In Perumal Murugan’s Pyre, the lyrical notes of Ilaiyaraaja’s Aathu Mettula (in the 1980 Tamil film Gramathu Athiyayam), and Ceylon Radio echoing from a transistor are inseparable from the simmering love between Kumaresan and Saroja. The soda shop worker nestles a radio to his chest—dreaming of his maiden “shining in the sunlight”—and faithfully ferries it back on a bus during a visit to his hometown on a rock in Kattuppatti, Tamil Nadu (TN).
Neighbours and relatives deliberate that the “radio box” contains a man the size of a little finger, telling stories or releasing voices that fill the wind into the world. The next time Kumaresan returns to the rock, the colour of a “dried-up stream of blood”, he brings Saroja. This time, Kumaresan’s mother Marayi wailingly sings an oppari (a folk song of lament) and the crowd isolates them for marrying outside their community. Set in arid Kongu Nadu with its shrubs and thorns, the tale follows the couple’s mammoth task of hiding Saroja’s caste and convincing the former’s community to accept their union.
Published in 2014 and translated in 2016, Pyre or Pookuzhi (a pyre of flowers) recently became the first Tamil novel to make it to the International Booker Prize longlist. The judges had this to say: “An intercaste couple elopes, setting in motion a story of terrifying foreboding. Perumal Murugan is a great anatomist of power and, in particular, of the deep, deforming rot of caste hatred and violence. With flashes of fable, his novel tells a story specific and universal: how flammable are fear and the distrust of others.”
Distinct dialect
As an ode to Tamil, poet Meena Kandasamy writes in Mulligatawny Dreams that she dreams of English with suffixes of respect, thirty-six words to call the sea, and the ability “of talking love with eyes alone”.
Dr Aniruddhan Vasudevan’s translation perhaps reaches this English but makes one crave the original prose: “The characters speak a lot and their streams of thought too bear the distinct mark of regional speech patterns. In the Tamil text, Kumaresan’s and Saroja’s people speak differently; their speech is marked by rural and semi-urban variations. It has been difficult to sustain differences in translation.”
Murugan ensures there is no escape from the blazing breath of this tale, and the scorching cry to burn down this system. Pyre, which begins parched with the scene of the couple stepping off the bus into a heat-cracked land, sets the tone for a breathless tale mixed with the searing breath of the wind, the white summer heat spread out like “white sarees”, the unforgiving sun.
Every encounter is then stifled with the violence of caste from Kumaresan’s grandmother handing a glass tumbler instead of the jug to Saroja and words themselves betray their community origins (Saroja’s matchsticks are vathichuppullu but Kumaresan’s called them neruppukkuchi). Gradually, this haunting tale mirrors the gruesome reality of caste with village leaders’ voices: “The point is that he has brought a girl here about whom we know nothing. The entire village bears a mark of impurity if there is a woman here whose caste or family are unknown” or “all this mixing might work with soda colours but it doesn’t in life.”
Readers restlessly turn the pages hoping to find glimpses of the community accepting and celebrating their love, despite the foreboding foreshadowing. Marayi’s oppari lingers just as Kumaresan’s desperate painful questions continue to twist deep within us: “Was it such a sin to get married? Can’t I marry the woman I love? In what way have I wronged anyone by doing that? She loved me with all her life. I love her the same way...Why is everyone chasing us away?”
Though far from a minuscule man in a radio box, Murugan’s fingers grip voices, often poisonous, that swirl around the air. He hurls them back at the world — urging society to stare at the rot of caste. After the longlist nomination, the Tamil professor and author tells us he is happy about the longlist, and shares his writing routine and love for folklore.
Why pick the 1980s? In a previous The New Indian Express interview, you mentioned the book was a tribute to E Illavarasan (a 19-year-old Dalit who was a victim of caste violence).
