For me, growing up, I felt like there was something fatally and tragically flawed in my nature and that it was my duty to try to avoid falling for that vice.
Shyam Selvadurai
On a personal level, I think the political situation in Sri Lanka is very much on the mind of Sri Lankans in Canada. They have family here and family back home, and it's possible they've lost members in any one of those tremendous, unbearable events there.
When we first moved to Scarborough, there was one Sri Lankan grocery store - now there's a take-out on every corner, each with some specialty or another. You can get what you want the way you want it, and that's very different from the way it used to be.
In the late 20th century, it became possible to travel between cultures, between the old world and the new, with great ease. So when you go back, you take the changed person with you who, in turn, changes things that otherwise might have stayed the same.
I believe that everything we think and feel and do produces a result and that we have to deal with that result - that result is then something that produces another result, so on and so forth, so yes, I do believe in causality.
I don't really know if things go from one life to another. I don't know if there's another life after this. I don't want to know.
I knew I had to write about Canada. I just could not find in literature any examples of the immigrant experience that I've had.
