Leena Manimekalai

Dhanushkodi, the Indo-Sri Lankan border town, is the crucible wherein History is brewing this concoction of defeated lives and exhausted dreams. Manimekalai, the filmmaker, Soori, a half-wit Sri Lankan Tamil Refugee, Munusamy, the fisherman, Rosemary, the social worker in Jesuit Christian Refugee Services, try hard to retain their sanity in this mad jumble. Their interactions with the dead or living refugees, their skirmishes with the Indian and Sri Lankan States, their personal lives overrun by external events - form the kernel of this narration.

The ten anthologies and eight long poems of the Sangam age are the oldest and most distinguished body of secular poetry extant in India, of which women poets were a very strong presence.