Outlook Anniversary Issue: Between Sky Above, Earth Below

For every novel, the central idea, the story, often takes shape easily in the mind. But constructing the background in which to situate it is not simple. The setting must possess credibility. Readers should feel as though they can walk through it, seeing everything with their own eyes. Only through this can one encounter the characters. Reading a novel is the experience of travelling into a new world. In that world, the space the characters inhabit is as important as the characters themselves. So, to build the background, the writer must also engage in fieldwork. I wish to share my experience of how I created the setting for a novel.

Koolamathari (Seasons of the Palm) is the third novel I wrote. It was published in Tamil in 2000, and the English translation was published in 2005. In fact, this was the novel I had intended to write first. But since it had not fully taken shape in my mind, I picked it up only after writing two other novels. From the time I began writing it to the time I completed it, nearly ten years passed. Several times, I abandoned certain chapters midway, feeling they were not coming out right. Once, after writing almost half the novel, I tore it up, dissatisfied with how it had turned out. Even then, I could neither abandon the novel altogether nor move on to something else. It kept chasing me relentlessly.

The characters, the events—everything had been finalised. I was clear about which incident should be written in what sequence. I had even named the goats that play an important role in the novel. I am usually confused when it comes to deciding an ending, but for this novel, even that was no trouble. Then what exactly was the problem?

It took me several years to figure that out. The difficulty I faced in writing stemmed from the setting. The background of the novel is the landscape where my ancestors had lived for generations, practising agriculture. I was attempting to shape that land as a living character. Because I did not fully grasp that sensibility, I could not write as I had envisioned. I kept fretting that something was missing, that something was not quite right. Once I realised that the land itself had to be transformed into a living character, I began to think about what all needed to be done to create that setting.

That setting is a rain-fed tract, known in our region’s local dialect as mettukkaadu or land that looks up to the sky, dependent entirely on rain. Sowing begins in Vaikasi (Tamil month corresponding to mid-May to mid-June) and Aani (mid-June to mid-July), when the summer rains fall in measured amounts, and the harvest is completed by Karthigai (mid-November to mid-December) and Margazhi (mid-December to mid-January). Agricultural work lasts only six or seven months. During the remaining months, we merely keep turning the soil in one way or another: digging out groundnuts left behind in the earth, cutting castor plants, storing and preparing seeds, and securing fodder for cattle and goats. There is no work that can be called compulsory agricultural labour then. Such are the climate and water resources of our region.

A large part of Kongu Nadu, the western region of Tamil Nadu, is poor in water resources. Rainfall is very scanty. In some parts of Tamil Nadu, both the southwest monsoon and the northeast monsoon bring rain. For us, it is only the northeast monsoon and even that arrives in moderation. When cyclones lash the northern districts such as Chennai, Chengalpattu, and Tiruvallur with torrential rain, our region remains scorched by the sun. When cyclones strike the southern districts like Thiruvarur and Nagapattinam, clouds gather thickly in our skies. Drops fall like a light drizzle. Year after year, people say, “It must either rain properly or clear away altogether. This sky that does neither is only toying with us.” This line has settled into the status of a proverb.

The River Cauvery enters Tamil Nadu from Karnataka and flows a long distance through our region before it reaches the delta districts. Yet it is of little benefit to us. In our area, it is called the ‘narrow Cauvery’; once it reaches the delta, it becomes the ‘broad Cauvery’. Kovai Kizhar, a historian of the Kongu region, describes the Cauvery as a ‘miser’. He says that after entering Kongu Nadu, the river gathers up all the resources of our land and carries them off to Chola Nadu. Even if it did not give us water, that might be tolerable—but it even takes away what little there is. Indeed, floods sweep away all the accumulated wealth of the soil. Thus, a river that is miserly in our region becomes a great benefactor to the delta districts. Such is nature’s wonder.

Only in the 20th century, after the construction of the Mettur Dam and a few smaller dams on tributary streams, did we begin to receive some measure of river water. Today, most cities can partake of Cauvery water. Even so, its use for irrigation remains limited.

