The award-winning author who used her prize money to feed her four kids

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Shankari Chandran. The 49-year-old is the author of novels Song of the Sun God and The Barrier. Her latest, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, won this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award.

“I told myself very clearly that I must accept that this novel wouldn’t get published.”Credit: James Brickwood

MONEY

You grew up in Canberra, the child of two doctors. What was money like growing up? We never wanted for anything, but grew up listening to Dad tell us that when he was a child in Sri Lanka, he had to walk miles to school and if he had a glass of falooda – a sort of rose-syrup milkshake – he had to share it with his three brothers.

Classic. But when it’s a migrant parent, all that sense of hardship is compounded, right? Absolutely. So we grew up with an awareness that my parents – my father, in particular – were entirely self-made; they didn’t have everything that they needed.

How did that affect your attitude to work and money? It breeds a kind of anxiety that you’ll never have enough, particularly if you’ve come from a country where the government has the potential to take everything away from you – including your property and children. Hence, my professional life has always involved a tension – between doing commerce law and becoming a lawyer versus pursuing a life in the arts.

And how have you managed that balance between artistic pursuit and financial stability, particularly as the parent of four kids? Very badly. I try hard, but haven’t yet worked out how to be comfortable with the prospect of a life of artistic richness but financial penury while having four dependents who, in the current economic climate, could remain dependent for the foreseeable and unforeseeable future.

In July, you won the Miles Franklin, which comes with a $60,000 cash prize. What did you do with the cash? Feed the children, I suppose? Oh, probably. They don’t stop eating.

Did you treat yourself to something special, though? On the advice of, like, seven cousins, I bought myself clothing other than trackies. Three dresses, including this one.

DEATH

Since your parents are doctors, am I right to assume that death wasn’t a taboo subject for you growing up? They’re Hindus and doctors, so there’s a clinical and indoctrinated detachment. Hindus believe that life and death are part of a continuous cycle and that our purpose is to free ourselves from that cycle. So when people die, they can be emotional about it, but also very restrained.

Does being Tamil – with ancestral roots in Jaffna in Sri Lanka – keep you mindful of historical persecution and genocide? Absolutely. That’s why my writing spends so much time in that space of death: it’s a fundamental part of our history. I look at Jaffna and the north and the east and think, that could very easily have been our life if not for the choices made by my parents and grandparents. We are the lucky ones. We were not pulling our children out of a lagoon. We were not covering their bodies with ours to protect them from mortar fire. We were not running through burning villages. We were in Sydney, watching it all unfold on the news. That makes me feel that I have a responsibility to sit in that space and remember it and record it. To use storytelling and fiction to do that feels like a responsibility.

You were about to give up on writing altogether after finishing Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens. Why? Sales for my second novel hadn’t been high and my third manuscript didn’t find a publisher, so I definitely felt a sense of grief when I began writing this novel. I’d told myself very clearly that I must accept that this novel wouldn’t get published, that this was the end of my publishing career in Australia, and that it was okay for me to keep writing just for myself – and perhaps 300 cousins. It wouldn’t be for a wider audience.

So does winning the Miles Franklin with Chai Time represent a kind of rebirth? Forget about the award: having a new publisher – Robert Watkins at Ultimo Press – who believed in me gave me such hope and encouragement. It felt like a real partnership for the first time; I felt as if I had a publisher who was backing me. It was so energising. And now two more books are coming out next year.

BODIES

Did you feel comfortable in your own skin, growing up in Canberra? I don’t think I ever felt comfortable in my skin growing up.

Why? Because I’m physically awkward, socially anxious, shy and introverted and a little antisocial. This is a terrible combination.

Classic writer, though. Classic writer. I’m incredibly uncoordinated, too. Then, on top of all that, for the longest time I was the only brown girl in a largely white environment. Back then, the only kids of colour in Canberra were the kids of diplomats. There was a very, very small Tamil community. The South Asian community originally stuck together because it was so small and then, as various regional conflicts broke out, we separated into our own ethnolinguistic lines. Plus, I was extremely hairy. Sri Lankan Tamil women are gifted with extra body hair, facial hair and childbearing hips!

Are you more comfortable now? Yes, for lots of different reasons. One: I invested in permanent hair removal. Two: at least four sets of medical teams have seen my vagina. Also: one should not seek physical validation from people around you. But it does help that my husband is super-hot.

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