When you read about someone who looks like you, and perhaps sounds like you, it says that you have a right to exist in this world. The story of this world should not be told through the lens of only one culture. Children of colour the world over need more heroes like them.
India’s ancient scriptures, particularly in the south of the country, have always echoed with whispers regarding a vast lost continent that existed in the Indian Ocean at about the same time as Atlantis existed on the other side of the planet. Thousand-year-old scriptures written in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu mention katalkol, or seizure by the ocean as the reason for the continents’ disappearance.
During the Nineteenth Century, European writers began referring to this mythical continent as Lemuria. Like Atlantis, legends grew up about its advanced technologies and advanced civilisation. Perhaps these stories about flying craft and super weapons have filtered down through the ages, to appear in later Hindu religious texts such as the epic Mahabharata. I speculate that Kumari Kandam may have been the proto-civilisation of India, its survivors having brought their knowledge to India as refugees.
I believe that we are all storytellers, whether we know it or not. We are in the end, each of us, a unique and precious story unreeling within a larger cosmic saga. To you, the reader, in whichever way you can, go and tell your story to others.
Happy reading.
R.K. Singh
P.S. Don’t forget to look up at the stars from time to time.