Iyengar’s women, in particular, stand out. They refuse to remain confined by the roles assigned to them; they are flawed, capable, contradictory, vulnerable, and intensely alive. Though their lives are shaped by limits and pressure, their choices—often brave,
The why of the crime becomes more important. However, these sections often err on the side of over-articulation. Motivations are explained and justified at length. In seeking to make the psychology legible, the narrative occasionally flattens it. The repetition of grievance, resentment and self-pity risks turning complexity into monotony.
her 14-year-old brother who has just entered the ‘Pew Burty Club’, has a bigger share of questions without answers than her even though he is older. Their Ma is a far cry from a typical mother; she tells her children that she picked them from a shop when she was in the mood and had to keep them as the shop didn’t have a return policy. She forgets basic household chores on many days,
Creating an absurdist world, it is not love but rather hatred and lust that are the clearer emotions in the novel. ‘The lines of love perpetually spiral into a whirlpool. Hatred and lust are better for they never fall prey to misunderstanding and doubt. Their manoeuvres, principles and rules are transparent…. It is love alone that remains trapped in doubt and suspicion, perpetually soaked in fear.’ The narrator celebrates lust.
it becomes his own creation. The first chapter in the source text raises some fundamental questions the novel raises, of the following of the traditional occupation of tending sheep versus taking up modern jobs and the priorities of people of different generations in the same family. The translator chooses to begin with chapter two in the source text. Unlike the source text that makes the entry of the tiger surreptitiously, even the word tiger is not directly used by the novelist until the fifth chapter and he prefers to use instead the word pedda nakka, the big fox;
Also, the translator Peer Mohamed Azees, might have done well to have given the meaning of those words that require an explanation the very first time they occur, especially the names of the various literary magazines that Pudumaipithan worked for. Also, it isn’t till page 30 that we are informed that Pudumaipithan means ‘the one crazy about the modern’. Equally inexplicably, a glossary is missing;