Rising from the embers

Fire Bird — first published in 2012 as Aalandaapatchi — has been translated into English by Janani Kannan, a US-based architect who pursues the vibrance of Tamil culture through its language, architecture and food.

Perumal Murugan is the literary face of the Tamil rural landscape. He draws inspiration from his own past and writes gazing at the very farms and animals he writes about — with modesty and humility that is rare in contemporary literature. Fire Bird — first published in 2012 as Aalandaapatchi — is but one fine example of his honest writing. It has been translated into English by Janani Kannan, a US-based architect who pursues the vibrance of Tamil culture through its language, architecture and food. She also translated Murugan’s first novel from 1991, Rising Heat, in 2020, initiating its late discovery for the non-Tamil reader.

Named after the mythical bird, the novel illustrates the ephemerality of life. This transition (or rather, its pursuit) is seen through the journey that Muthannan (Muthu) makes from his ancestral village. Kuppan, a loyal worker of his in-laws, accompanies him. Together, with their oxen, they travel from one village to another, “in search for permanence.”

Muthu, the youngest and once the dearest son, has been cheated by his fate, as his family farm is divided among his four brothers and parents. Once full of life, his home in Karattur taluk is now a bitter memory. Thus, he seeks a new life, a new place, with new people, for his wife and three children. Kuppan is a helping hand and a welcome company, for they balance each other like the wheels of a cart. Muthu lives in his head and thinks everything through. And worries. Kuppan acts more than he thinks, albeit responsibly. Muthu has travelled and knows people. Kuppan has never set foot outside his village but knows stories worth filling hours. Muthu is hardworking and Kuppan is sincere, unlike the strange men of Karankunnu, the village they have chosen to build a new home. This, however, is not the end of their labour; only the beginning.

Murugan often writes with hindsight, revealing the past as a reason, but not before one knows its consequences in the present. Muthu’s story starts in the middle, with only a glimpse through the window of his life. As a perceptive man — a reflection of Murugan himself as I’d like to believe — Muthu understands animals, birds and Nature’s needs. His story circles varying social realities and the fragility of relationships — between mother and son, daughters and daughters-in-law, and brothers — and yet, it eventually confronts the universality of the human condition, as is Murugan’s signature style. Simplicity is his strongest tool.

In a long writing and academic career, Murugan has written poetry, short stories, and over a dozen novels, many of which have been translated into English — the inevitable language that connects the local with the global. Because of the miraculous work done by translators like Anirudhh Vasudevan and Janani Kannan, Murugan’s ostensibly humble and quotidian stories of the rural past and present have reached a wider (and deserving) audience leading to national and international recognition. In the six years of the JCB Prize for Literature — an award recognising the best of contemporary Indian literature — Perumal Murugan has been nominated thrice. This year, Fire Bird has made it to the JCB longlist. Previously, he was nominated for Poonachi in 2018 and for A Lonely Harvest and Trial by Silence in 2019 — the sequels to One Part Woman he wrote as an incisive response to the 2015 controversy. (In 2015, after an aggressive local criticism of One Part Woman, a story of the struggles of childlessness, he had posted on social media that, “Perumal Murugan, the writer is dead. As he is no God, he is not going to resurrect himself.”) Fortunately for his readers, he did resurrect himself.

Speaking of acclaim, the 57-year-old scholar and professor of Tamil Literature was also the first Tamil writer to make it to the International Booker Longlist 2023. In an interview with the Booker team earlier this year, he highlighted the potency of translations in a global sense, underlining the spirit of the award: “Language is the best among the inventions of humankind. A long history is embedded in a single word. Language holds culture in it, it holds values. It is a magic that holds music, geography, arts and more. In that sense, a translation is a confluence of two magics. It has to be celebrated.” As readers and lovers of the written word, we are thankful for writers who create this magic and for translators who bridge the gap.