Merging Fact, Fiction and Myth: Reading TD Ramakrishnan’s Sugandhi Enna Aandaal Devanayaki as a Historiographic Metafiction

Abstract

TD Ramakrishnan’s novel Sugandhi Enna Aandaal Devanayaki is a mixture of the mythological, metaphysical and historical into a fictional space which transcends the boundaries of nation. The novel is a quest for retelling the historical trauma of Sreelanka. In the search for Sugandhi a Tamil liberation activist, the narrator stumbles upon the mythical Sugandhi from the folklore, creating tension between faction and reality. In the search for the mythical Sugandhi Ramakrishnan uses ‘SusinaSupina’ and arrives at Devanayaki belonging to 7th century AD Pallava Dynasty. As fact, fiction and myth blur into the contemporary social space, the myth of Devanayaki merges with Rajani Thirinagame creating the notion of the alternate history from a female perspective. In the novel History blurs into myth, reality into fiction, contemporary into past, individual into society and body into spirit.TD Ramakrishnan deconstructs the millennium old Tamil- Sinhalese political history using the alternate history from mythology and folklore. This paper is an attempt to read the novel Sugandhi Enna AandaalDevanayaki as a Historiographic metafiction.