AustLit

'Arguing that the past informs our present and indeed our future as migrants, this essay focuses on the history of movement and interaction of the earliest Sri Lankans who emigrated to Australia in the late nineteenth century. Rather than follow a sequential narrative arc, I use a personal essay form that allows me to humanize the migrant by identifying imaginatively with the migrant's sense of self, and through that strategy, question assumptions about singular national, ethnic and religious identity in the light of transnational border-crossings.' (Publication abstract)

'But he was lying there beside her, waiting for her answer. A stranger. They were strangers. She turned slowly away from him, towards the window. And against the bright blue sky, she saw the storks flying away in formation, an arrow in the sky. They’d started their long journey at last, back to their other home. They’d dared to dream again. And roam the skies for something they’d loved and lost, perhaps.

'‘Perhaps,’ she said turning back.

'In poetic vignettes set against the fascinating exotics of Australia and France, Chandani Lokugé weaves a haunting and meditative story on the spectral gains and losses of travel, the nature of its transience. Through it, she dignifies with grace and tenderness, our unassuageable yearning, when we have lost everything and even ourselves, to anchor to something, someone, somewhere, and the unexpected moment of our arrival.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Aruni returns to the island of her birth, Sri Lanka, aching to discover the truth about her mother, the wild and sensual beach girl, Mala. Happy for the first time in her life, Aruni believes she has found the place to which she belongs. But as the tragic story of Mala’s life unfolds, Aruni finds that belonging makes its own relentless claims …' (Synopsis)

'I go down to the river, unheeding my mother’s disapproval. I dip into the lazily flowing water. Here, at least, nothing has changed.The bath-cloth balloons around my body and I press it down. I loosen my hair and let it spread where it will. I open my hands upwards on the water’s surface, languidly remembering. All, that is familiar. The promise. The promise of life. As a young woman in Sri Lanka, Manthri marvels at the promise of life and yearns for a future of fulfilled dreams. Years on, she finds herself in a loveless marriage, in a foreign land, and estranged from her two Australian children. Torn between an idyllic past to which she cannot return and a present that breaks her heart, she never loses touch with those dreams, nor abandons her passionate enchantment with life. As a young woman in Sri Lanka, Manthri marvels at the promise of life and years for a future of fulfilled dreams. Years on, she finds herself in a loveless marriage, in a foreign land, and estranged from her two Australian children. Torn between an idyllic past to which she cannot return and a present that breaks her heart, she never loses touch with those dreams, nor abandons her passionate enchantment with life.' (Synopsis)