How does trauma rewire a writer’s personality? Does he start to tell different kinds of stories? Is he a little less free, a little less brave? Shall we, his readers, continue to lament the loss of a beloved writer, or will he return mightier than ever before?
Everything that Perumal Murugan — who faced violent protests from caste groups against his novel Madhorubhagan in 2015 — writes is now under scrutiny. And none more so than Poonachi Or The Story of a Black Goat , the first work of fiction by this Tamil writer after he ended his state of self-exile.
Black as the night
The clearly demarcated ‘before’ and ‘after’ in the timeline of this author allows us to subject his works to a biopsy that satisfies, before anything else, our impulse as bystanders to linger or gloat over the misfortune of others. Has Murugan’s condition altered from the way he described himself in a poem in 2015? “ Someone has painted over my head/ a pair of horns everyone can see/ Someone has turned me/ into a strange beast.”
Not surprisingly, given the context, Poonachi is an ironic look at society, of power and abuse, bondage and greed, surveillance and the silent acquiescence of the weak in their own subjugation.
It is, first of all, a fable, and in this choice one feels the hint of a taunt. Murugan writes in the preface: “I am
fearful of writing about humans; even more fearful of writing about gods... It is forbidden to write about cows or pigs. That leaves only goats and sheep. Goats are problem-free, harmless and, above all, energetic. A story needs narrative pace. Therefore, I’ve chosen to write about goats.” Murugan’s sarcasm speaks of the robustness of his spirit.
Poonachi is an odd one: a weakling about a day old when she was gifted to an old farmer by a mysterious stranger, she’s a survivor despite circumstances. Attacks by creatures of prey, lack of nourishment, the slaughter of her lover, and the sale of her kids — nothing stifles her vitality, though they dim it little by little. She’s black as night, which worries the old couple who now look after her: the “regime” had all but wiped out black goats, deemed a criminal class, and was now bound to ask uncomfortable questions.
Chip in the ear
As in all his novels, Murugan’s story is rich in detail. The semi-arid rural landscape thirsting for rain, in which it is set, throbs with life. The novel takes us into the old couple’s sparse thatched hut where they have enough to survive and a little bit more, with one pregnant goat and another who has just given birth to two kids.
We see the old woman’s determination that little Poonachi should live, as also the mother goat’s refusal to adopt Poonachi as her own.
Murugan sustains the narrative tension right from the start. This is at its peak when Poonachi is taken to the door of the regime, which plans to install an identity chip in her ear. The chip brings her into the system and will monitor each event in her life henceforth — from every miraculous seven-kid litter her frail body births to their sales and her death.
It’s a surveillance regime that favours the corrupt, the rich and the powerful. But even the poor, despite their subservience, sometimes have ways to beat the system.
The goatherds in turn, quietly standing in queue, know how to keep their subjects in check. “We have to fasten them (the goats) with a rope when they are grazing, tie their hind legs together with the rope around the necks. If we don’t keep a strict watch on them, they’ll become arrogant and do anything they want.”
Poonachi knows that unlike sheep, who have their heads bowed at all times, goats are a proud lot — “Unless we look up, how can we see the sky!” Despite their naturally rebellious nature, goats, too, can be tamed. Poonachi tastes the exhilarating freedom of forest life and yet chooses to return to her herd, to her own kind.
The free-spirited, too, can be broken. All it takes is the persistent denial of agency in their lives, and the hunger in their belly.
Poonachi, Or the Story of a Black Goat; Perumal Murugan, trs N. Kalyan Raman, Context/Westland, ₹499
elizabeth.k@thehindu.co.in
