‘The challenge was to produce a language, not just use what is accepted as correct’: Sundar Sarukkai

Writer, philosopher, and teacher Sundar Sarukkai’s most recent work of fiction, Following a Prayer, is the story of 12-year-old Kalpana. The young girl, who lives in a village in Karnataka, goes missing one morning. When she returns, she has gone silent. Nothing can get her to speak. What happened in those three days? What prevents her from communicating with her parents and sister except through notes and scribbles? And why does her grandmother’s presence provoke such a strong reaction from her? As the village gets ready to celebrate Deepavali, a rumour spreads that Kalpana will speak on the day after the festival. What will she say, and what will be the impact of her words?

Talking about his novel, Sarukkai said he wanted to write about the way children think, and it was “natural” to ask these questions through his young protagonist. His novel is about the absence of language and yet, he emphasises, language is alive and is in fact a character too in the book. The novel is set in rural Karnataka and regarding this, the author said that even though he wrote the book in English, the “girls spoke to me in Kannada”.

In a conversation with Scroll, Sarukkai discussed another of his recent books,...

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