I have been out of commission a couple of weeks now with a gammy shoulder and the doctor irately telling me to stay away from the computer or else. So I have read. And one of the books I picked up was, of course, Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman , which has created such a ruckus.
I guess some of the book’s original vibrancy is lost in translation but nothing can conceal its heart. It is a deeply compassionate book and a deeply feminist one. And it fills me with anger that a bunch of yobs should be allowed to pass judgement on something that’s clearly outside their ken.
I have followed the arguments of both those who support Murugan and those who support the ban saying the book ‘insults women’. I have tried to understand why the story that culminates in a temple function where men and women have consensual sex in the anonymity of the crowded final day should offend women.
If anything, the book celebrates women. The passages that describe this custom, Ponna, her sexuality, and the man-wife relationship are among the most empowering in literature. The consensual sex is in itself a hugely assertive act where Ponna is completely in control. She decides to take this extreme step to impregnate herself despite being deeply in love with her husband Kali. Nobody, not even her husband, is able to force her to do it until she herself agrees.
The hypocrisy of the protest takes my breath away. This is the sort of hypocrisy that will accept rape in Tiruchengode without protest, but heaven forbid we talk about extra-marital sex initiated by a consenting, adult woman.
What exactly do we imagine happens when childless women are taken, often forcibly, to godmen and swamis and come back miraculously pregnant? The quasi-religio-social practice, dating to pre-artificial insemination days, has long allowed men to retain their public image of virility. Hinduism is a highly pragmatic religion and has never been ashamed to sanction what must be endured.
And even if, for a minute, we buy the argument that mentioning Tiruchengode by name is what has deeply unsettled these good people, why then was every offer by Murugan to change the town’s name from subsequent editions rejected and book burning the only acceptable solution? That’s when I begin to seriously suspect the motives of such a protest because it is certainly not about women.
In the book, Ponna and Kali are balanced in a delicate dance of equality that perfectly reflects Ardhanariswarar, the deity whose name Madhorubhagan, is the book’s title in Tamil. Theirs is a love story of tenderness and understanding, where Kali doesn’t take a second wife despite social sanction. Where he realises that their inability to conceive could be his fault, not Ponna’s.
But, above all, the book, with its descriptions of toddy extraction and groundnut cultivation, of Kali’s poovarasu tree and Nature-loving Muthu’s forest hideouts, is an invaluable gem of modern Tamil literature. I am ashamed that we choose not to see this.
Vaishna is a Sr. Deputy Editor with The Hindu and can be contacted at vaishna.r@thehindu.co.in
