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  PERUMAL MURUGAN

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  Translated by V. Geetha

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  1. They work fast in the darkness

  2. The quiet walls echo his call

  3. Can’t bear being called a beggary dog

  4. The well is large and probably very deep

  5. His nose has been eaten away to a hollow

  6. Sathi kicks at the gate

  7. He whirls around, his hands held high

  8. A lizard puts out a sly tongue

  9. The dice show nothing

  10. His voice booms and echoes off the theatre walls

  11. He feels sapped and flops back into his seat

  12. Laughter echoes around the huge empty room

  13. A termite escaping a sudden patch of light

  14. Wet sand sits well in ploughed-up areas

  15. A dead, dry voice

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  Copyright

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  CURRENT SHOW

  Perumal Murugan is the star of contemporary Tamil literature, having garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success for his work. An award-winning writer, poet and scholar, he has written several novels, short-story collections, poetry anthologies and works of non-fiction. Some of his novels have been translated into English to immense acclaim, including Seasons of the Palm, which was shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005, and One Part Woman, his best-known work, which was shortlisted for the Crossword Award and won the prestigious ILF Samanvay Bhasha Samman in 2015. Murugan has also received awards from the Tamil Nadu government as well as from Katha Books.

  V. Geetha is a feminist historian and publisher who writes in English and Tamil on contemporary Tamil society, particularly on caste, gender, education and labour. She translates poetry and fiction from and into both languages. Geetha is with Tara Books, Chennai.

  Praise for Pyre

  ‘Murugan’s fictional villages are places full of quiet menace, where caste boundaries are protected with violence and social exclusion . . . [Pyre is] so tense it leaves you gasping for air’—Ellen Barry, New York Times

  ‘Pyre glows with as much power as [One Part Woman] did, and adds immeasurable value to contemporary Indian literature . . . “Meditative, joyous, humbling”—three words [that] describe perfectly the sensations with which you put down Perumal Murugan’s Pyre, a book marked with the same quality of luminous integrity and beauty seen in One Part Woman . . . Aniruddhan translates with a fine ear that preserves beautifully the music of the original . . . [Murugan] succeeds in universalising Kongu Nadu to such a degree that place and person fall away and all that remains is a hard and glittering gem of a story’—Vaishna Roy, The Hindu

  ‘[A] sensitive, richly textured translation by Aniruddhan Vasudevan . . . Murugan writes with a gentle, sensual tenderness that is unforgettable [and also] with cinematic power, and the final images of Pyre will sear your heart, though he makes sure that the reader writes the ending with him . . . One Part Woman was met with intolerance of such a degree that it forced him into silence. Pyre, written before the storm of bigotry swept through the author’s life, is even more accomplished, bitterly haunting, a love story, and an indictment of those who hate with such staunch righteousness’—Nilanjana Roy, Business Standard

  ‘The prose is deceptively simple and sparse. And yet it has the effect of hitting you hard like the blazing sun . . . [Murugan] knows how to handle masterful imagery and human emotions. Especially when he delves into the emotional space of his women characters, be it a coarse, unloving mother-in-law or the soft, sparrow-like, bewildered new bride . . . A sensitive translation done with great care. There is not a single word that jars . . . [Pyre] will haunt the reader for a long time’—Vaasanthi, Indian Express

  ‘The real fire in Pyre [lies] in Murugan’s words . . . Aniruddhan Vasudevan [translates] the story of Pyre beautifully . . . With Pyre, Murugan places a love story at the centre of human confusion and regional literature at the centre of Indian mainstream writing’—Financial Express

  ‘A poignant love story . . . Murugan vividly describes the dusty, beautiful landscape and through his characters gives us a peek into the daily struggles and joys of a different kind of life’—Femina

  Praise for One Part Woman

  ‘A superb book in which tenderness, love and desire kindle each other into a conflagration of sexual rapture’—Bapsi Sidhwa

  ‘Perumal Murugan opens up the layers of desire, longing, loss and fulfilment in a relationship with extraordinary sensitivity and surgical precision’—Ambai

