Skip to main content

One Part Woman


Book Review


Perumal Murugan’s novel, One Part Woman, which attracted unnecessary controversy in Tamil Nadu recently, is essentially about the fundamental complementarity of the male and the female components of humanity.  “The male and the female together make the world,” as the priest in the Ardhanareeswara temple tells Kali, the protagonist.  Within each individual too there exists both the male and the female components.  Who destroyed that harmonious balance between the male and the female?

Is it the Brahmin who expediently creates and imposes certain rules and regulations on the people?  The novel raises this question when a Brahmin lawyer gets toddy and arrack banned in the Salem district and thus throws the whole Sanar community out of “their traditional livelihood.” 

But the novel never suggests that the Brahmins have been responsible for the loss of certain traditions.  It does not even suggest that the traditions are sacred or useful in any significant ways.  It even questions the gods and people’s faith in them.  Kali, having performed many religious rituals and sacrifices, wonders when the thirst of the gods will be sated. 

Gods and traditions don’t seem to serve profound functions in the actual practical world of human affairs.  In fact, the former can be bent to suit the needs of the latter.  Thus there is a ritual in Tiruchengode when married childless women can mate with a stranger in order to beget an offspring.

For Kali, his wife Ponna is the other half of his very being. He cannot view her as a person apart.  Kali and Ponna together would form an Ardhanareeswara.  But they do not get a child in spite of all their passionate love-making, in spite of all the religious rituals and sacrifices they perform.  Finally the suggestion comes from their mothers that Ponna should find her divine mate during the religious festival. 

Can the supposed sanctity of a religious ritual heal the rupture caused to the sanctity of the marital relationship?  In other words, how does Ponna who has undergone much torment because of her childlessness view the suggestion of finding her divine mate?  How does her view affect Kali for whom Ponna is really not a distinct individual but is the complementary half of himself?

The novel probes the deep relationship that Kali and Ponna have built up, a relationship which cannot apparently be broken by any force.  It also delves into the problem of childlessness which is often believed to be the result of some curse.  It probes the validity of certain religious practices.

Uncle Nallupayyan is a sharp contrast to the sensitive Kali.  Nallupayyan (which ironically means ‘good boy’) does not see any sanctity in human relations.  “If one can freely get the pleasure of a woman without getting married, who would want to get married?” he asks.  For him life is a series of enjoyments and sex is part of that series.  Traditions and religious rituals make no sense to him.  When the village decides to punish him for cutting off his caste’s trademark hair-knot, his answer is: “If the village’s honour resides in my bloody hair, I will grow it.... I don’t even mind growing a beard and a moustache.  I will grow them and sit around like you all, plucking lice from it. But add another thing to it.  It was only yesterday that I shaved off my pubic hair, because it was itching too much.  Now if your village honour is also dependent on my pubic hair, let me know right away.  I will grow that too.”

Kali and Uncle Nallupayyan are contrasting approaches to absurd religious practices.  Kali is tormented by them, while Nallupayyan is able to cast them off with the ease of a snake that sheds its worn-out scales.  The majority lie in between seeking and finding their gods and goddesses in ways that suit them.

Why the resurgent Right Wing was offended by this novel is beyond my comprehension.  It seems they were offended by the mating ritual mentioned in the novel.  Of course, the author makes it amply clear that the ritual took place in the olden days.  The novel is set in the days of the British Raj.  We had many such practices in the ancient days.  The devadasi system, for instance, had its share of kitsch and twitch.  Will the Sangh Parivar demand the ban of all books on such practices?

One Part Woman is a delightful work of art that takes us through certain labyrinths of an old Tamil Nadu village and its religion.  It shows us the various dimensions of religious beliefs and how they keep life going even at the very basic levels of sexual unions, and how they hinder life at times.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Nazneen’s Fate

N azneen is the protagonist of Monica Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane (2003). Born in Bangla Desh, Nazneen is married at the age of 18 to 40-year-old Chanu Ahmed who lives in London. Fate plays a big role in Nazneen’s life. Rather, she allows fate to play a big role. What is the role of fate in our life? Let us examine the question with Nazneen as our example. Nazneen was born two months before time. Later on she will tell her daughters that she was “stillborn.” Her mother refused to seek medical help though the infant’s condition was critical. “We must not stand in the way of Fate,” the mother said. “Whatever happens, I accept it. And my child must not waste any energy fighting against Fate.” The child does survive as if Fate had a plan for her. And she becomes as much a fatalist as her mother. She too leaves everything to Fate which is not quite different from God if you’re a believer like Nazneen and her mother. When a man from another continent, who is more than double her age,...