A young man and a woman, in the relative freedom of a town, find each other and fall in love. After their secret marriage in a temple, the man takes the new bride, who is most likely from another caste, to his village home where they face the wrath of his family, relatives and the entire village.
It's a simple enough story of inter-caste love, which has been a staple of many a movie and books. However, when it comes to Perumal Murugan, it's not really the plot but the rich details he brings to the narrative, the images he evokes, the tapestry of human relations he weaves, his understated humour, that make you want to return to his writings again and again.
Historian A R Venkatachalapathy calls him the 'chronicler of Kongu,' for etching Kongu Nadu firmly on to the literary landscape. After the nomination for his novel Pyre for this year's International Booker Prize, the vast expanses of Kongu hinterlands, its palm trees, goats, goatherds, farms, barns, barnyards, hills, temples on the hills, men's loincloths and women's dirges are sure to reach many corners of the world.
First Tamil Book to Be Nominated for Booker
Pyre tells the story of Kumaresan and Saroja, the young couple who don't demand much from anybody except the freedom to be with each other and carry on with their life. The story moves simultaneously between the village and the town – before they had found each other and after they are married. Murugan handles his characters with a certain tenderness, which makes you feel like you have an intimate relationship with each of them.
Unlike some of his other novels, Pyre picks up pace quickly and once you are immersed in the story, you want to keep reading it. Anirudhan Vasudevan has done such a seamless translation, the narrative feels quite lyrical – you do not feel like you are reading a book that was originally written in Tamil.
Pyre is the first Tamil book to be nominated for the Booker prize. It's not surprising that this honour has gone to Murugan, who is one of the most interesting contemporary writers in India.
The Resurrection
Since his first novel in 1991, at the age of 25, Murugan has written 11 novels, five short story collections, five poetry collections and a number of essays and nonfiction works. I suppose it will be hard for him to imagine a life without writing.
In 2015, after his hounding by right-wing and casteist groups in his region for his novel One Part Woman, which depicts the social isolation faced by a childless couple, he declared that Perumal Murugan the writer was dead.
In a heartfelt note on Facebook, he wrote:
"This is P. Murugan writing for the person called Perumal Murugan. Writer Perumal Murugan is dead. He is no god. So he will not rise from the dead. Nor does he believe in resurrection. Hereafter only the lowly teacher P. Murugan will live."
However, after the Madras High Court intervened in the controversy in 2016, quashing all injunctions against him, Murugan soon published his celebrated novel Poonachi Or the Story of a Black Goat and a collection of poems called Songs of a Coward: Poems of Exile.
The judges had written emphatically in their judgment, "Let the author be resurrected to what he is best at. Write."
Murugan has stated publicly that the controversy around One Part Woman has taken a toll on him, making him second-guess every word he writes. It has also changed him as a writer, forcing him to adopt a more allegorical style of writing instead of raw realism that animated his earlier works. However, thankfully he hasn't stopped writing.
The controversy, which propelled him to the national limelight, has been a blessing in another way too, especially for the Anglophone readership – more of his works have been translated in English in the last one decade than before.
Murugan has been blessed with a number of able translators who keep going back to his writings again and again. It shows the alluring power of his books, which forces the translators to get absorbed in the Kongu hinterlands littered with palm trees and baked in the scorching sun.
The Constant Presence of Caste
Murugan is probably the most translated contemporary Indian writer. When the English writing in India is dominated by upper class metropolitan writers with urban concerns, the majestic depiction of village life by Murugan stands in acute contrast. I do not know any other novelist who writes about sheep, goats and cattle with as much care and detail as one would be writing about a human character.
Another thread that runs through his writing is the tension around caste. Depending on the plot, it is either pronounced, as in Pyre and Seasons of the Palm or lying just under the surface, as in One Part Woman. While exposing a character's casteism, he doesn't get preachy or dismissive; he rather handles it with the deftness of a surgeon. He rarely resorts to judgment or condemnation of his characters but makes sure that you as a reader always root for the underdog.
The towns in Murugan's novels are a space of relative freedom where caste rules are relaxed and people are less uppity about intermingling. In Pyre, the love between Kumaresan and Saroja blossoms in a town and even after they move to the village, they keep looking towards the town as an escape from the casteist inferno they are engulfed in.
Whether Murugan wins the Booker prize or not, the nomination for his novel will result in more people discovering him and getting lost in the lives of the people and animals of Kongu Nadu.
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