Publisher’s
write-up:
‘Saroja and Kumaresan are in love. After a hasty wedding, they arrive in
Kumaresan's village, harboring a dangerous secret: their marriage is an
inter-caste one, likely to upset the village elders should they get to know of
it. Kumaresan is naively confident that all will be well. But nothing is
further from the truth. Despite the strident denials of the young couple, the
villagers strongly suspect that Saroja must belong to a different caste. It is
only a matter of time before their suspicions harden into certainty and,
outraged, they set about exacting their revenge.’
Note : I read the
novel in Tamil and its French translation
The Pyre is a novel of Perumal Murugan, known for is plots that are set
in rural Tamil Nadu, in India. He often talks about the difference between the
lifestyle in the cities as against the countryside, the social problems,
particularly ones related to caste discrimination.
In The Pyre, we have a young couple, Kumaresan and Saroja.
Kumaresan is from a village, working in a soda bottling factory in the city, and
while delivering these sodas, he saw Saroja and immediately falls in love with
her. After a few months, they elope and marry in a temple en route to Kumaresan’s
village. Ever since they settled down at the house of Kumaresan’s mother, they
face problems, the first being that Saroja being from a city, is not accustomed
to a village life but the latter and more important problem is that the two are
not from the same caste. Thus, nobody in Kumaresan’s family or the extended
family in the village accept Saroja as their daughter-in-law. That is the
principal theme of the novel – would Saroja get used to her new circumstances
and be accepted by Kumaresan’s family?
There are elements of the Tamil countryside which was used well by the
author. For those who have been in the countryside in South Asia, it is easy to
visualize the descriptions given by the author. The conflicts between Saroja
and Kumaresan’s family was described in detail, including the friendship and
love between Kumaresan and Saroja, given that Kumaresan was the only source of
support for Saroja in the whole village. Even though the author never specified
when the story ws taking place, based n certain cultural references, it was evident
that it was in one of the last decades of the 20th century.
However, that was what was missing for those who would read the translation
without being familiar with Tamil culture or customs, given that the translator
gave very minimal footnotes, for instance, a word like ‘thali’, it is
evident for someone like me from the Tamil culture that it is a wedding
jewellery, but for anyone else, it would be difficult. The author also introduced
several aspects to the story, such as the relationship between Saroja and her brother, which the
character describes in detail, but this was never relevant to the plot and I
did not understand why the author chose to introduce it in the first place.
It also needs to be said that those who do not like the background melancholy
and the excessive suffering that the main characters – Saroja and Kumaresan go
through, it would be difficult to read the book.
To conclude, it is a well written novel where I felt very much immersed
in a Tamil village while reading the book. I award the book a rating of eight
on ten.
Rating – 8/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
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