  ‘A fable about sexual passion and social norms, pleasure and the conventions of family and motherhood . . . A lovely rendering of the Tamil’—Biblio

  ‘Perumal Murugan turns an intimate and crystalline gaze on a married couple in interior Tamil Nadu. It is a gaze that lays bare the intricacies of their story, culminating in a heart-wrenching denouement that allows no room for apathy . . . One Part Woman is a powerful and insightful rendering of an entire milieu which is certainly still in existence. [Murugan] handles myriad complexities with an enviable sophistication, creating an evocative, even haunting, work . . . Murugan’s writing is taut and suspenseful . . . Aniruddhan Vasudevan’s translation deserves mention—the language is crisp, retaining local flavour without jarring, and often lyrical’—The Hindu Business Line

  ‘An evocative novel about a childless couple reminds us of the excellence of writing in Indian languages . . . This is a novel of many layers; of richly textured relationships; of raw and resonant dialogues and characters . . . Perumal Murugan’s voice is distinct; it is the voice of writing in the Indian languages rich in characters, dialogues and locales that are unerringly drawn and intensely evocative. As the novel moves towards its inevitable climax, tragic yet redemptive, the reader shares in the anguish of the characters caught in a fate beyond their control. It is because a superb writer has drawn us adroitly into the lives of those far removed from our acquaintance’—Indian Express

  ‘Murugan imbues the simple story of a young couple, deeply in love and anxious to have a child, with the complexities of convention, obligation and, ultimately, conviction . . . An engaging story’—TimeOut

  ‘One Part Woman has the distant romanticism of a gentler, slower, prettier world, but it is infused with a sense of immediacy . . . Murugan intricately examines the effect the pressure to have a child has on [the couple’s] relationship . . . One Part Woman is beautifully rooted in its setting. Murugan delights in description and Aniruddhan translates it ably’—Open

  Praise for Perumal Murugan

  ‘Versatile, sensitive to history and conscious of his responsibilities as a writer, Murugan is . . . the most accomplished of his generation of Tamil writers’—Caravan

  ‘[A] great literary chronicler . . . Murugan is at the height of his creative powers’—The Hindu

  ‘Murugan’s insights about relationships spread throughout his work like flashes of lightning’—Kalachuvadu

  ‘The Tamil Irvine Welsh’—Guardian

  To my friends in the cinema hall who taught me all about life

  The young man slumps against a lamp post.

  A buzzing aura of insects around his face.

  Some spiral down to their deaths, scorched by the heat of the lamp. Rasping, they fall on his chest, arms and legs. He doesn’t throw them off. Or make an attempt to move away. He lies, staring at the makeshift shop in front of him.

  The shop: a broken cot with a board nailed to it. Small, fat mangoes heaped in a corner. Bottles of sticky boiled sweets sitting uncertainly on the edge. From a distance, they look filled with colour. Like a palm fan, the old cot-shop woman’s thin hand, laden with bangles, flaps this way and that, trying to keep the flies away.

  Peanuts heaped in a cone. He stares intently at them. A still mess of tiny worms, glistening in the lamplight. He feels a mad desire. Brush that thin waving hand out of the way. Grab the peanuts and run. But to do this, he must get up. He knows he cannot. His legs have gone to sleep. Heavy, wooden.

  He looks around him. Dead insects on both sides of his body. What if his body goes stiff forever? He tries to swallow the thick gob of saliva pushing at the walls of his cheeks. It is an effort. In the end, the saliva stays stuck to the roof his mouth. He tightens his lips into a stitch.

  A massive back cuts his line of vision and hides the cot-shop. He feels relieved, even thankful. He closes his eyes.

  His stomach, worn thin like a cotton rag, pulls into a spasm. His limbs feel like straw. He must find something to eat. How long can this go on? But then, get up—and do what? Maybe he should stretch out and go to sleep.

  A hoarse, loud voice startles the evening, shattering its twilight calm. A song. From the film showing in the theatre outside which he lies. The hairs on his forearms rise. His body jerks into tremors. It’s a while before it dies down, accepting the blare that hits it.

