INTERVIEW – THE WEEK நேர்காணல்கள் September 17, 2008 ஷோபாசக்திLeave a Comment on INTERVIEW – THE WEEK By Kallol Bhattacherjee Sometimes, the only choice a boy has is to pick up a gun’, the blog Satiyakadatasi or ‘Speaking the truth in the face of power’ says. Shobasakthi’s book Gorilla gives reasons. Labelled an ‘auto-fiction’, Gorilla is about a child who works for the LTTE. Shobasakthi says the character has him in abundance, when he was a child named Anthony Thasan who at age 15 joined the LTTE more than 20 years ago. The book is his way of reliving his childhood, wishing it was better. Shobasakthi now lives in France, far away from his troubled past. He isn’t the 25-year-old who landed in France as a refugee. He is an activist who champions the cause of the oppressed, and a student of literature and politics. In a way, he tries to be the child that he never got to be. Yet what made him a writer is his experience as a child soldier of the militant outfit. He has seen it all-the mass murders and the shallow graves dug by the LTTE to burn its opponents-and he roamed around the streets shouting ‘Nehru’s grandson is a Tamils’ enemy’. All these, his disrespect for Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi and disagreement with the activities of the Lankan government and the LTTE are brought out in the novel, his second one. He has written non-fiction, plays and a collection of short stories as well. Shobasakthi is now in his late 30s. His family is scattered-parents live as refugees in India and siblings in Europe. He works as a dishwasher in restaurants and in supermarkets, whenever he finds time from his reading and writing schedule. Excerpts from an email interview with Shobasakthi:
