Rising Heat
PERUMAL MURUGAN
Rising Heat
Bestselling Author of One Part Woman
Translated by Janani Kannan
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Translator’s Note
Rising Heat
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
Praise for One Part Woman
‘Murugan works his themes with a light hand; they always emanate from his characters, who are endowed with enough contradiction and mystery to keep from devolving into mouthpieces . . . It’s not just the physical world Murugan describes so vividly—the way a cow clears its throat, for example—but the rural community, a village of 20 huts and a thousand ancient resentments, where there is no privacy and your neighbor’s suffering can serve as your evening’s entertainment . . . I’m hoping for a whole shelf of books from this writer.’—Parul Sehgal, New York Times
‘Intimate and affecting . . . Throughout the novel, Murugan pits the individual against the group. How far are you willing to go, he asks, in order to belong? . . . Murugan’s descriptions of village life are evocative, but the true pleasure of this book lies in his adept explorations of male and female relationships, and in his unmistakable affection for people who find themselves pitted against the world.’—Laila Lalami, New York Times Book Review
‘This subtly subversive novel examines the pang of childlessness experienced by Kali and Ponna, a couple living in rural southern India. In simple yet lyrical prose, Murugan shows how their standing in the world depends on offspring . . . The novel considers the constraints of tradition and beautifully articulates the couple’s intense connection, even without a child.’—New Yorker
‘Beautiful . . . Plunges readers into Tamil culture through a story of love within a caste system undergoing British colonization in the early 19th century . . . Murugan’s touching, harrowing love story captures the toll that infertility has on a marriage in a world where having a child is the greatest measure of one’s worth.’—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
‘With a backstory as fascinating as the narrative, this intriguing work, longlisted for the National Book Award, will undoubtedly be appreciated by internationally savvy Anglophone audiences.’—Library Journal
‘Perumal Murugan brings a playful, fable-like quality to his tale of traditional values and their subversion.’—Vanity Fair, ‘Fall’s Best Books from Around the World’
‘Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman contains the sweetest, most substantial portrait of an Indian marriage in recent fiction. A touching and original novel.’—Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs
‘Perumal Murugan’s Tamil is vivid and terse, an instrument he uses with great care and precision to cut through the dense meshes of rural Tamil social life. The result, in this novel, is a brutally elegant examination of caste, family, and sex in South India.’—Anuk Arudpragasam, author of The Story of a Brief Marriage
‘The life of an innocent couple who are led to believe that the expectations of the system defines their own personal pursuit of happiness forms Perumal Murugan’s captivating story of love and desire. With his brilliant artistry, he captures the ups and downs of their lives. Works such as these have the power to subject contemporary value systems to intense introspection, it is for the same reason they are met with resistance. This work of art by Perumal Murugan can be acclaimed as modern mythology for its unusual access to cultural memories of the land and language, and the extraordinary courage with which it is dealt.’—Vivek Shanbhag, author of Ghachar Ghochar
‘Murugan’s writing is locally-grown literature, not a canned object sold on a supermarket bookshelf. It is rare to come across a writer who enjoys such intimacy with a land and those who live in close contact with it. One Part Woman is so rooted in the soil of tradition that its rebellion against it is all the more unexpected and moving.’—Amitava Kumar, author of Immigrant, Montana
‘A major Indian writer . . . Dark currents run through One Part Woman. . . Kali and Ponna, a couple who are erotically wrapped up in each other, withstand waves of derision because they have not conceived a child after a decade of marriage . . . When describing the farming communities of South India, Mr. Murugan is neither sentimental nor harsh.’—New York Times (profile)
To Kannaps and Giri, the centre of my universe
—Janani Kannan
Translator’s Note
Eru Veyyil, Perumal Murugan’s first novel, is a timeless work of art that remains as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1991. A poignant story of a young boy who witnesses his ancestral lands being taken away for housing development and bears the socio-economic consequences as he grows into adulthood, this novel made the world take notice of the then twenty-five-year-old writer.
My own paternal grandfather was a farmer all his life. During the frequent visits to our ancestral village, I remember him being surrounded by labourers all the time. Pongal festival meant shopping for scores of saris and veshtis to give away to the people who worked on the land. That was not only their livelihood but also their way of life. However, starting in the late eighties, the children of the labourers began to leave the village for the closest city or for Chennai, seeking other opportunities. By the turn of the twentieth century, the dearth for help in the farms was tangible. Many farmers in the neighbouring villages were forced to sell their land to housing developers. This personal experience connected me with the characters and the events in the novel intimately. Indeed, after I embarked on this translation, I learnt that Perumal Murugan’s ancestral lands were also taken away for development.
The realism of the events in the novel is intricately woven with the way he develops the seemingly simple characters. These are characters with layers of emotions, desires and insecurities, defined by their experiences and circumstances, that make them act the way they do. He seamlessly but never overtly narrates the various characters’ extreme actions and the dire situations they find themselves in, without evoking the sense of right or wrong. As one character in the novel puts it, everyone only needs an opportunity to present itself to not be scrupulous. I have strived hard to capture these subtleties as closely as possible to the Tamil work.
