Ep.1 - Bharathy: On Displacement, Integration and Poetry as Autoethnography

Playing amidst bullet wounds on coconut trees and memorialisation through poetry: A reflection on the life of a Tamil refugee who fled to London. 

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How does a child make sense of separation from their father, who has fled war? What is it like to leave behind friends and flee to a new country? To start school afresh without knowing the language? How does one deal with culture shock, racism, and the nightmare of dreaming of a deserted homeland but waking up in a cold, foreign country?

Then, many years later, what does one feel when stepping foot in the island one left behind, now devastatingly shell-shocked from war? When getting a Facebook request from friends back home who survived? And how, amidst it all, does one memorialise what genocide has tried to erase?

In this episode, Thivyaa interviews Bharathy, a Tamil refugee, psychology graduate and inspirational poet (pen name: Amsavalli). We discuss what it was like to flee the post-colonial genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka, and grow up in London as a teenager. We reflect on Bharathy's memories, emotions and the effect of her displacement on who she is today. We also discuss the power of the arts in memorialising the diaspora struggle, and touch upon Bharathy's writings in Tamil and English.

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Key terms used in this episode:
Diaspora - A community dispersed across the world due to war/difficulty in their own country

Tamil - One of the world's oldest living languages

Tamil Eelam or Eelam - The name Tamils give to their homeland (what the world calls Sri Lanka), also meaning 'Tamil Island' or 'Island'
*Note: many Tamils will not refer to themselves as 'Sri Lankan', since the government, which is predominantly made of Sinhalese individuals (Sinahalese = people who speak the language Sinhala) orchestrated a systematic discrimination and post-colonial genocide of Tamils, killing thousands of Tamils and leaving thousands more unaccounted for.

Pottu - Bindi

Veepoothi - A religious ash placed upon one's forehead after prayer, in Saivism

Mullivaikal massacre of 2009  - Often referred to as the end of the 'civil' war (though the genocide is ongoing); this was a key point in the genocide when the Sri Lankan government declared a 'No Fire Zone' to falsely lure many Tamils into this area under the pretence of safety, and then systematically targeted and killed tens of thousands of Tamils. For more information, see the Channel 4 documentary, 'No Fire Zone'.

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Get in touch!

Bharathy's poetry (instagram): @amsavalli.writes
Stories of Migration (instagram): @storiesofmigration_
Stories of Migration (twitter): @SoMigration
Stories of Migration (email): [email protected]