A decade ago, Perumal Murugan published his controversial Tamil novel Madhorubagan, the story of a young couple tormented by their inability to have children. Translated into English as One Part Woman in 2013, the novel drew instant protests against its portrayal of a ritual where childless women hoping to conceive met strange men at a chariot festival. The protests took a heavy toll on the author who temporarily quit writing because of the demands of fighting a court case. Murugan is back now with another novel that questions the heavily prejudiced gender equations in the country.

Resolve, the English translation of Murugan’s 2014 Tamil novel Kanganam, tells the story of a young man looking for an elusive bride. Marimuthu is a 35-year-old farmer in a village where there are only three young women looking for a groom. The number of potential bridegrooms is, however, 67. Praised by all for his farming skills, the young man is unable to find a match even in nearby villages and faraway lands. There are small matters like caste to deal with and marriage is something not solely left to those getting married. Not only the family members, but astrologers, neighbours and the entire community come in to make or force decisions. For many years, Marimuthu has been at the wrong end of these decisions.

Living with his parents and grandmother, Marimuthu is an easy prey for the matchmakers in the village. ‘Thanavadhi’ Thatha is the village’s elderly matchmaker responsible for many marriages in the past, but struggling with the lop-sided ratio today. Then there is a retired math teacher, who has set up an office and amassed a set of old horoscopes and photographs to dupe unsuspecting men. Veeduthi is another, who arrives at Marimuthu’s house often armed with proposals that never see the light of the day. The young man was once persuaded by one of the matchmakers to buy a television for his home because a prospective bride was an avid watcher of serials.

The novel begins with Marimuthu’s farm hand Kuppan seeking money from his master for the marriage expenses of his 17-year-old son. Kuppan wants Marimuthu to set a date for his son’s marriage. The demand sends the exasperated young man on a desperate journey of his own to find a bride within six months, the date he sets for the marriage of Kuppan’s son. Marimuthu knows he wouldn’t find help from his family, from a father who takes no decisions, and a mother who wants to have the final say in everything, including his marriage. He feels his fate is like that of a young man in their community who is told by his clansmen that he could get married only when his new pair of sandals with iron soles gifted by them are worn out.

Written in 2007, Resolve is Murugan’s fourth novel that was influenced by reports of female infanticide in Tamil Nadu in the 1980s. “I was a college student then. I found a huge discrepancy between the public debates about the issue and the way things actually worked in my region, where I came to hear stories of female infanticide among landholding castes and other well-to-do families,” writes the author in an introduction to the translation. “They didn’t want to diminish their holdings by giving away property to their daughters… They believed that sons would be their true heirs, that they would carry the family name forward, and they would pass on the inheritance to future generations of the family,” he adds.

One case of female infanticide in the book hints at a woman’s mother-in-law turning her four-day-old infant daughter on its stomach and leaving it to suffocate to death. Other methods mentioned are poisoning female babies with milk of a certain plant or adding grains of paddy to milk. Women’s rights to inheritance ensured in the late 1980s led to illegal abortions after finding out the sex of the child in the womb. “The issue of female infanticide has seen many dimensions since the late 1970s. The ones to truly feel the impact of all these changes are those men who were born in the 1980s,” writes Murugan, explaining the origins of his novel.

Resolve follows the publication of Amma, last year’s English translation of Murugan’s essays about his mother, first published in Tamil as Thondra Thunai (Invisible Companion). His previous work, Estuary, the English translation of Murugan’s 2018 Tamil novel Kazhimugam, analysed the deep distrust of young people in an education system that viewed development as an obedient tool of tradition. Translated with an elegance that reflects Murugan’s deep understanding of the unbreakable links between farmers and their land, Resolve is a searing indictment of the skewed gender equations in India.

Faizal Khan is a freelancer

Resolve
Perumal Murugan
Penguin Random House
Pp 400, Rs 599