Her novel Sembawang was recommended by President Tharman. At 75, she’s not done writing yet

If you picture a literary author as someone cloistered in a study typing feverishly behind a desk, fuelled solely by the power of imagination, Kamaladevi Aravindan has news for you: It’s not.

A typical day for the award-winning writer, essayist and playwright, who writes in Tamil and Malayalam, might involve traipsing through a tropical jungle in Malaysia to research her latest novel-in-progress. Or combing the streets of Geylang to get to know sex workers to write a short story authentic to their experiences.

If she’s writing, she writes at night, in the quiet of the home she shares with her husband, her notebooks and mind overflowing with what she’s seen and learnt that day.

“Writers are observers. If you want to write, you must read a lot, and you must observe all things very carefully,” says Kamaladevi, who was inducted into the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations (SCWO) Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame this year.

At 75, she remains indefatigably observant. Since she earned her first byline as an author at age 14 (for an essay published in a Malaysian newspaper), she hasn’t stopped writing, despite objections from her father, her mother-in-law, and other people in her life who thought a woman’s place was in the home.

To date, Kamaladevi, has written 160 short stories and essays, 18 stage plays, some 300 radio dramas, and five books, among them Sembawang, the 2020 novel that brought her work to a wider audience in Singapore.

In July, the novel was selected by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam as one of his book recommendations for the Presidential Pop-up Library by the National Library Board.

Written in Tamil and translated into English by the older of her two daughters, writer and lecturer Anitha Devi Pillai, it chronicles the lives of Tamil and Malayalee men and women living in Sembawang in the 1960s. The novel draws from Kamaladevi’s own journey of moving from Malaysia to Sembawang in the 1970s as a newly-wed.

Home was a 10-bedroom kampung house amid lush groves of rambutan, mango and banana trees, and weekends were spent watching movies at Sultan Theatre in Chong Pang Village.

“[Sembawang beach] was the first time I ever saw the seaside,” recalls Kamaladevi. “At night, when everyone was asleep, my husband and I would go to the seaside and walk. It was so romantic.”

But Sembawang, shortlisted for the NUS Singapore History Prize in 2021 – which recognises works that celebrate Singapore’s history and heritage – is more than one woman’s memories.

Supported by a National Heritage Board grant, Kamaladevi sought out 50 former Sembawang residents, and dug into crimes and incidents that took place at the time to weave vivid texture into the book.

“Not many people know that Sembawang had a thriving Malayalee community,” shares Kamaladevi, who is Malayalee. Hailing from the state of Kerala in southern India, Malayalees form the second largest sub-group within Singapore’s Indian population after Tamils, with a population of 21,000.

“It was like ‘Little Kerala’, everywhere you went you could hear Tamil and Malayalam in the air,” says Kamaladevi of Sembawang.

Writing in secret

Before Sembawang, home was Labis, a small town in Johor, Malaysia. Growing up, Kamaladevi studied English, Malay and Tamil in school, while learning to read and write in Malayalam from her father, who immigrated to Malaysia from Kerala. A lover of books, Kamaladevi wanted to be a teacher when she grew up so that she could “always be around books”.

At 14, she wrote an essay about April Fool’s Day that impressed her teacher so much that he submitted it to Tamil Murasu, Singapore’s Tamil-language newspaper. The newspaper published the essay in its supplementary section for children, together with a photo of Kamaladevi in school uniform.

For Kamaladevi, it was a moment of pride – and punishment. When a co-worker of her father spotted the article and showed it to him, he flew into a rage.

“The minute I came home, he beat me. He was so angry that this happened without his knowledge,” she recalls. “He told me not to do this again, because he didn’t want my photo to be in the newspaper. And he said we weren’t Tamil, we were Malayalee. [My parents] were not modern people, you know?”

