ONE PART
WOMAN/ MADHUROBAGAN by PERUMAL MURUGAN
BOOK
REVIEW OF TRANSLATION by ANIRUDDHAN VASUDEVAN
‘One
Part Woman’ is the English version of Perumal Murugan’s book
in Tamil ‘Madhurobagan’. The translation by Aniruddhan Vasudevan absolutely
brilliant and lyrical in its rendition won him the Sahitya Akademi Translation
Award for the year 2016, while Perumal Murugan finds himself in the midst of a
controversy and ostracism from his community for his alleged blasphemous
depiction of certain rituals which were said to have been prevalent during the
early part of the twentieth century. Despite the excellent translation of
Aniruddhan Vasudevan which I could read, I am sure that the original flavor of
the novel written in the native tongue with its peculiar nuances in the dialect
of the region and the caste would have been diluted to an extent.
The English title is derived from
the Tamil Madhurobagan which is a translation of the name of the deity
Ardhanareeswara which means one part woman and one part man in this case
Parvati and Shiva. In fact, the Ardhanareeswara is the presiding deity of the
temple in Tiruchengode.
Storyline
The story has its setting in the
early part of the 20th century in a village near Tiruchengode where Kali
and Ponna belonging to a lower caste in a society ridden by stringent caste
divisions, are a childless couple. The plot revolves around the rituals and
practices that are said to have been prevalent during the chariot festival in
the temple of Ardhanareeswara at Tiruchengode. This is elaborated in the
following extract from the book -
“For the
people of Tiruchengode the chariot festival was a three-month affair.
At
the peak of the celebration, all rules were relaxed. The night bore witness to
that. Any consenting man and woman could have sex. In the narrow lanes, on the
fields around the village, in the rest stops on the hill, and on the open
surfaces of the rock bodies lay casually intertwined. Darkness cast a mask on
every face. It is in such revelry that the primal being in man surfaces.
No
one sent unmarried women to the festival. But women over thirty were to be seen
everywhere. Young men roamed all over the place. These men tried to lure as
many women as they could on this one night. This was also the night when many
of the young men had their first taste of sex. And women took on the role of
their teachers.
This was on the night of the
fourteenth day of the festival and was accepted as a means of helping a woman
bear a child after having consensual sex with a faceless stranger who for all
practical purposes was considered as a god. This is said to have been an
accepted ritual. In the story Ponna is persuaded by her mother-in-law to go to
the festival
“Ponna,
please go to the fourteenth day of the festival” said her mother-in-law to her
happily.
“Your brother will take care of everything. How long can we keep
looking at each other’s faces in this house? Don’t we want a child to bounce
around this place?”
Her
mother-in-law had told her “What is there to think about? This is God’s work.
You are going to be with whoever appears as God to you. God will show you the
way.”
Ponna does go the festival
assuming that it has her husband’s acceptance having been tricked into
believing it is so.
It is possible that in a
typically caste ridden agrarian society of those times especially the lower
caste smaller farmers and laborers the need for a progeny and the stigma
attached to a barren woman is so great that the possibility of such rituals
being prevalent during those times cannot be ruled out. It appears they did
exist and have been documented.
The hue and cry raised by caste
based outfits against the author for what they consider as portrayal of historical
traditions of the temple rituals in a bad manner and calling for withdrawal of
his books from circulation only served to fuel the controversy surrounding an
author’s literary freedom. In fact, Perumal Murugan unable to withstand the onslaught
against him decided to leave his native place after declaring that he was
giving up writing stating that ‘Perumal Murugan the writer is dead’.
The protests have since petered
out after the Madras High Court disposed of the petitions filed by protesters
in favor of the author. Perumal Murugan is a Professor of Tamil and teaches at
a college in Namakkal. He has won State awards for his works and three of his
books have been translated into English – the other two being Seasons of the Palm and Pyre.
In a sense the controversy
surrounding ‘Óne Part Woman’ has catapulted him onto the national stage. The
other books are also rooted to the traditions and behavior patterns of the
society in which he had grown up and touch on caste divides and depictions of
real life patterns. One can say his writing is simple and truthful and since I have
read only the English translations a lot of credit is due to the translator and
perhaps that is why the Sahitya Akademi Award 2016 for Translation has been
given to Aniruddhan Vasudevan. An Award for the Original author would have been
a befitting response to his detractors.
I am only left with certain questions
– 1) why rake up a controversy over a custom which no longer exists especially
when the story is set in the early part of the last century? 2) though the
entire story has an underlying element of sexuality at no point has the author
transgressed the rules of decency, in fact at no point does one feel
distasteful while reading the book. 3) our epics especially the Mahabharata is
replete with examples of children born through the intervention of the Gods. Here
in the book the consensual partner is referred to as a god. May be the ritual
traces back its origins to the epics (or is this a controversial statement that
I have made?).
In the end of the book while
Ponna goes to the festival assuming that her husband is aware and his
acceptance is there, the truth is far from that. This does raise the question
of the morality of all such practices.