In the 1980s, the media had not developed so much, but nowadays the news is known because of the media. Last week, in Krishnagiri, a father of a girl and a few more people murdered a boy. Both sides belong to the same caste. It (the news) has spread to the entire of Tamil Nadu. At present, if anything happens, it reaches people because of the media.
Everybody feels that these (incidents) are happening only now. In the 1980s, such incidents were occurring but there was an absence of phones and the lens of the media. So, it was convenient for me to write about that period and lots of stories were there in and around the oorus (villages). The surroundings and atmosphere made me choose the 1980s. Compared to earlier times, cinema played its role in the lives of people in the 70s and 80s.
How important is it to document caste violence and honour killing not just in media but also fiction?
We must speak about honour killing in fiction. There are so many subjects not covered by fiction. Only in the 1990s or 2000s, did literature get the freedom of expression. Anything can be a part of literature; we can speak about anything in this period. Earlier, there was some kind of a ban on writing about caste discrimination. The relationship and discrimination based on caste were not taken into literature. There was some kind of a hurdle. Especially after the 1990s, only after the centenary of BR Ambedkar, these topics could be spoken about openly.
Did the characters continue to haunt you after you finished the novel?
It took nearly four months to write this novel. I wrote it as a serial in a weekly for Kalki, a weekly magazine, for about 20 weeks. After penning down the novel, invariably I come out of the troubling feelings (of the) novel. For around one to two months, the subject and theme will continue to linger in my mind. It is usual to be captured by the novel. When readers express what they felt during their time, I experience the same while writing it. I don’t have any specific routine or space for writing poetry. As for fiction, I fix the time I can. I require a certain time slotted for sitting down to write—that is when I can write.
In previous interviews, you’ve mentioned folklore and oral histories impacted your writing. What is the one childhood story you remember the most?
When we grow up in villages, there are always a lot of tales stemming from folk, occasions, and some stories are oral. When two people meet, there is some conversation about what happened in this ooru, this happened in that ooru, and went for a village festival. All of these tales have had some impact on my novels. Many folktales are still in my memory and I can’t select one as unique.
Your book One Part Woman has two separate sequels. Why write two different endings? Is this common in Tamil literature?
It is a new, modern method. There is a model in Tamil literature where the end of one novel becomes the beginning of the other. For instance, author Jayakanthan had written a short story and changed the climax and made a novel, and wrote a resolution for the same. To my knowledge, there has never been a novel with two different endings. This is a successful experiment from my side. Readers influenced me (to experiment) with the endings and sequels.
Some people thought he (Kali) died and fought, asking why should Kali die. Some readers demanded that Ponna should have died instead. Likewise, readers asked me a variety of questions and I replied that I, too, was confused. Out of this confusion, I thought why not consider the climax in two different ways — if Kali survived, how would their lives be? And two, if Kali had died, how would it be then?
How did you start writing?
I started writing at a very young age, during my school days and represented our school in poetry writing competitions. Even in college, I was writing short stories, and when I was pursuing my postgraduate, my first story got published in a literary magazine. Only in 1991, my first novel came out in Eru Veyyil.
If you had a chance to pick a pen name, what would it be?
When I started writing, my name was Ila Murugan for (works of) poetry. Murugan is my name and Perumal is my father’s name. In the 2000s, Perumal Murugan was known and so I continued writing in this name. I chose my father’s name and that was appealing to the readers too.
A feature film is set to come out soon on Pyre. Who would you pick as Saroja and Kumaresan? What are you working on?
It is a director’s choice. My part is only to write dialogues and the director has come up with a screenplay after discussions with me. By the end of this year or early next year, this film will be released. As I’m writing the dialogues, I am planning for a few short stories. I’m writing a few unfinished novels. Last January, my novel Nedu Neram on the pandemic period was released.
Book recommendations.
Few Tamil novels are translated into English and many exist that could be translated. Many novels have been written by good authors. Sundara Ramaswamy and Ashokamitran have been published in English. Salma and Imayam are good too.