The Apex Book of World SF 4 edited by Mahvesh Murad is coming in late August. Between now and then, we would like to feature some of the contributors in the anthology.
Deepak Unnikrishnan is a writer from Abu Dhabi, who currently lives in Chicago. His fiction and essays have appeared in Guernica, Himal, Drunken Boat, and others. He is the recipient of the 2014 Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award.
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Tell us a little about your story in The Apex Book of World SF 4.
At one point in my youth, barring my father's father, whom I've never seen, the elders in my immediate family refused to die. This meant I got to spend time with my maternal and paternal great-grandmother, my maternal great-grandfather, both grandmothers, and my maternal grandfather. Such luck cannot last. Between 1983-98, I lost them all, my maternal great-grandmother the last to pass. I was still in my teens.
"Sarama" is a tribute of sorts to a storyteller who gave me some of my most cherished memories of childhood. It is a story about war, recited by an old woman to her great-grandson. Basically, I resurrected my Muthassi -- Malayalam for great-grandmother -- the first woman to hold me and tell me stories, the last great elder in my family to die. She'd be on her cot, I'd be by her side. I think I am four, then I am ten. I'm always listening. Her voice, that voice, it woke you up like brass bands wake you up! I loved this woman. I miss this woman. Sometimes, I'd fan her, as she recited stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata from memory. "Sarama" wonders about the closing moments of The Ramayana, when God in human form has rescued his wife from the clutches of evil. The version I was taught. Over the years, I'd begun to wonder at what cost Lord Ram decided to wage war, and whether there were other stories that needed/deserved to be mined. Stories that not only scrutinized the vanquished but also inspected the victors. I suppose you could say "Sarama" is my way of looking at stories that got buried in the celebrations of conquest.
Why do you feel it is important to read stories from around the globe?
One word, perspective. Not only is it important to know what stories are being told, it's just as crucial to understand how stories can get told. Languages have personalities. English is not Hindi. Arabic isn't Tamil. And a temporary resident from the Arabian Gulf knows fables no New Yorker could grasp, fables mined from a specific time and space, tales worth contemplating. Certainly, some of the musicality and in-jokes may get lost in translation, but that's all right. Stories from elsewhere need mystery, but there can also be familiarity: Ask anyone who knows Hindi to hear songs by the Roma. Wait a minute, this person will say, I know some of these words! Who are these people?
If you could tell people to read one author from your home country, who would it be and why?
The Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim isn't from Abu Dhabi, nor does he live in Iraq anymore, having been granted refugee status in Finland, but he writes about home with such feeling and rage, joy, and sorrow, that one can't help but pause. He makes you think, Blasim. He refuses to let you forget.
