ALAPPUZHA: Poet Arundhati Subramaniam, the winner of the debut Kushwant Singh memorial prize, underwent an inexplicable near-death experience on a train journey to Mumbai after a vacation in Nepal in 1997. She had no ready physical or psychological explanation for it which lasted for a week.
Subsequently, she became a disciple of Sadhguru (Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev) in 2004. She, a single woman, plunged into the world of books, travelled though the nuances of life and reality and regained her balance.
Ms Subramaniam, born and brought up in Mumbai, was attending the South Indian Writers Ensemble (SIWE) being held at Chengannur near here.
“Through my lines, I am trying to sensitise people to various issues, including feminist politics,” the writer of ‘When God is Traveller,’ which was shortlisted for T.S. Eliot prize last year, says.
Responding to the attack on Perumal Murugahan’s book ‘Madhorubhagan,’ she says: “It is a sign of the deep insecurity when people want to take offence against everything. At the deepest level, creation empowers us to become good listeners. The self is capable of listening to so many tones and shades. It’s such a rewarding experience that the reactive in society becomes irrelevant,” she points out.
