Indran Amirthanayagam in Sri Lanka. Photo: Ravi Ratnasabapathy.

I remember when Adam & I first met at the home of writer and then U.N. official Shashi Tharoor. He was beaming holding Cyrus Cyrus in his hands. I think he had just come to New York from the Harbourfront Festival in Toronto. It must have been 1990. We left the apartment and walked in Midtown together, carrying on an animated conversation over a square radius of about 20 blocks.

I want to make that conversation public, allow readers to walk with us. I am sure we talked of politics that night, of the root of the word: polis, community. Adam discovered that I am a Tamil ambling forever on far away islands, and said, I still remember, “Why do you care so much about roots?” The branches, my friend, and where they go. That’s our subject and our calling.

Where is the sap flowing at the moment? Does it come up from roots or has it flowered into some new kind of tree, a hybrid, a transplant? Let us ask our children for the answer.

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Issue 103 Spring 2008