Thanks to my journal readers, to my Clarion class, to my colleagues in the Ph.D. program at Utah, to the members of SAWNET (the online South Asian Women’s Network), and the members of Chicago’s SAPAC (South Asian Progressive Action Collective), all of whom offered support, encouragement, and critique along the way. Extra-special thanks go to Kate Bachus, Jed Hartman, Karen Meisner, Dan Percival, and Benjamin Rosenbaum; you guys give great crit! And finally, much love and gratitude to David Horwich, who spent far too many hours helping me untangle an almost impossibly snarled web of family history and chronology; again, any remaining errors are my own.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More…
About the author
Meet Mary Anne Mohanraj
About the book
Make Sure You Have Enough Onions: Cooking with Mary Anne Mohanraj
Sri Lankan Timeline
Read on
Return to Sri Lanka
Author Recipe: Sri Lankan Curry Powder
An Excerpt from Mary Anne Mohanraj’s Forthcoming Novel, The Arrangement
About the author
Meet Mary Anne Mohanraj
MARY ANNE MOHANRAJ was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1971 and raised in the United States. She received her doctorate from the University of Utah, specializing in postcolonial literature and creative writing.
She came to writing in a decidedly curious manner. “My boyfriend in college (in 1991) was a computer guy—I think I was the only English major in my department who actually used the Internet,” she says. “I found the newsgroups (forums) and, like most people, I checked out the sex newsgroups. I started reading erotica online and was startled to see how bad most of it was—incoherent grammar, unintelligible spelling. I was an English major and had only read good literature. This was my first exposure to really bad writing. I read those stories and thought, ‘Well, I can do better than this!’ Famous last words.”
“I started reading erotica online—this was my first exposure to really bad writing.”
Mohanraj taught composition and creative writing at Salt Lake City Community College and the University of Utah, and currently teaches creative writing in the MFA programs at Vermont College and Roosevelt University in Chicago. She is the executive director of DesiLit (www.desilit.org) and of the Speculative Literature Foundation (www.speclit.org). Prior jobs were “very boring, mostly secretarial,” she says. One experience, however, merits attention: “I got fired from a filing job once, because they said I had ‘a bad attitude about alphabetizing.’ I actually enjoy alphabetizing, so I don’t know what they were talking about. My partner’s job is actually more interesting than any of mine; Kevin’s a mathematician and spends most of his time thinking about what happens in more-than-three-dimensional space. They pay him to do it, too, which is the astonishing part.”
Now at work on a novel, The Arrangement, she is the author of two literary collections—Silence and the Word and Torn Shapes of Desire—and A Taste of Serendib, a Sri Lankan cookbook.
Asked if she observes any beverage ritual while writing, she replies: “I’ll generally go through four cups of tea in a day. I start with Ceylon breakfast tea (two cups), then maybe drink a cup of chai (I like the Stash brand), and if I’m still going in the afternoon I’ll have a cup of Darjeeling. I take all of them with milk and sugar; most Sri Lankans picked up British colonial habits regarding tea. If I have guests or I’m feeling fancy I’ll use some of the gorgeous loose tea I brought back from Sri Lanka, and I might even brew it with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. But most days I’m focused on work, and for me tea bags work just fine. I’ll often make my tea with a book in my hand. Once I burned my arm pretty badly with steam from the kettle because I was caught up in a good part of a book and wasn’t paying attention.
Mohanraj lives in Chicago.
“I’ll often make my tea with a book in my hand. Once I burned my arm pretty badly with steam from the kettle.”
About the book
Make Sure You Have Enough Onions
Cooking with Mary Anne Mohanraj
Food plays a crucial role throughout Bodies in Motion . Below is an excerpt from Mary Anne Mohanraj’s cookbook A Taste of Serendib.
Make sure you have enough onions. This is critical. You always need more onions than you think. A three-pound bag might be enough—better to get two just to be safe. When I first started cooking in college, my roommates were amazed by how many onions I bought. They would flee the kitchen with their eyes burning while I was chopping. And when it came time to cook the chili powder (“fry it till it makes you cough”), they flung open windows or left the apartment altogether. But they always came back to eat when the meal was ready.
In college was the first time I cooked entire meals—and was also the first time I cooked for anyone outside my family. I was at the University of Chicago, many states away from my mother in Connecticut, and it wasn’t long before bland dorm food had driven me to attempt to reproduce her curries.
She never taught me how to cook; growing up I had one kitchen chore: chop the onions. I must have been about age twelve or so when she first trusted me with a sharp knife. She set me up at the cutting board with the knife and three onions, enough for a single dish. She showed me how to cut off the ends, slice the onion in half, and peel it. Then she had me slice the length of the onion as thinly as I could. When an onion half is being sliced, you turn it, holding it firmly, and cut crosswise making a fine dice. Practice until you can do this quickly—despite what you may hear about keeping onions cold in the fridge or putting a slice of bread on your head to suck up the fumes, cutting them quickly is the only way I know to effectively reduce tears.