I have stayed true to Perumal Murugan’s style of narration with simple and direct sentences. However, the dialect used in the original work, Kongu Tamil as it is known, is a sub-regional dialect, known for its unique words and expressions that are not part of Tamil spoken elsewhere. In the Tamil work, the author has included a glossary for the benefit of the larger Tamil audience. I was also fortunate to have the help of Indumathi Mariappan to help me navigate many of the nuances in the Konga Tamil language and cultural contexts. This English translation is homogenized but I have strived to preserve the intent of the narrative. Ambar Sahil Chatterjee helped tremendously in preserving this intent and avoiding the pitfall of literal translation. In some places, I have left some expressions as such, in cases where I found them to paint the picture better. Such contextual expressions are so integral to the speech and adds colour to the context.
As normal with translations, there are cultural references that often need more explaining than the space allows. An example is when the village head is described to be in such a rage that if he were given a bunch of neem leaves in his hands, it would complete the image of him being possessed. Readers familiar with the cultural context would know of the practice in south India where women and some men vow to fast in penance for a period of time before a festival or holy day to a certain deity, most commonly the goddess, in exchange for forgiveness or favour. Almost always, there is an episode of the divine Mother descending on one of them to soothsay or simply show presence. The pers
on who becomes the medium for the spirit would evoke an aura of fear, shaking vigorously, their hair getting undone, their eyes rolling back and forth and their voice sounding guttural. They usually have a bunch of neem leaves in their hands, neem leaves being a symbol of the goddess herself. Such elaborations are not included to keep the preserve the fluidity of the narrative.
The Tamil language particularly lends itself naturally to the interweaving of tenses in storytelling. I found this aspect that seemed effortless and very appropriate in the original text quite a challenge to maintain in the translation. I thank Shreya Chakravertty with the editorial team for helping me keep the translated tenses consistent.
I first met Murugan at the launch of his books Ardhanari and Aalavayan in 2015, right before he declared himself dead as a writer. I was deeply struck by the simplicity of the man who by then was already world-renowned. I devoured his books and remember putting it out to the universe then that I wish to be associated with his writing sometime in future. When I received the email that asked me if I would be interested in translating his book, I had to pinch myself several times to make sure I was not dreaming. It is a deep honour that has given me immense joy to undertake this translation wok. For entrusting me this work, I am extremely grateful to Kannan Sundaram of Kalachuvadu.
Los Angeles
Janani Kannan
22 February 2020
Rising Heat
Chapter 1
‘Mani, Mani . . . Mani, Mani, Mani-i-i, Mani-i-i-i-i!’
The boy’s cries subsided, his voice losing steam as his throat shut in pain from having shouted for so long. His heart got drier, his eyes welled up. He gritted his teeth and fought to hold back his tears, in vain. Tears gushed like a mighty spring. He paused briefly, swallowing to release saliva in his dry mouth, and called out again.
The dog came bouncing when it heard its name, stopping a few feet away from him with its tongue dripping and its tail wagging so hard that it seemed ready to fall off. It then sat down, lashing its tail against the ground as it stared at the boy with a bewildered look in its eyes. When it heard ‘Mani, Mani-i-i-i . . .’ again, it twisted its body to look away and produced a groan to signify refusal. And yet, it rolled around in the dirt, evidently expressing its affection for the boy.
But he was so enraged that he wanted to beat that devil of a dog to a pulp. Thinking he could stealthily advance on the dog and then suddenly grab it, he softened his voice, letting it drip with sweetness, and inched closer. He stretched out one hand—with a few fingers folded as if they held something to eat—and gestured to it with the other. But the dog, alert to the boy’s ploy, straightened its twisted body and ran over to the top of the elevation around the well in the Veera forest. The dog didn’t want to get caught. Nor did it want to leave the boy and run away. It stood there, torn.
The tracks gouged by passing trucks glittered bright white in the rays of the evening sun. The razed forests were replaced with sprouts of grass. At a distance, more trees lay fallen with their arms spread wide. It was the time of felling. The boy was so angry that he wanted to get hold of the dog and annihilate it. For the past couple of days, it had been the same sequence of events with this dog—the chase and the slipping away had now become a habit. But how could he explain to the dog that they had been completely uprooted from this soil? That they had no claims left on the property. That not even a clump of soil belonged to them any more. He did not know the dog’s language, but even if he did, he would still have found himself unable to reason with Mani. Or even to whisper in its ears, ‘Those people whose laps you laid on and played with like a child are no longer here. Those houses in front of which you lazed around and ran barking towards at the slightest sound stand ruined, empty and motionless. There is no one here to provide food.’ This dog would still choose to run away instead of coming into his arms.
The more he thought about it the angrier he got. But exhaustion softened him. Nearby was the temple bolster. He sat down, leaning against it. Let the dog go to hell. Let it die of starvation.