Discouraged, Kamaladevi shared what happened with her teacher. “He was very upset and told me I had to continue to write, because I had the talent. I am grateful that he and other teachers were so encouraging,” said Kamaladevi, who went on to win a Tamil literary competition at 15, beating a well-known Tamil poet.

“There were people who were not happy… they thought, ‘How can a Malayalee girl write so well in Tamil? She’s not even Tamil,’” she says.

Apart from her teachers, her husband, along with one of her sisters, were the first supporters of her writing. “My mother-in-law was not happy about me writing, because there was so much housework to do,” she says. “When we moved to Singapore, I brought all my writing trophies, and my mother-in-law was so upset. She said, ‘What is all this for?’

“But my husband was so proud of me. He loved my writing and told me I had to continue. So I wrote at night, even when I was pregnant. I never stopped.”

Eventually, Kamaladevi submitted one of her short stories to Tamil Murasu, and it was accepted for publication.

“They paid me a little bit of money, like $20, but I was so happy,” says Kamaladevi. “And when my in-laws moved to Kerala, I could finally write in full sprint, with the support of my husband.”

Taking on the stage and the big screen

Kamaladevi’s short stories soon caught the attention of producers at Radio Singapore, who reached out to her to script radio dramas.

“I remember thinking I didn’t know anything about writing dramas, but I took [my daughter] Anitha, who was still a baby, and my husband to the station, and they waited for me in the reception while I had a meeting,” says Kamaladevi. “They taught me drama writing, and soon I was writing for radio and even TV.”

In 1992, she wrote a Malayalam play, Edi Parvaty, Ende Parvathy?, which won her top honours at a drama competition organised by Kairalee Kala Nilayam, a non-profit promoting Indian arts and culture in Singapore.

“I wanted to write about issues happening in society,” says Kamaladevi of the play, which told the story of an ambitious young woman looking for a prospective groom.

Over the years, she continued to write plays, short stories and poems in both Tamil and Malayalam, sometimes tapping on grants from the National Arts Council to fund her work.

She went on to garner awards in Singapore, Malaysia, and India – among them the Karigarsozhan Award from Thanjai University in 2011, and the Tamil Language and Cultural Society’s Bharathiyar Bharathidasan Award, which is given annually to Tamil poets by the Tamil Nadu state government.

In 2014, Mugadugal, from her short story collection Nuval, was selected by the Singapore Writers Festival to be made into a short film. No subject is off limits for Kamaladevi, who finds a story in the everyday occurrences that many might not give a second glance.

An incident shared with her by her engineer husband became the inspiration for Finger, a fictional short story about a migrant worker who gets into an accident at work. Headlines about brothels in Geylang inspired another story about female sex workers in Singapore.

“I went there every day with a friend until I met a woman who was willing to speak to me,” she says.She takes pride in her meticulous research and the bonds forged with her source material. “I don’t just sit around. When I wrote a play about mental illness, I went to a mental hospital in Malaysia,” says Kamaladevi.

“I brought food and fruits, and talked to the people there, and when I got home I cried, because their stories were so sad.” It is a lesson she continues to impart to younger generations of writers, whom she meets through creative writing workshops and competitions.

“It’s not all about your imagination, it’s about your ability to observe, and to use language to narrate that story,” says Kamaladevi. “And your writing must have a message, directly or indirectly.”

Asked if she ever struggled to juggle her work with parenting and running a household, Kamaladevi says simply: “No. During the day, I cooked, and took care of my two children. At night, when everyone is asleep, I write.”

Although she has weathered her share of scepticism, it is the encouragement she has received over the years that has stayed with her. She is now working on a new novel, which she says is set in a jungle, and has elements of magical realism.

“I love writing, and I have received so many positive and kind comments from people all over the world,” she reflects. “Even at this age, I’m still writing, and I’m not tired of writing. I want to keep writing, and I want to die a writer.”

PHOTOGRAPHY Athirah Annissa
ART DIRECTION Adeline Eng
HAIR & MAKEUP Angel Gwee, using Nars & Davines