Firebird

I recently read a novel called ‘Firebird’ which is the English translation of the original Tamil book by Perumal Murugan. I had heard an interview of the author at the Bangalore Lit Fest and got interested in the book. It is translated into English by Janani Kannan.

The novel is steeped in the world of Tamil villages, customs, foods, people, gender and caste equations, ordinary life, village routines and societal norms. Therefore, while I read the English version, I cannot be certain how much of the original has been maintained in the translation. But as a non Tamil reader, I must affirm that it takes you into the world of Tamil farmers, family structures, villages, caste politics and everyday life fairly deeply.

The story revolves around the journey of a poor farmer whose life is uprooted when, as the youngest member of his family, he is left with a raw deal as part of the family land distribution. To add to his woes, he finds himself angry yet helpless when his fiery wife is molested by his fatherly eldest brother and leaves home with the condition that she won’t return till he finds a new place to settle. He then sets out on his oxen cart with a loyal, senior helper assigned by his father-in-law in search of land to set up house and farm.

The story is non-linear and keeps shifting between present and past, adulthood and childhood of the main protagonist Muthu. There are substantive roles for his helper Kuppanna throughout the journey and his wife Peruma has a constant presence in the background. There are important influences from his brothers, his parents, a number of villagers he meets, and even a grandmother of his wife towards the end. The author transports you into the real world of Tamil villages and the rural, poverty-struck, mundane life of a farmer, perhaps from a few decades back. The amount of detail in the aspects of ordinary life such as the types of clothes and foods to the intricacies of farming, woven into the story along with unsaid social and caste structures, undercurrents of village politics, unfair gender equations, tenuousness of family relationships, bitterness of language – make this novel extraordinary to read.

The first half of the novel is gripping when the plot moves fast and it seems like Muthu – the main protagonist- is on his way towards deliverance when he seals a deal for land in a village far from his native place after suffering at the hands of his own family. But the second half meanders for a long while with backstories that don’t tie up while he faces various hurdles and spends time to set up the land for cultivation. It has painstaking details on the farmer’s problems, toddy tapping and even removal of stones from his land which don’t move the plot anywhere forward. Eventually, the novel ends while he is still in that process, and the reader is left wondering what happened to the others, especially his wife Peruma and his other brothers in the village. Most of all, it is unclear whether Muthu himself has achieved closure on his search. Hence, I found the end incomplete as far as the story line is concerned.

But then, such novels are not about the plot as much as they are about the reading itself. On that front, this book kept me hooked and engrossed in the world of Muthu and Tamil village life right through. It painted a picture through words like I have not seen or known before. One does empathize with the main characters and gets involved in their desperation during suffering and optimism when a life of promise beholds. But as a reader, I remained somewhat unsatisfied at the end when I wasn’t sure of the state of the deliverance of Muthu and Peruma, the real Firebird. Despite that, just for an in-depth experience of the world of Tamil villages and a farmer’s journey that the author brings to life, Firebird is highly recommended reading.