RELIGION

In Seven Moons, Maali thinks of himself as an apolitical atheist who is racially indifferent. What about you? I was brought up a Sinhalese Buddhist, so I’m the majority. But “Sinhalese Buddhist” is a political invention. There’s no such thing; there’s Buddhism and there’s the Sinhalese language. I also went to an Anglican school. These days, I have an app that helps me to meditate and, on a good day, I do some yoga. So I suppose I can put myself in the camp of being Buddhist. But I don’t do the rituals or go to temple. It’s not a secret: I share a lot of Maali’s beliefs, such as, “How can there be justice when we’ve seen all of this stuff happen?” Maybe I’m not as idealistic as him: he believes there’s hope and that the actions of one person can change things, whereas I’m more a Generation X slacker. I’m not quite Maali, but I’m not a million moons away from him, either.

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What do you believe happens after we die? Well, I wrote a book [The Seven Moons] about the afterlife! I read the religious texts, the philosophers, the near-death experiences, the neurologists. The fact is, no one knows. That’s what we know: no one knows. And that’s the thing I hold onto. My wife’s Christian; my family and hers, we have our religious beliefs and our kids are exposed to those. But I also talk to them about the “no one knows” philosophy. What happens after we die? I’d like to be surprised, but I don’t think I will be.

Do you have any rituals or superstitions when it comes to sitting down to write? I’m not sure they’re rituals. I light a candle, adjust the lighting, select the music, set the mood. That’s how I waste the first hour. The most important ritual is starting early: everything happens in the first two hours. After that, kids wake up, Facebook wakes up, the phone starts pinging. But having this place where no one’s going to talk to you … Sometimes I scribble, sometimes I type, sometimes I make notes, sometimes I read. But I turn up, every day.