Hello and welcome to Meet the Writers.
I'm Georgina Godwin.
My guest today began his career as a lawyer in private practice in London
and Paris and worked for many years across all aspects of film and television development,
production and distribution.
He's a graduate of Dartmouth College, Columbia Law School,
the Sorbonne, and the University of Cambridge.
He's of Tamil heritage and a citizen of multiple countries.
Ramir Ali, welcome to Meet the Writers.
Thank you so much, Georgina.
Thank you so much for having me.
So we're speaking on the outskirts of the Gaul Literary Festival in Sri Lanka.
Tell me about Gaul and the festival.
So Gaul is an absolutely beautiful colonial town.
It was built mostly, I think, by the Dutch in the 16th century.
And it really is this perfectly preserved vestige, much,
much better preserved than what you generally see in South Asia.
It's interesting because of how well preserved it is.
It actually does, I think, carry its colonial past in a lot of ways.
You do really feel it in ways that are both good and a little bit more intense.