NOVEMBER 2017
Monsoon Journal
A parfait media publication
World News
‘‘I SAW IT WITH FRESH EYES!’’ Interview with Thulasi Muttulingam BY Shashini Ruwanthi Gamage (7 October 2017)
“REPORTING ON TAMIL PEOPLE TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD, I COULD SEE MANY THINGS THAT FELLOW TAMIL JOURNALISTS MISSED BECAUSE I SAW IT WITH FRESH EYES” hulasi Muttulingam is the creator T of Humans of Northern Sri Lanka, a Facebook page dedicated to telling
stories of people and communities in the North of Sri Lanka. She is also a journalist and feature writer. In this interview, Thulasi talks about having grown up in the Maldives, her return to Sri Lanka, her journey into journalism, her passion for writing about social issues, and her latest research-based work on women, labour, and migration. You grew up in the Maldives, mainly because your parents were compelled to leave Sri Lanka after the 1983 riots. This engagement your parents had with the riots and having to grow up away from your culture of origins, did that shape your thinking and identity in any way? Definitely. My parents did not tell us much about Sri Lanka, except that they had fled the country at a very dangerous time. So, that was the only thing I knew about Sri Lanka. Growing up, I was a history buff. I liked to learn about other cultures and histories. I was always reading in the library. I tried very hard to get books on Sri Lankan history and culture, but I could not find any. Such books were not available in the Maldivian libraries or the school. You got books on American history, British history, and Indian history, but there weren’t any on Sri Lankan history. So, that was always a gap in my life, wanting to know more about my country and my culture and being completely removed from it. Within the family unit we had Sri Lankan food and Sri Lankan-type parenting. But outside the house it was the Maldivian culture, which is completely removed from Sri Lankan culture. It was kind of hard, growing up in that dichotomy.
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What made you come back to Sri Lanka?
What are some of the work you have done in your career in journalism?
I was 21 years old when I came back to Sri Lanka. I came on my own. This was when the ceasefire was signed. People who fled the 1983 riots, like my parents, tend to live in a time warp where they constantly think of Sri Lanka as a very dangerous country. They did not want to come back. By the time I was 21, I took a decision to go back to Jaffna. I came here and stayed with relatives in Jaffna for a year. That was very hard to take, simply because I was not at all prepared for Jaffna. Jaffna itself had also opened up since 30 years of being shut. They were not prepared for me, wearing pants, talking English, and having opinions for a woman. Most children who grow up anywhere else would have this common experience of being told that they did not belong there. And they are asked to go back home to where they belonged. That is especially true of South Asian countries because you can’t become citizens there. I continuously heard that growing up in the Maldives – that I didn’t belong there. So, I completely by-passed Colombo and came to Jaffna. I had to be home, on my own soil.
Straight after the College of Journalism, I joined the Sunday Times. That was quite interesting. I learned a lot there. I was there just under a year and then I got a scholarship to the Asian College of Journalism. At the Sunday Times, I was a cub reporter and I did not know what I was getting until I was assigned to cover certain stories. I wrote a lot but not all of it got published. But it was a good place to start because there were many seniors in the field there and you were given the opportunity to report on diverse programs, such as drama, theatre, workshops and many other kinds of
articles. I enjoyed my time at the Sunday Times. After I came back from the Asian College of Journalism, I joined the Sunday Observer, purely because I wanted more space to publish my writing. I spent a year there. I then joined the Ceylon Today. I learned a lot there because it was a paper about to re-launch and I joined before its inception. There we had to be allrounders at everything – proofreading, layout, editing, sub-editing, writing news, and features. It was quite interesting, launching a paper and being able to do everything round the clock. It was very demanding but also very educational.
You seemed to be doing a lot of reading, especially since you were a child and you also got into a career in journalism. Is there a link between this love you have for reading, writing, and journalism? Definitely. The only thing that I could do was write, which was a direct extension of my reading. But my parents being Sri Lankan, they were horrified of the notion of a daughter writing as a journalist in Sri Lanka. So, they made it very clear from the beginning; one, you are not going back to Sri Lanka. Two, you are not becoming a journalist anywhere. Three, you are not studying humanities. So, I had to study science for my O/Levels and A/Levels. Then I had to get into CIMA and accountancy. But I finally made a decision and joined the Sri Lanka College of Journalism. How did you start, as a journalist in Sri Lanka? When I started, I had to promise my parents that I would not write anything political. At that time, journalists were getting killed and abducted. The Tamil journalists, in particular, had to be extra vigilant. Anyway, I was mostly interested in feature writing. I was not very interested in hard news. From the beginning, I was a feature writer, sitting in features departments, writing about social issues, which is what I still do.
Thulasi Muttulingam
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