Sivanandini’s Moments in Culture: Reflection of Jaffna Tamil Cultural Identity

Abstract

Creativity is viewed by many post modern writers as an act of empowering one’s identity and culture. In the collection of short stories Moments in Culture, Sivanandini Duraiswami attempts to recall the socio- cultural lifestyle of Hindu Tamil middle class families in Jaffna, the Northern part of Sri lanka. The objective of this paper ‘Sivanandini’s Moments in Culture: Reflection of Jaffna Tamil cultural identity’ is to portray the diverse aspects of life in Hindu middle class families by capturing the individual experiences expressed by the author. This paper reveals not only the religious and cultural norms, social practices and traditional values of Jaffna Tamils but the agonies and aspirations of an ethnic group and a life which is shattered by thirty years of conflict, in a descriptive way. In short, this study explores the Tamil cultural identity and its finer dimensions to the times we live in.