In Namakkal district where I live, the predominance of red soil means that it instantly absorbs whatever rain falls. No matter how much it rains, red soil has a way of gulping it all down and letting out a belch. It has no capacity to store water. Consequently, groundwater resources are also scarce. There are many wells, but they are extremely deep. People say that if a man wearing a turban bends to look into a well, the turban would slip off and fall in; it was so impossible to see the bottom. Even in the wells, the water is saline. A well that yields water with low salt content is a rare marvel, and that alone serves as drinking water. Until about 20 years ago, it was a common sight to see crowds carrying pots and queuing up at such places.

Because of such a terrain, along with cultivation, the rearing of goats and sheep is also an important occupation for us. Koolamathari portrays the lives of boys who herd sheep as bonded farm labourers under small landowners. Grazing land belongs to the sheep; the boys who trail behind them, like the sheep themselves, are bound to and wander within that same land. For this, the landscape had to be rendered alive.

Within me lay an expanse of land. I spread it out before me like a map. Some parts were in darkness; in some, shadows had taken over. The parts that appeared in glaring light were too bright to look at directly. I realised how inadequate what I had assumed to be clarity really was. That land is the space of my childhood. For seven or eight generations, my ancestors had lived there. From birth until the age of 11, I roamed and wandered within it. When I was 11, the Tamil Nadu government acquired nearly a hundred acres of land belonging to our family and our kin, saying it was required to build Tamil Nadu Housing Board tenements. I would say that the government cheated us. We were illiterate, dependent entirely on that land for our livelihood. I would say the government grabbed the land from us by paying a small sum. We did not know what to do with that money. Of the 11 acres that belonged to my grandfather, my father had received a share of three acres. After that too was lost, we struggled in deep misery. Somehow, after much stumbling, we managed to survive.

The land I had run through and played in until the age of 11, and that way of life, lived on within me. The ache of that loss tormented my mind. It seemed to me that only after bringing everything into writing would I be able to free myself. Apart from writing, I could see no other way to release my mind. To reclaim in writing, after the age of 30, what I had lost at 11 was indeed a challenge. Everything that had entered me in those years of little understanding, and remained unclear within, had to be made clear.

I rode around that area on a bicycle, which had turned into a town with the houses built by the government and the many individual homes people had constructed after buying plots. All kinds of boundaries had disappeared. Wells had been sealed. Of the hundreds of palmyra trees, not even one was to be seen. Rocks that had once been grain fields had been split open, and houses built on top of them. There was no trace of where our houses had once stood. At the spot where our well—60 or 70 feet deep—had been covered over, a single coconut tree had survived and stood there. I went up to it, stroked its trunk, lingered for a while, and then left with a heavy sigh. In my mind, I tried to shape an outline of what had been where, and of what had existed where.

When I undertook these efforts, my grandfather and grandmother were no longer alive. They had told me so many things, so many incidents, like stories. I had also heard from them about events from the times of their parents and grandparents. Because of this, I carry a certain pride in knowing the history of five or six generations. From the beginning of the 19th century to the first quarter of the 21st century—two-and-a-quarter centuries of history—reside within me. Had I known then that these would later be of use in my writing, I could have asked my grandparents and many of my elders so much more. What has stayed with me unbidden is my true wealth.

While trying to create the setting of Koolamathari, I felt that if my grandparents had been alive, my need would have been easily met. What else could I do except let out another deep sigh? My mother is a repository of information. If asked for information directly, nothing emerges. But by drawing her into conversation from time to time, as though reviving old memories, I managed to extract many details. I spared no one—my paternal uncles and aunts, my cousins and kin. I deliberately created occasions to meet each of them and spoke casually. My aunt had spent her childhood on that land. Though she had moved to another place after marriage, she had not forgotten the land of her childhood and the life that was deeply etched in her memory. Though everyone spoke about the same landscape, their accounts were never identical. Each person had a different angle, a different gaze, a different memory. The land each had shaped and drawn within their own mind was distinct.

Drawing on all the information and incidents I gathered from so many people, I created a landscape. That became the setting for the fiction. I structured time as a single year, beginning in the month of Thai (mid-January to mid-February) and ending with the following Thai. The seasonal changes that occur every two months, the corresponding shifts in the life cycle of the palmyra, and the sights of the cultivated fields all fell naturally into place. To turn the land into one of the characters of the story, I used description, detail, season, and nature—everything possible to the fullest extent. I managed to kind of complete it and the novel was published in 2000.

