Perumal Murugan has come back after his self-imposed exile from writing with a collection of poetry and Poonachi, a novel about a black goat. Having been a witness to his exile and alienation at close quarters, I know how writing sustained him, regardless of whether he was going to publish it or not.

Hailing from the Kongu region that is semi-arid and awaits the rains each season, a goatherd climbs the hostile terrain with his goats, cattle and sheep to graze the little green that is available. A common sight though this may be, it is etched in our imaginations. Poonachi captures the essence of the land, its flora and fauna, animals and birds and the Asura tribes ruled over by the officials.

Tamil aesthetics is based on the poetical mode of tinai as the bedrock of life, imagination and philosophy. The Asura tribes occupying the Dravida region divide life into akam and puram (love and war, as A.K. Ramanujan has termed it), and the land into five major tinais, or landscapes. The tinais correspond to certain mindscapes and emotional states of being in Tamil poetics. Within this framework, Poonachi comes alive as an intense, internal strife for survival. Like in the akam tradition, the personae, or characters, in Poonachi are not named. They are like ‘everyman’, each playing their part. As in the Tamil tradition, the animals or the landscape are not mere symbolic abstractions but material and functional aspects that intertwine with human existence, or rather play a decisive role in human life. It is not Orwellian in that sense.

Poonachi, the magical seventh offspring of a black goat, reaches an old man one evening. A stranger entrusts him with her care and disappears. From then on, Poonachi becomes pivotal in the life of the old man and his wife. Even though the other goat in their house that has just delivered is reluctant to take care of Poonachi, the old woman is determined to save her. In keeping with her name, Poonachi literally takes to the old woman like a domesticated cat. (Poonai is the Tamil word for cat).

Poonachi’s growth is a treasure house of folk knowledge about rearing livestock. The government system interferes and controls the goats and sheep born in the village. No goat goes unmarked. The surveillance is all pervasive. The scene where the old woman takes her goats to have their ears pierced for identity and to obtain a license from the local office is indeed an absurdist play. There is a litany about queuing and how we must all get used to it. Humans and animals compete in vulnerability in the presence of these officers. But Poonachi brings the officers to her hut when she delivers her first seven kids. The old man turns her into an exhibit for people to watch and collects one rupee per head. This is perhaps the height of irony.

Poonachi’s life is beset with everything a young girl encounters in her life – almost orphaned at birth, faced with a lack of nutrition while growing up, left to fend for herself and to learn about the big bad world, imposed with strict morality concerning her sexuality, forced to be pregnant etc. Perumal Murugan scoffs at the right-wing moralistic critique of his writings by laying bare the misogyny implied in our patriarchal culture. It scorches at every turn and affects male and female alike. The male goats who are allowed to impregnate once and are then sold off form a heartrending part of the story. But even in this story of misery, there is breezy romance. The sensuality of Poonachi and Poovan reads like a duet number.

The traversing of literary texts from Bashas to English, mediated through translation, brought Perumal Murugan into the scene of controversy. Two of his earlier novels translated into English by V. Geetha revealed his sense of social critique, especially of the travails of the marginalised. But Poonachi is special as it came out after the controversy over One Part Woman.

Kalyan Raman’s translation has an easy flow that makes it a pleasure to read. Thanks to the translation, the book can now be read by a wider audience. (We still, however, need to resolve our old debates as to which words we retain from the original and why. I could not understand why ‘sombu’, a vessel, has to be retained in Tamil.)

As the author has said in an interview, he is not Poonachi; but Poonachi resides in him. As he states in his introduction, because he is fearful of writing about humans, more so of Gods, he has written about animals. “Of them, dogs and cats are meant for poetry. It is forbidden to write about cows or pigs. That leaves only goats and sheep. Goats are problem-free, harmless and above all, energetic”.

A. Mangai is a feminist theatre activist, translator and academician.