Love Story of a Childless Couple
One Part Woman (Madhorubhagan) by Perumal Murugan
This is most well known work of the author for non-Tamil speaking audience, owing to controversy it stirred. It is a love story of Kali and Poona, a childless couple in Tamil Nadu, who weren’t allowed to live with peace by societal norms and peer pressure. Everyone taunts them on their inability to birth a child and as a result they live an ostracized life. Despite all this, the way author describes their relationship, desire, remorse, and broken-heartedness , the couple seemed to be very much in love with each other. Yet the couple and their close relatives remains concerned on their deficiency. The relative’s conspiracy to get Poona a child by sleeping with some god on the night of temple festivities, as a religious custom goes, is the hope for Poona whereas heartbreaking for Kali.
This novel has one of the best sidekick character as Nallayyan, Kali’s uncle, who mocks the social conventions whenever they encroach his rights. Whenever he comes in novel, he transfers some of his infectious energy to the major characters to the novel and even to the readers. Wish the author write a book on him.
Overall, this book is a love story laced with emphatic characters, evocative details, intense romance (not in generic sense), pain of childless parents, and horrors of religious customs.