A Woman Burnt

Book

Title: A Woman Burnt

Author: Imayam

Translator: GJV Prasad

Publisher: Smon & Schuster, 2023

Pages: 317

Women are victims of many kinds of discrimination and exploitation in India. While patriarchy plays the dominant role in this, caste is an equally potent villain. A Burnt Woman is a novel, written originally in Tamil, about the tragic fate that a young woman faced because she chose to marry the man who apparently loved her more than he loved himself, though he belonged to a lower caste.

Revathi is a fresh graduate in computer software and she is offered a covetous job by TCS, the company she longed to join. But her entire life turns topsy-turvy when she chooses to marry Ravi, an autorickshaw driver belonging to a low caste and also to an economically low class.

Ravi met her just a couple of times in the local temple and fell madly in love with her. He tattoos her name all over his body and appears too frequently in front of Revathi’s house to proclaim his love for her. Revathi is won over. She refuses to listen to the wise counsels of her parents and relatives. The marriage becomes a disaster too soon.

Revathi sets herself on fire six years after the marriage. Almost the entire action of the novel takes place in the hospital where Revathi lies in the Intensive Care Unit [ICU] awaiting her death. Ravi is there too outside waiting anxiously for her recovery. He has never been kind to her, let alone loving. And now, in the hospital where his wife is dying slowly, Ravi is drunk all the time. There are moments when he confesses his love for Revathi and even refers to her as his goddess.

Ravi loved Revathi sincerely. But the love was never expressed. On the contrary, he exploited her brutally. He got her mother to pay the monthly instalments of his autorickshaw’s loan. He sold all of Revathi’s jewellery for financing his own delights. But he says many times, as he is waiting in the hospital, that he loves her more than anything else. We are given to understand that his inferiority complex and other psychological issues came in the way between him and his love.

Revathi’s relatives didn’t make it easy for him either. They all shunned them after the marriage. It is true that Revathi’s mother provided them with a lot of money. Revathi’s parents and brother do have genuine love for her. But they are unable to accept Ravi as her husband and the fact that Revathi could leave them for a loafer like him.  

The novel presents the complexities of human relationships. In spite of all the love people carry in their hearts, they can make lives miserable – their own as well as those of others. Caste and other social institutions also play a big role in it, apart from our own psychological makeup.

“What is without caste in Tamil Nadu?” Arunmozhi, Revathi’s sister-in-law asks her when Revathi protests that caste should have nothing to do with romance. Nothing happens without caste, she asserts.

Can our loves transcend certain barriers erected by the society? That is one of the questions the novel raises. Even if you are able to raise yourself above those barriers, what about the complexities that come from the psychological makeup of the other person? How much do you endure?

This novel is a portrayal of that endurance. The Tamil version won the state’s Sahitya Akademi Award in 2022. The translation is good though in a few places certain expressions are strikingly inelegant. What makes you wonder is the ability of the novel to keep you hooked to it till the end though there is hardly any action in it. You are there outside the ICU of the JIPMER hospital, Pondicherry. Revathi’s pain becomes your own. The pain of her parents and relatives as well as their anger and indignation against Ravi too become our own. But Ravi’s questions about the way a Dalit like him is treated by the society are not quite convincing. Ravi is too hollow a character to make his questions carry the profundity they could have had if they had come from another personality. But then, would another personality have driven Revathi to this tragic fate?

This is a simple novel written straight from the heart. It is sure to touch your heart too every now and then.