  The theatre lights come on. He looks at the shops inside the theatre compound, to see if there is someone he knows.

  Not a fucking baby fly.

  ~

  The song ends.

  Quiet for some time, but for a slight whirr. A few moments of static-flecked silence.

  Then, BOOM!

  The next song. A gravelly voice and a slap of harsh sound.

  Over the music from the theatre, another tone slithers into his ears. The old cot-shop woman’s wail.

  —Take those hands back! Think you can just come and grab what you want? Know what a kilo of
peanuts costs? Digging your hands in as if you picked them yourselves! Ask for money and you make faces . . .

  His hands itch to strangle her. Choke that voice in her throat. Demon with long, sharp teeth, sitting on her cot and guarding a heap of nuts. She whines on, not stopping to breathe. Stitch that mouth up. Take a huge sack-stitching needle and do it. That fucking song. And her voice that cracks his ears.

  No one near the shops yet. No one he knows, at any rate. Maybe his hunger-blurred eyes are playing tricks. Maybe there are people he knows and he can’t recognize them.

  People are bunching together. A couple. Slowly, more. Soon heads bob outside the queue doors. They grow by the minute, the heads. After a while he can’t see the doors.

  The crowd is large, spilling on to the road. People at the cot-shop. It is lit by the street lamp which towers over the theatre walls. The old woman has brought her own light. A little oil lamp, whose yellow flicker adds a glow to her wares. She keeps a sharp eye on them.

  There are four queue doors opening into the theatre compound, to the ticket counters. The crowd pushes at three of them. The fourth door stands forlorn. Nobody outside. It is never opened. It is brighter and more cheerful than the other doors.

  He hears the sound of coins rattling, of shuffling rupee notes. Should he get up and join the crowd? His right hand strays to his shirt pocket. No pocket. Not even the memory of one on the rag he wears. His hand falls back, disappointed.

  Clumps of lungi-clad legs pass by. All kinds of lengths and colours. A few pants, some children in shorts. The crowd warms his heart. He feels safe. In any case, who or what can harm him? No one cares for him. He is sure of that.

  ~

  He looks up and sees the film poster lit up by the street lamp.

  The hero brandishes a sword. He is about to swing it. His battle skirt billows over his thighs. His mouth is honest. The kind that will address you straight, man to man.

  He strains his eyes towards the theatre again. No familiar faces yet. If he could find a rupee, he would stand in the queue like everyone else. He could ask each of them to lend him five paise. That would do.

  He wipes the spit away. It comes off on his fingers, black and thick with dirt. He kneads it into pellets and drops them on the ground. Revolted, he lets his eyes run over his chest. His skin is flecked with dirt. Like black moss. No buttons on his ripped shirt. How can he go into the theatre looking like this?

  The crowd is bigger now. Why can’t one of them look in his direction? Throw a pitying glance and a few coins in its wake? Horrible. Yet the thought haunts him.

  Money is money, however you get hold of it. Same value everywhere, for everyone. Will the old cot-shop thing humped over her measly wares part with her peanuts for nothing?

  He has to find the strength to reach the crowd. He must. Must put his hands out and beg. No other way.

  The theatre bell rings. The moments pass, one by one. With them, the line of heads. The queue doors swallow them into the passages, slowly. Bit by bit. Until there is almost no one left outside. He feels panic. They have left him, cast him to the empty air.

  He can see the cot-shop clearly now. The peanut heap has shrunk. The old hag grabs handfuls from a basket next to her and builds the pile up to a new peak. The mangoes—only two left. The oil lamp is snuffed out. Now. Crawl up to the shop, grab the peanuts and run. What if she screams for help? She can’t follow him. That’s for sure.

  But—can he run?

  He is filled with self-loathing. Must he lie here forever? Like a pig, with his legs apart?

  1

  They work fast in the darkness

  The Hulk lies at the foot of the stairway, his face pressed to the ground. His legs move, keeping time to an unheard beat.

  Natesan scribbles numbers on the inside of a cigarette pack, tallying his soda earnings for the day. He stands by the stairway.