It is difficult to discern the difference between real space and fictional space. The writer needs the artistic skill to fuse the two. When readers respond to Koolamathari, my attention is always on what they say about the novel’s setting. In the 20th century, the middle class emerged and grew as a social category. With it came a certain mindset, which gradually spread as the general social outlook. Contemporary ideas about the home arose in this way as well. Owning a house has become one of the lifelong dreams of an individual. There are young people who say they will marry only after buying or building a house. There are parents who insist that they will give their daughter in marriage only to a man who owns a house. A significant number of people buy homes through bank loans and spend a large portion of their salaries repaying them in instalments over many years. There are also those who own multiple houses and live off rental income. Among government schemes, one of the most important is ‘Housing for All’.

A house has come to function as proof of one’s level of comfort and prosperity. I see even palace-like houses inhabited by just two people. For women who are heads of households, maintaining the home takes up most of the day. The house has ceased to be merely a place to live and has become a symbol of social status. In such a context, what place did the house occupy in the social mindset of 50 years ago? A house was a place to safeguard grain. A house was a shelter from the rain. One could even live without a house; a small hut in the name of a house was enough. Many find it hard to believe that there were generations who lived without ever forming a mental image of a house. Yes. In the fictional world of Koolamathari, the house holds no importance at all.

The setting of Koolamathari is the open expanse of mettukkaadu. The people and the sheep wander through that space day and night. They have no sense of a house, no thought that a house is necessary. When the sun scorches, the shade of a tree is enough for shelter. When the rain falls in moderation, they delight in getting wet. When rain lashes down, they need a roof to hide under. In times without harvest, a roof is needed to store grain for food. That is all. Even sexual union takes place in the open. Do animals and birds go looking for houses? A few houses do appear in the novel, but they are never shown directly. They are spoken of through a retrospective technique. Yes, they are not shown; they are told. Even in these narrated houses, we never enter them and see anything inside. Only the exterior appears as an image. The threshold and the cattle shed are shown. Even when Dalit people enter houses, they step back out immediately. And so, the fictional space of this novel is entirely an open space. At a cursory glance, it may seem that there is nothing there at all. But for those who live there, countless things reveal themselves, like quail eggs hidden among the dry leaves scattered across a harvested field, many secrets lie concealed. In every season, the land reveals a different face, and that is reflected in human life as well.

Many readers have grasped this subtlety of the novel. Most do not speak about the events in it; they speak instead about that space. The plants, creepers, birds and trees in it all come alive for readers. They also speak of the politics that surface through the events. What is there to be found in this fictional space where the sky is above and the earth below? Wherever human beings set foot, they never fail to leave behind their marks or scars. Within this space, too, there are many things. The caste-political face of Indian society is firmly inscribed here. Both the minor and major forms of untouchability are revealed here. The authority and dominance that caste confers from birth take shape in this barren expanse. The well, with its gaping mouth, is no exception. Power operates even over water.

I have not constructed a village. I have not built the many kinds of cities so lavishly celebrated in the epics. The fictional space I have constructed is, in others’ eyes, an empty stretch of mettukkaadu. An open field where the rays of the sun spread without obstruction. An open space where the stars shine fully and wink eagerly. A vast expanse where the moon glides and casts its spell. A hidden space where darkness thickens and blinds the eyes. This is how I have created the fictional space of Koolamathari.

Some ask whether the space in this novel is entirely real, whether it can be seen today. A fictional space can be seen only within fiction. One may recognise its elements and shades here and there, but to behold it in its entirety, one must return to the novel again and again.

Perumal Murugan is a Tamil writer, poet and scholar. Several of his novels have been translated into English, including Seasons of the Palm (shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize); One Part Woman, which won the ILF Samanvay Bhasha Samman; Pyre, which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize; and Fire Bird, which won the 2023 JCB Prize for Literature

This article appeared as 'Sky Above, Earth Below' in Outlook’s 30th anniversary double issue ‘Party is Elsewhere’ dated January 21st, 2025, which explores the subject of imagined spaces as tools of resistance and politics.