I never cut them as finely as my mother did; I wasn’t a particularly careful teenager and often my chopping was more a matter of five cuts along the onion’s length, rather than the ten or fifteen that she required. My mother mostly put up with my coarsely chopped onions, though occasionally she’d take the board away and finish the job herself. Her knife flying across the board, neat mounds of tiny onion pieces would pile up. When the chopping was finished she would slide the onions into a large pot, add two large cooking spoons of vegetable oil, and start sautéing them over high heat. Once I grew halfway competent at chopping onions she began to let me stir them.
Chopping and stirring—these seemed to be the most tedious parts of cooking, and it was all I was allowed to do.
“Despite what you may hear about keeping onions cold in the fridge or putting a slice of bread on your head to suck up the fumes, cutting them quickly is the only way I know to effectively reduce tears.”
We came to America when I was about two and a half. I grew up in Connecticut eating cereal or toast for breakfast and a sandwich of cold cuts or a mass-produced hot meal at school for lunch. My dad was a doctor, but my parents were careful with money—we only ate out at real restaurants on birthdays or other special occasions. So I mostly had very simple American food during the day and I had my mother’s cooking every night—usually plain white rice, a meat curry, and a vegetable. If we had guests, then we might have appetizers (fish cutlets, meat rolls), more vegetables, more meat, and accompaniments (chutneys, sambols)—but mostly it was rice and curry. Yet I was never bored; every night it was a little different.
A lot of people think their moms are the best cooks in the world. I won’t claim that. I do know that my mother was and is considered a very good cook, not just by me but by everyone we know. Of course part of it was that she had the time—my father worked and she raised us. She kept a spotless house and took similar care with her cooking. As I grew up I knew fewer and fewer people who cooked like that—people who really cared how finely the onions were diced and how long they’d been sautéing. Most of my college friends couldn’t cook at all—or if they could they could only make spaghetti. If they were brave enough to sauté a little ground beef to toss into store-bought sauce they were culinary wonders!
So in college I started trying to cook too. I call
ed up my mother and asked for her beef and potato recipe (still my favorite). I was frustrated that she hadn’t somehow magically infused her cooking ability into me, but I realized that it would have been difficult for her to even teach me how to cook; I spent most of my teenage time either studying, reading novels, or talking on the phone. If she had tried to get me to sit still long enough to teach me to make a dish from start to finish I would have undoubtedly complained. I know I complained about all that onion chopping and frying.
“As I grew up I knew fewer and fewer people who cooked like my mother—people who really cared how finely the onions were diced and how long they’d been sautéing.”
I couldn’t make the dish properly at first—I didn’t have the right spices for the meat. I couldn’t go to the store and buy what they call curry powder! That is fine for northern Indian cooking but it’s nothing like what we use. In Sri Lanka the spices are dry-roasted separately, then ground and mixed together. They become dark and very aromatic; it’s a flavor completely unlike what you’d get from using Indian curry powder, and the dishes turn out a dark brown rather than a pale yellow. These days I take the time to go to the Indian grocery store, buy bulk spices, and make my own Sri Lankan curry powder. It’s easy with a coffee grinder dedicated to spice grinding, and slowly roasting the spices, stirring occasionally, can be a pleasant way to spend a mellow hour. Back then I waited for my dad to pack up some curry powder and send it along.
“These days I take the time to go to the Indian grocery store, buy bulk spices, and make my own Sri Lankan curry powder.”
Some photos from Mohanraj’s 2005 trip to Sri Lanka appear on the following pages.
Sri Lankan Timeline
Fifth centuryB.C.: Migrants from India settle on the island. The most prominent group were the Sinhalese. The prehistory of Sri Lanka is still very unclear, as the main source for reconstruction is the Mahavamsa, written by Buddhist monks in the sixth century A.D. (or possibly later) and possessing a strong religious bias. The original Sri Lankan tribespeople disappeared within the next few centuries, either through intermarriage or death.
Third century B.C.: Tamil migration from India begins.
1505: The Portuguese arrive in Colombo.
1815: The British become first European power to control the entire island, now known as Ceylon. They bring in Tamil laborers from southern India to work tea, coffee, and coconut plantations.
1833: English is made the official language.
1931: The British grant Ceylonese the right to vote.
1948: Ceylon gains full independence in the wake of India’s 1947 independence.
1949: Indian Tamil plantation workers are disenfranchised.
1956: Solomon Bandaranaike is elected Prime Minister on a wave of Sinhalese nationalism. Sinhala is made the sole official language. Sri Lanka witnesses its first ethnic clash since independence when Tamil civilians are set upon by Sinhalese mobs.
1959: Bandaranaike is assassinated and succeeded by his widow, Srimavo, the first female elected head of state in the world.
1972: Ceylon changes its name to Sri Lanka. Buddhism is given a primary place as the country’s religion, further antagonizing the Tamil minority.
1976: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), one of many separatist groups, is formed under the leadership of Velupillai Prabhakaran.
1983: Thirteen soldiers are killed in an LTTE ambush, sparking anti-Tamil riots which led to the deaths of an estimated several hundred Tamils. Conflict develops in the north between the army and LTTE.
