworks.
Googling kudumba kuthu vilakku alone returns disturbing content created to shame women who drink, smoke or don’t dress modestly. These women are not alone in their vilification. My own Tamil male friends are perpetrators of this shaming culture. When discussing relationships, a handful have admitted to wanting to marry a virgin despite being sexually active themselves. Others have taunted me and other Tamil girls for drinking alcohol, all the while swigging bottles of Jack Daniels most weekends. However, the biggest factor that was stopping me from being a kudumba kuthu vilakku was my skin colour.
Since birth, I have experienced shadeism of varying degrees from friends, family and strangers. I am the darkest girl in my entire extended family which naturally meant I was referred to as Karuppi, rather than my given name. Aunties constantly tried to whitewash my skin by lathering me in skin- lightening products. On more than one occasion, Tamil men have revealed they would date me if I wasn’t dark-skinned. Why wouldn’t they? The Tamil movies and music videos we watched growing up only showed fair-skinned women. Ask anyone to name 3 dark-skinned prominent Tamil actresses and they will struggle. This is dangerous, as the film industry conforms to Western beauty ideals and propels the notion that dark-skinned women are not beautiful.
For a long-time, I accepted that I was ugly because that is what the world taught me. I was too dark to be a model or an actress. I was too dark to wear red lipstick. Ultimately, I was too dark to be loved. But the rise of social media changed all of that. The growing prominence of movements such as #UnfairAndLovely and seeing women in the public sphere reclaiming their melanin-rich skin broke down my own insecurities. I have also been lucky enough to be in relationships with men who love me for who I am. I am finally in a place where I can say I am beautiful and believe it too.
For a long time, I was ashamed of myself for not being a kudumba kuthu vilakku. I was trapped in the systems of oppression that are entrenched in the Tamil culture. But this changed as I grew up. I started seeing strong, independent Tamil women popping up around me. Prominent British singer MIA alongside independent artists (within the diaspora) such as Navz-47 and Rolex Rasathy taught me to be unapologetically myself. The female Tamil Tigers, who are often forgotten and lost in mainstream feminism, broke down gender biases in the Tamil community by becoming powerful agents of conflict and empowering Tamil women along the way. They represent my definition of what it means to be a Tamil woman. Courageous. Resilient. Powerful. We may not be your Kudumba Kuthu Vilakkus, but we are enough.
Credits
Tamil Futures 2020 Cover
Photo of a shoreline in Sri Lanka.
Image courtesy of Vanessa Vigneswaramoorthy
Table of Contents
Waves rushing to shoreline in Sri Lanka.
Video courtesy of Vanessa Vigneswaramoorthy
To Our Unborn Child(ren)
Collage of author’s family tree.
Image courtesy of Priya Guns
Two Poems
Image courtesy of Anojan Satha
Kudumba Kuthu Villaku
Photo series courtesy of Anojan Satha
Hand-Me-Downs
Photo of a shoreline in Sri Lanka.
Image courtesy of Vanessa Vigneswaramoorthy