The breeze blew hot on his face. The little bells hanging from the tips of the lances planted at the temple’s gateway swayed with the breeze. The delicate chiming of the bells sounded like a lullaby to him at that moment. I should go to the gateway and watch the gentle movements of the bells to my heart’s content, he thought to himself. He went past the exterior structure of two timber columns, painted red, towards the inner plinth. Atop the plinth, sanitized with cow-dung paste and enclosed within bars, stood a small stone god. It had age-old deposits of oil that resembled the layers that form on top of dried cow dung. The deity was housed in a small, niche-like room. Memories of going round and round the room in circles touching the walls, of overcoming his shyness to run around and play catch with other children, of falling down—all came rushing back to him. This was where his friend Selvan’s front tooth had snapped in half. He had fallen face down from the giddiness of running around when his tooth hit the ground and broke upon impact. His mouth was choked with blood. His cries had sounded shrill, like the bleating of a baby goat with a bloated stomach.
Days were spent in vain playing thaayam, which was not unlike a game of checkers, on the lime-plastered front yard covered with a pandal shelter. Important men, big adults, used to kneel down and grind their teeth as they rolled the dice. ‘Single . . .!’ ‘An eight, an eight’, ‘Look at this perfect six!’ The clamour and commotion. Contemptuous laughter. Whenever Appa lost, he spat on his pawns, circled them around his head and threw them away. Even today, those pawns could be found, if looked for, under that tamarind tree. And his father’s sweaty face was sure to flash on the bright surface of the eighth pawn, ashen with anger.
The temple stood to the south of the road that connected Karattur to Odaiyur. To the north of the road was the Aattur valavu, a cluster of houses, about a forest’s distance away. And then there were the forests that slipped around the temple. This proximity between the village and the temple was the reason the children had made the temple their playground. During harvest season, not a soul came to this side. The deity sweltered alone in the heat. That changed only once in a while, when the village priest came by to sprinkle some water on it. Even the sweeping and dousing of the front yard reduced to once every couple of days during that time.
It was his grandmother, his Paati, who cleaned and dampened the front yard of the temple. They paid her an annual budgeted amount from the village’s account. She gathered all the dried leaves from the tamarind tree into little piles with her own hands. She specifically brought only a cow’s dung to sanitize the front yard. A couple of the little ones usually followed Paati to the temple. If they did, they played there until someone called out to them that it was getting late for school. During holidays, it usually took someone from their homes to come over, land a couple of blows on their backs and drag them home. Caught up in the throes of their play, the children seldom noticed when Paati left or when the sun moved over their heads.
Since the temple sat right off the main road, the back wall was often destroyed by a wayward bus or lorry that ran into it. The village had grown weary from clearing the debris and rebuilding it over and over again. Aren’t God’s collisions always with man’s creations! The worst was when Kannaiyah’s bus rammed into the wall. The bus came to a halt after its snout had gone through the wall. Oh, the wailing of the driver who had got caught in the mangled steel! He hadn’t lost consciousness throughout. Even though they cut through this and that to get to him, they were still only able to remove him in parts. He died when they were about halfway through. About four or five people had died in that accident. His Chithappa, Appa’s younger brother, had gone in and out through the debris without a trace of fear. His body was like the trunk of the black babool tree, he could lift and hurl anything effortlessly.
The boy had stood there watching, holding the loose end of his mother’s sari, withdrawn like a fledgling. The gruesomeness from that day had led to a carnage of his sleep for
several days. From then on, he was quite afraid to come by this side alone. The temple’s rear wall seemed to bear an impression of the heart-piercing cries of the driver, as if that agonized voice was somehow trapped in it. Coming here by himself was really scary. Belief in ghosts usually trumped belief in God.
The yard lay wide open like a threshing ground, where piles of grain fibres get twisted into ropes. A couple of fallen tamarind fruits lay on the ground. During the Karthigai festival, it was under this tamarind tree that the lamps were placed. The lamps were kept on conical pearl millet plates in which the flames crackled bright. They stroked and licked with their tongues the docile branches of the tamarind tree. A part of the tree trunk still stood blackened from the heat of the lamps. To the south was a platform studded with some holy stones. And surrounding them densely were offerings of prayers in the form of figurines of those requesting to be protected. The more he stared at them, the more he wanted to laugh.
He spotted his mother among the figurines, standing with him tucked on her hip, holding Annan and Akka by their hands. The nose had chipped off, flattening the face. The arms had fallen down. It had hardly been—what, three years—since they set that figurine? For reasons unknown, she used to carry him on her hip all the time, as if he was a small child, although he was already in fifth standard at that time. They even prayed for Mani. The dog’s figurine stood there still so new, its sheen untainted. With its tongue sticking out and its tail pluming up in the act of wagging, it looked like a real bell, a mani. Once, when its body was covered with blisters and it was fighting death, prayers and offerings were made to God on its behalf. The pandakaran who made the mud figurines always added a collar for all the ‘escort’ dogs but Mani alone didn’t have one. Maybe Appa described Mani to him. He had made a beautiful and perfect image of Mani. The boy’s hands twitched to caress the dog’s back as soon as he saw its figurine. The pandakaran’s workmanship deserved an award.