Exploring karma and rebirth

Continuing our series on the writers shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize 2022, Yomal Senerath-Yapa talks to Shirani Rajapakse

The title of Shirani Rajapakse’s latest collection of poetry – Samsara - lays bare the journey through the landscapes of eternity it proposes to traverse. The seasoned scribe, for whom this is her second shortlisting, is this time moving away from the theme of her previous two collections, “Chant of a Million Women” and “Fallen Leaves” which were about rights, and issues pertaining to rights.

Samsara is an exploration of human nature and how we see ourselves in this swirling cycle of rebirth and death.

“We don’t care to question or Think about the reason why

We are here, lest it

Make us wonder why we

Do things the way

We do…” – “The Karmic Trail”

The poems are “a series of incidents, observations and reflections of what takes place through time and space and how we react to them”.

Shirani has garnered quite a reputation abroad for both her poetry and prose. This came about after her first shortlisting for her debut Breaking News: the win left her feeling at a loss about what to do; since she had reams of writings she thought of publishing a book a

year - an impossibility in the current publishing scene. So she instead sent her material to foreign literary journals, which finally led to her garnering a fan base abroad.

Following this, “Chant of a Million Women” was her first selfpublished book and won a “Kindle Book Award” for poetry.

Another reason for her popularity abroad she says is that she addresses global issues.

“Zuccotti Park Rises” is an early poem about the Occupy Wall Street Movement in the US; “The Shower” that was a finalist in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards is about the holocaust; “The End of Summer” is about the devastation of Iraq and the children caught in the crossfire while “On the Beach” was a response to the bombing of Palestinian children playing on a beach. “I Will Rise” is a poem that was written in response to the firebombing of a

bookshop in the UK. “September” is a poem remembering 9/11…

Shirani’s former guru at the Kelaniya University, Dr Lakshmi de Silva once commented on Shirani’s ‘fluid play of images’.

Says Shirani, “I see the situations I write before I write them. It’s like a movie playing out in my mind where I direct the action that is to follow.”

The images are not static; they can be forceful and somewhat overwhelming or subtle:

“Bright pink bougainvillea running up walls

Spreading over

The roof tiled in a traditional design. Looks like the embroidered chiffon saree I wore

Last night now heaped on a chair, the ends

Lifting gently with breezes wafting inside.” – “Moving in another Plane”

As a practitioner of prose

Shirani has been praised for her stories straddling diverse social milieux.

“Breaking News” is her only collection that’s set in Sri Lanka. The other two collections “I Exist. Therefore I am” and “Gods, Nukes and a Whole Lot of Nonsense” are set in India. Both the latter books were State Literary Award winners.

In “Emerald Silk” the narrator is a young woman living abroad who is trying to break free from the confines of a world she finds alien and unsuitable; the “Boy from Wellawatte” is about a young Muslim man who couldn’t speak good English but returns from abroad with such a pronounced fake accent that even his friends can’t quite understand; “Man from the East” deals with a rather amusing situation where a young Sinhala woman from a middle class family is looking for a bridegroom; “Missing Pieces” details the hope of a young soldier from a remote village whose world is shattered when he loses a leg in battle and has to adapt to a new life; and “Photographs in her Mind” is about a Tamil mother who attempts to go on with life carrying this horrific memory of witnessing her children forcibly taken away by the LTTE.”

“I like narrating stories from varied points of view because we aren’t all the same,” says Shirani. “It’s challenging to get into a character’s mind and try to tell a story from a perspective that isn’t mine. Different voices and experiences bring a certain richness to stories.”