A peek into the life of...

Fire Bird

Author: Perumal Murugan

(translated from Tamil by Janani Kannan)

In my opinion, this is how a novel should be written. From a mundane job of riding on the bullock cart, traversing the country roads, looking for suitable land to start farming and hence to prosper his young family, he manages to tell the whole shebang of his family politics and the people and politics of the land he was passing through to scout. 

Kuppan decides to take a long ride to the edge of the state with his faithful handyman, Muthu, in search of land to buy after a family feud. Being the youngest male child, he got the short end of the stick. His elder brothers decided that their father's land had to be divided. Perumal tells how the division of ancestral land works. Even the parents were given a measly piece of land. Kuppan, the timid one in the family who grew in awe of his brothers, did not fight back as it was not his colour to clash head-on despite his wife's constant nagging. 

Through flashbacks and soliloquies, the readers learn tiny titbits about farming, traditional inheritance practices in some Tamil communities and that the whole of South India is not a monolith. Each part of the state has its peculiarities. Through his master storytelling, Perumal brings his viewer into the depth of its interiors to share Kuppan's sometimes hair-raising quest to start the right footing for his young family.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.