LONTAR #10 Interviews: Manish Melwani
Tags: Interview, Lontar, Manish Melwani
To celebrate the tenth and final, double-sized issue of LONTAR, we have three exclusive short interviews conducted by founding editor Jason Erik Lundberg. The first is with Manish Melwani, whose “Sejarah Larangan; or, The Forbidden History of Old Singapura” is the lead-off story. Melwani is a rising star in Singaporean speculative fiction; his first published story appeared in LONTAR #7.
Jason Erik Lundberg: “Sejarah Larangan; or, The Forbidden History of Old Singapura” is a reimagining of a long-mythologised nation-building narrative in Singapore: how Sang Nila Utama, a Srivijaya prince from the Sumatran city of Palembang, named the country Singapura (or “Lion City”) after spotting what many now cite as a tiger upon making landfall. What was it about this myth that made you want to tell a “secret history” of the encounter?
Manish Melwani: Like most Singaporeans, I first learned that myth in primary school. It’s been fascinating to revisit it. The story is part of the Sejarah Melayu, or Malay Annals, which is a collection of regional legends. It contains some fantastic stories, including the tale of Badang, who is sort of a Malayan Hercules and a character in my version too.
After reading around the myth in books like Singapore: A Biography by Mark Ravinder Frost and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea by John Miksic, and Between Two Oceans: A Military History of Singapore, edited by Malcolm Murfett, I was struck by a couple of things about Singapore’s ancient history.
Firstly, the archaeological evidence seems to suggest that Singapore was a trading port as far back as the 13th century. There’s a narrative that this only happened recently, or that it only happened when the British came, but Singapore’s location has always been well-placed for various local and regional maritime powers.
Secondly, the accounts are full of blanks and contradictions. There are multiple versions of the Sejarah Melayu, revised by king after king in order to legitimise their own rule. There are also interesting ways in which these legitimating stories tie into regional and global myths and histories. For example, various rulers in South and Southeast Asia claimed descent from Alexander the Great—including Sang Nila Utama.
I wanted to convey this palimpsest-sense of unreliable history and also to examine the relationship of fables and myths to power, while posing a new origin story or “secret history” of my own, one that incorporated the regional historical context. Weretigers show up a ton in the region’s mythology, and it seemed to come together into an elegant and compelling story premise: Sang Nila Utama lands on the island of Temasek, but it’s not a tiger he mistakes for a lion, it’s a weretiger.
JEL: You establish in the story that Singapore was actually the domain of weretigers (called the harimau jadi-jadian) before humans arrived in the 13th century. It is mentioned that “the bite of the harimau jadi-jadian does not transform the victim, not unless you count being killed as a transformation. No, becoming a harimau jadi-jadian is a matter of magic, not of infection.” Why did you feel the need to subvert the common idea of therianthropy propagation in this way, when we’re so used to seeing in media someone transforming into a werewolf after being bitten by one, for example?
MM: This actually came entirely from the stuff I was reading about weretigers in the Malay Archipelago. Many shamans or otherwise spiritually powerful people apparently have the ability to take on tiger forms. There are also stories about regions where the inhabitants are tigers who can take on human forms—I really like the idea that there are versions where the weretigers are primarily tigers, and others in which they are primarily humans.
JEL: Are there any plans to write more stories about these characters or within this premise?
MM: I’d like to write some little pieces of flash fiction set after the fall of ancient Singapura at the end of this story and before the British arrive. But before I do that, I need to do a lot more research about the Orang Laut, who would be the main characters of that story. Also, a character from this tale may or may not be in my short story “The Tigers of Bengal”, published in LONTAR #7.
JEL: Which authors either from Southeast Asia or writing about Southeast Asia do you enjoy reading? Could you give examples of particular works?
MM: Now that I’m done with my graduate degree, which had me mostly reading early science fiction and doing historical research, I really want to read more Southeast Asian fiction. I just finished Cassandra Khaw’s Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef series, which is set in Kuala Lumpur and is horrific, hilarious and amazing. I’ve also been reading a couple of short story collections, one of which is Alfian Sa’at’s Malay Sketches, a collection of beautiful, insightful, complex little stories about various characters in Singapore’s Malay community. Finally, I literally just started reading Eka Kurniawan’s celebrated novel Man Tiger, and so far, it’s incredible; it’s also a weretiger story, but of a completely different set of stripes.
JEL: Shameless self-promotion time: what is next on the publication horizon for Manish Melwani?
MM: “Sejarah Larangan” is one of several historical Singapore supernatural stories that I wrote as part of my master’s thesis. I’m going to be revising and publishing the rest of those stories, and hopefully putting them out as a collection soon. I’ve also got a couple novellas that I’m working on. One is a space opera: a mummy’s tomb story set in the distant future on a dying planet. The other is a near-future science fiction cosmic horror story about an expedition to the Antarctic: it’s my homage to The Thing and At the Mountains of Madness.