1987: Government forces push the LTTE back into the northern city of Jaffna. The government signs accords creating new councils for Tamil areas in the north and east of the country and reaches agreement with India on deployment of an Indian peacekeeping force.
1990: Indian troops leave after getting bogged down in fighting in the north. Violence escalates.
2000: Norway says it will act as an intermediary in a push for peace.
2001: Britain labels the LTTE “terrorists” under a new antiterrorism law designed to halt funding and support for UK-based militant groups.
2002 (February): The government and the LTTE sign a permanent cease-fire agreement, paving the way for talks to end the long-running conflict. The peace initiative is sponsored by Norway.
2002 (December): During peace talks in Norway the government and the LTTE agree to share power. Under the deal, minority Tamils would have autonomy in the mainly Tamil-speaking north and east.
2004 (July): A suicide bomb blast Colombo—the first such incident since 2001—raises fears for the fragile peace process.
2004 (December): More than thirty thousand people are killed when massive waves generated by a powerful undersea earthquake off the coast of Indonesia devastate coastal communities. Hundreds of thousands are forced from their homes. The government declares a national disaster.
2005 (June): A deal is reached with the LTTE to share nearly three billion dollars in tsunami aid among Sinhalas, Tamils, and Muslims. The Sinhala nationalist JVP party pulls out of the governing coalition in protest.
Read on
Return to Sri Lanka
I hadn’t been back to Sri Lanka in many years, due mostly to civil unrest in the country. But I was determined to make a trip after the publication of Bodies in Motion . The following essay about my trip back is from a work in progress.
“Don’t worry—you can pass,” she said, her voice low, her hand reassuring on my arm.
I’d just finished reading from my new book, Bodies in Motion, at SALA, the South Asian Literature Association academic group. A pretty, dark-skinned woman had walked up to me; her nose was pierced and she looked much like many of the women I had seen the last time I was in Sri Lanka nine years before. Of course, she could have been South Indian instead. I couldn’t tell the difference between a Sri Lankan and an Indian on sight. We started talking about my upcoming trip to Sri Lanka. She hadn’t been back since she was a little girl; she was Tamil too. Her family had emigrated to India during the troubles. As a teenager she’d wanted desperately to get her nose pierced. Her father would only allow it if she promised him she would never go back to Sri Lanka. With her nose pierced she could never pass for Sinhalese.
“It had been more than two years since the cease-fire, but the memory of two decades of civil unrest was still vivid in the minds of expatriates like my father.”
My own father had worried about this trip. He told me over and over again to stay with the white tourist groups, with the hotel guides, and to never go anywhere by myself. Not even to temples, not even in the daytime. It had been more than two years since the cease-fire between the Tamil Tigers and the Sinhalese government, but the memory of two decades of civil unrest (the “troubles”) was still vivid in the minds of expatriates like my father.
In 1983, I was twelve and was going to go back by myself to spend a summer with my grandparents. A few days before I was to get on a plane my father received a telegram from SriLanka. Don’t send her; there’s trouble coming. He cancelled my flight. At the beginning of July there came word of major riots in Colombo, the capital—of thousands of Tamils dead, killed by their Sinhalese neighbors.
That month marked the start of almost two decades of civil unrest. Many Tamils (those who could afford to) abandoned their homes, their friends, and their country. They flew to India, Canada, England, Australia, America—wherever someone might be willing to speak for them, to take them in. My aunts started arriving in the States, one after another; it wasn’t long before my mother’s eight siblings had all come to America or Canada.
In 2002, after extended peace talks in Oslo mediated by the tireless Norwegians, a cease-fire was negotiated between Prabhakaran, the leader of the Tamil Tigers, and President Kumaratunga. The cease-fire had held, unlike others before it, and so in 2005 I planned to go back to Sri Lanka. To research, to remember.
"My parents were Sri Lankan Tamils, but I couldn’t speak Tamil, couldn’t tell a Tamil from
a Sinhalese on the street. What did being Tamil have to do with me?”
Now that the cease-fire had held for a few years, I’d persuaded my father that it would be safe enough for me to go back. To be honest, I thought his concerns were overstated, overwrought. I was a permanent resident in America; I had lived there for thirty-one of my thirty-three years. My parents were Sri Lankan Tamils, true, members of the minority group, but I couldn’t speak Tamil, couldn’t tell a Tamil from a Sinhalese on the street. What did being Tamil have to do with me?
And yet here was this woman, at an academic conference in Philadelphia on a winter’s night in December, telling me that, yes, I could pass.
I didn’t know what she meant. Was it my light skin that would protect me? Would the features of my face not reveal me as Tamil? I couldn’t tell the difference myself, though either of my parents could often tell—by glancing at a face or overhearing a few words—not only whether someone was Tamil or Sinhalese, but also which city or village they were from. I was blind and deaf to such nuances; raised in America, I could tell a Southern accent from a Boston accent, but that wouldn’t be much use to me in Sri Lanka. Did it matter? I was just going to be there for a few weeks, as a tourist.
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