The
first novel of one of the best writers today, Koveru Kazhuthaigal is
located in the early 1970s when ritual status and payment in kind were giving
way to cash wages. It is a tapestry of despair, courage and a journey both
outward and inward and a story of decline and change in a village seen through
the eyes of a washerwoman (vannaatti) Arokkyam, who serves a dalit
community of agricultural labourers. The ‘mules’ of the title refers ironically
to the vannaan and vannaatti themselves who
traditionally carried their washing on donkeys. Although they play an important
role in all Hindu rites of passage, it is striking that Arokkyam and Savuri are
Catholics. Most importantly, they defer to the authority of the priest at the
Church of Saint Antony and seek his blessing on family and community occasions.
The novel gives us an extraordinarily detailed picture of a lifestyle that has
now passed—reclaimed and told with pride.
The worst oppression of
the caste system, Imayam suggests, is that people are dependent upon it for
their living.