![]() The rest of the novel drifts back and forth in time. Ponna is just willing, but Kali is adamantly against it. ![]() Part of the novel reveals how Kali and Ponna’s mothers and Ponna’s brothers badger the couple to let Ponna take part in the 18th day festivities (for lack of a better word). Emotionally, however, things are not so permissible for a couple as in love as Kali and Ponna. The man “appears as god” to the woman and everything is religiously and socially sanctioned. On the 18th day of the festival, women who hope to conceive have the option of having sex with a man not their husband. One Part Woman takes place in the months leading up to the chariot festival. Ponna, on the other hand, is tormented by her inability to conceive. Kali is content, however, and deeply in love with his wife. Everyone around them, from relatives to neighbors to priests, has advice, pity, theories, and/or scorn for the childless couple. Farmer Kali has been married for twelve years to Ponna, but they don’t have any children. ![]() This is certainly the case in rural Tamil Nadu, some time after 1945, in Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman (translated by Aniruddhan Tasedevan). For a long time and in many places (and still is in many places) the role of a woman is to produce children, heirs. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |