5 Questions with Manisha Anjali
Manisha Anjali was born in Suva, Fiji. She spends her time between Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. She is the founder of Neptune, a research and documentation platform for dreams, visions and hallucinations.
Her debut book of poetry, Naag Mountain was published in April 2024 by Giramondo.
No.1
You are the founder of Neptune, a research and documentation platform for dreams, visions and hallucinations. In your opinion, what can dreams and visions tell us about ourselves?
Each dream is like a kerosene lamp in the darkness of our minds. There are ghosts, gods and trees to commune with. Dreams allow for dialogue with our hidden selves. It is an enchanting way to engage with our unknown stories, our illusions and truths. In my dream journal, I search for mysteries that I can explore or resolve through writing or performance. By recording dreams, I am keeping the fire in my imagination alive. As a writer, it is my responsibility to do so.
No.2
What do you recall as your earliest aesthetic and political interests that connects to the work you make now?
Politically, it is the commodification of humans and the more-than-human world that has always haunted me. My ancestors were girmityas, Indian indentured labourers on Australian-owned plantations in colonial Fiji. They were coerced into crossing the seas to labour on terraformed lands, once lush native forests, now sugar cane, coconut, rubber and pineapple plantations. The dual exploitation of human labour and the earth continues to expand in frightening ways.
Aesthetically, the iridescence of the lands and waters of Fiji, where I was born, and the colourful ritual practice of Hinduism. It is in my formative years in the archipelago that the intersection between the immaterial realms and the material realms became a point of fascination. Years later, I studied cinema in Aotearoa. Films of Wong Kar-wai, Agnès Varda and Krzysztof Kieślowski had a profound impact on my approach to storytelling. I also grew up watching Bollywood films in the 90s. That era can never leave you.
No.3
Tell us a bit more about your debut book, Naag Mountain. How was it conceived and how did it evolve?
Naag Mountain is a narrative poem split into three parts—Paper Jackal, Port Douglas and Mountain. It was written partly by following instructions from dreams, and partly through integrating oral, archival and mythical histories. It came together after a long time of experimentation. I felt compelled to write this book in prose, weaving together fragments of history and dream. I was living on Minjungbal country at the time, near sugarcane fields once owned by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, the entity whom my family was indentured by. The past was very much in the present. I was seeking to restore dignity to girmityas who were misrepresented in the archives. Many were tricked into leaving India, [and] many could not read or write and many suffered violence at the hands of white overseers. I wanted their stories to be known. I wanted my parents’ stories to be known. I could only tell this story in the language of dream.
No.4
There are many renditions of dream-like imagery in Naag Mountain. How does this practice of dream-making inform your writing? What does that mean when put against or alongside colonial histories?
The language of dreams is entwined with my writing because it is entwined with my being. In Naag Mountain, it was the means through which I was able to communicate truth. Juxtaposed against colonial histories, such as indenture in the South Pacific, dream imagery tells a counter-history. The lawless, irrational and ephemeral temperament of dreams corresponds to our true nature, therefore functioning as a form of resistance against colonial exploitation. The presence of dream imagery also offers healing from these ruptured, violent histories, by painting other worlds we all have the keys to.
No.5
What buoyed you while you were in the process of writing Naag Mountain?
The natural world. I was living on the border of New South Wales and Queensland during lockdown. I was surrounded by oceans, rivers and forests. I had a routine that I loved: ashtanga yoga at 6am, followed by a jog around the oyster track that circled a bull-shark infested inlet. I would spend some of the day working on Naag Mountain. Before the sun went down, I would seek wisdom from the sea. I made voice memos about Naag Mountain as I watched waves crashing into the echidna, the ancient basalt columns at Booninybah. Young humpback whales would somersault into the air. It was a time that felt so creative and fertile. In the slowness of lockdown, I was able to align with the nature in the same way I had done as a child in Fiji.
(Credit: Nisha Hunter)
Find out more
A remarkable debut collection by an Australian and New Zealand poet of Indo-Fijian background, the descendant of indentured labourers.
Naag Mountain is an imagined recovery of the little-known cultural inheritance of a displaced and exploited people. Historical figures, folk characters and spirits are entwined in a narrative poem coloured by the surrealism of dreams. A community whose ancestors from India were indentured by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, to labour on sugar plantations in Fiji, receives their dreams as messages from their friends across the Tasman. A mysterious reel of film washes ashore in Port Douglas, depicting harrowing violence under the indenture system. The historical actors walk out of the film and into the world of the living. The community walks into the projection. The naag, the thousand-mouthed snake, conjures a floating mountain, lined with flowering trees, mists and dreams.
Get it from Giramondo here.