She grew up watching her mother clean toilets in a school in Kanyakumari and dropped out after class VIII due to poverty. But today, her painful early childhood has helped her win acclaim in the world of Tamil literature.
E Malarvathi, the 30-year-old recipient of this year’s Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for young Tamil writers, was inspired to pen her award-winning novel ‘Thoopukari’ based on the travails of her mother.
“I hadn’t read much literature before writing my novel. I penned the book just to register the pains of my mother, who is a ‘Thoopukari’, a term used to call a woman sanitary worker in Kanyakumari,” said Malarvathi, whose real name is Mary Flora.
“The pains of my mother being a sanitary worker, made me discover the writer in me. Like her, there are lots of Thoopukaris, whose pli-
ghts are yet to be addressed,” added Malarvathi, who was in Coimbatore recently to address members of Sinthanai Mandram, a literary association of the PSG College of Arts and Science.
Years after dropping out of school, she pursued a B.Litt (Tamil) course through distance mode from the Tamil Nadu Open University.
Malarvathi had developed a taste for literature at a very young age of 14, while she staged a number of plays in her village Vellikodu on the TN-Kerala borders of Kanyakumari.
Later, she also worked as a sub-editor in the Tamil periodical ‘Mudharchangu’ for a brief period.
“After I was informed that my novel was selected for Sahitya Akademi award, I travelled by air for the first time to receive the award in Guwahati in March this year,” Malarvathi recalled adding that she chose not to celebrate the occasion as the recognition came unexpected.
“Nor had I got my writings published in any literary magazine before the award came to me. I feel that I have just started a journey into the world of literature,” said Malarvathi.