WHEN I came back to live in Malaysia after spending most of my young life abroad, my father gave me a number of books.
There were, among others, ‘The Hikayat of Munshi Abdullah’, ‘The Jungle is Neutral’ by Spencer Chapman, ‘The Malay Magician’ by RO Winstedt, the ‘Sejarah Melayu’, a book on Malaysian birds, a book on Malay feudalism and ‘The Return’ by KS Maniam.
He had already sent me ‘The Malay Dilemma’ by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad when I was an undergraduate Politics and Philosophy student, with an inscription which said, “To be read as Polemic, not Philosophy” so it was clear he was trying to prepare me for my return.
Maniam’s book was the only novel he gave me and the story of a return from living abroad, of a return to one’s cultural heritage and a return to literature after years spent studying philosophy, was profoundly moving and the start of my own reflections on the literature of my country.
At the time there were many talks at places like Skoob Books in Bangsar where writers wrestled with the conundrum of being Malaysian writers writing in English. After a while it felt like you couldn’t go to a literary event in KL without that being the main anguished theme.
At the time, having lived 14 of my 21 years abroad I didn’t speak Malay or Tamil. “Your parents are Tamil scholars”, my relatives would chide me and my sisters. “Why didn’t you learn?”
“We were badly brought up,” we would say jokingly, trying to deflect the painful question.
Why hadn’t we? My parents could both speak and read and write Tamil, but living in Australia and later Hong Kong they had little occasion to use it.
They were both literary and loved reading but they read books in English and we spoke English at home, though they sometimes rather mysteriously used Tamil.
When we went home to Malaysia for holidays my grandmother (who pretended not to speak English even when glued to the TV watching Mission Impossible and therefore obviously able to comprehend) spoke to us in Tamil, and attempted to teach us to read, speak and write the staggering Tamil alphabet of 247 characters.
We’d listen enviously as our cousins and uncles and aunts told funny bilingual stories. The best jokes always seemed to be in Tamil. We had to have punchlines translated.
We were outsiders to our own language. We’d never get past 12 letters of the alphabet before our holidays would end and we’d be whisked away.
Only the cadences of Tamil lingered; a few Tamil proverbs and the lovely, familiar curliness of the sounds and letters.
So when I returned I thought I could pick up Tamil as well as Malay. But I struggled. I’m not good with languages and forgot as quickly as I learned. I felt lost. An outsider.
The KL literati beat their breasts about writing in English. But it was the only language I knew. Did that I mean I could never be, would never be a writer?
It was my father, himself a writer, who pointed out to me that even though KS Maniam wrote in English, he wasn’t writing an English novel. The sounds and rhythms of his English were the sounds and rhythms of Tamil. The cadences were Tamil. And so it was.
“Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of themselves,'' says the Red Queen to Alice, in Alice in Wonderland. It was meant to be nonsense bad advice but I think she was right.
Words are like music and the effect on you the reader, listener and speaker is more than meaning.
Years later, when 5Arts Centre producer Ivy Josiah asked me if I would play Sumathi in ‘The Sandpit’ by KS Maniam, there were many reasons to say yes.
I would get to work opposite Anne James who I had last acted opposite in Romeo and Juliet – she as Tybalt and I as Mercutio, who she slew.
This would be a completely different experience – to play women, to play Indian women, to have a fight, not with swords but with words and even then indirectly.
I would get to work with Krishen Jit for the first time. Krishen who I had known since I was a toddler and who was now for many a theatre icon. We fought politely, we argued with great respect, we became firm friends.
And finally and most importantly I got to speak KS Maniam’s words and I got to try to find the cadence and the rhythms of Tamil that my father had told me were there, on my own foreign-shaped tongue.
My father was, of course, right. He knew his Tamil.
I don’t know how successful I was but I learned a great deal trying to find the sounds.
At a post-show party a few years later I found myself seated next to Maniam. We were both sitting on the floor, eating.
He was a shy man but he leant over and whispered quietly to me, “I like what you did with Sumathi. I liked it very much.”
And then we talked for the first time. And I felt like I was home, that I had returned, that I had found a voice and that made me happy. – The Vibes, December 13, 2020
Listen to a dramatised reading of 'The Sandpit' between celebrated actresses Anne James and Jo Kukathas from this year's George Town Literary Festival here.