  Sathivel stands next to Natesan, his back against a wall.

  Mani slumps, his legs spread in exhaustion. Now and then, he puffs at a bidi.

  Ganesan waits outside the betel-nut shop. He has to hand in his accounts for the day.

  The Hulk suddenly lifts his head up.

  —Dai, Sathi, looks like you sold a whole lot today!

  A faint smile spreads across Sathivel’s face. He’s in no mood to rise to The Hulk’s bait though. Especially since the bastard clearly wants him to say something. But the Hulk insists.

  —So, what’d you sell?

  —Maybe two dozen. You?

  —Oh, less. Less than you. You got a good party in the sofa seats, eh? The buying kind. Shit film’s full of sofa-seat types. All come to see what? That Sivaji Ganesan, with his big belly?

  —I just managed some cake and coconut bread. Couldn’t get rid of the sweets. Not many for the floor and bench seats today.

  Mani speaks up. Sathi feels relieved. He’s glad Mani has piped up. He doesn’t feel like talking to The Hulk.

  Sathi’s face is always clouded, like his heart hugs a deep sorrow. But he looks better than he did before. He used to go around in ragged shorts and a buttonless shirt. Now he wears a lungi and a T-shirt with faded writing on it. His hair is still the same though. He tries to comb it down, but somehow it springs back up into a dry, messy tangle.

  —Our hero’s film next week. The Hulk boasts. —Watch me sell . . .

  —Keep hoping. It is Mani again. —I’m telling you, that bastard manager’s going to bring in some other fucker’s film. It’s love king Gemini Ganesan or old fart Muthuraman next.

  —Dai, Hulk, want to play cards?

  Everyone turns to look. It is Ganesan, walking up with a set of playing cards in his hand. He shuffles them several times, setting up a flutter they can’t ignore. He stops near Sathi, holds the cards up in front of his face and spreads them out.

  Sathi stares at the cards for a moment—then suddenly snatches them from Ganesan. Startled, Ganesan lunges forward and with his thick hands, yanks at Sathi’s fingers to get at the cards. Sathi is too quick for him. He runs up and down the staircase and around it. Ganesan runs after him.

  The Hulk joins in the chase, trying to snatch the cards from Sathi. Sathi’s fist curls tightly around the cards. The Hulk’s meaty hand bores into the curled ball of Sathi’s fingers, like a pig’s snout raking desperately at the earth. He tears Sathi’s fist open. His nails peel away the skin around the thumb. Crushed and smeared with sweat, the cards come away in his hands.

  —Dai, give them to me, they’re mine!

  Ganesan pounces on The Hulk.

  The Hulk grinds his teeth loudly, waves the cards in the air, tears them into bits and scatters them all around him. He jumps up and down, hooting.

  —Motherfucker!

  Ganesan sees that the cards are finished.

  Sathi sits back against the wall. He is short of breath. He looks at The Hulk, jumping up and down. Huge and menacing. He could bring the theatre down.

  —Come on, get some cigarette packs. We’ll make our own cards.

  The Hulk is genial. The floor of the betel-nut shop is littered with packs. They lie scattered in small white heaps. The boys walk to the shop and start gathering them. They rip the packs open and lay them out, clean insides facing up. Soon they have a stack of white cards.

  Sathi goes to the soda shop and returns with a pen. He numbers the smaller cards and starts framing the king, queen and jack. He holds up his king and laughs.

  —Aiy, look at this man! Dimpled cheek, chubby face. If he didn’t have a moustache, he’d look like The Hulk!

  —You mother . . . ! How many times have I told you not to call me The Hulk! You do that once more and I’ll tear the flesh from your bones!

  The Hulk shakes a massive fist in Sathi’s face.

  Sathi looks at him in disgust. He’d like to roll him into a ball and fling him outside the theatre gates . . . but his face darkens. He drops the cards and sits quiet.

  —Oh, ho! Sweetie-pie’s angry!

  The Hulk chucks Sathivel under his chin. Sathi pushes his hand away.

  —Asshole. Get lost.