This question was submitted on Instagram:
“I’m trying to rewrite Silappadikaram. I have a draft but I’m afraid of it. It was my thesis! It was dogshit. How do I work up the courage to fix it and keep at it?”
That sounds like a beautiful project! I still remember when my mother told me the story of Kannagi as a child and reading the Amar Chitra Katha comic book retelling of it.
If you want courage, I would meditate on just how beautiful and transgressive of a story it is and how lucky we are as Tamil people to have it as one of our founding poetic works.
I won’t say it’s progressive in our modern sense, but the way it represents female anger as purifying is something that would still disturb, let’s say, more “traditionally minded” people. And paying attention to women’s anger instead of dismissing it outright is still something we struggle with.
But I think more fundamentally, like the Bhagavad Gita says: all you’re entitled to is your labor, not the rewards you imagine coming from it. So lose yourself in the labor, and try to find it fun and exciting for its own sake. Don’t fixate on it as a finished project, and soon you’ll have something beautiful.
