I feel compelled to write a second and longer review for Poonachi, now that I have had time to marinate my thoughts.
This review contains spoilers:
The many original, unadulterated Tamil names Perumal Murugan has used in this book, brought up a very special joy in me. A familiarity, a sense of attachment to my roots along with a unique attraction to the story, because of how much I love the Tamil language. I feel a strong connection to Tamil as an entity, beyond just a language. It is it's people, the Dravidian culture, our food, our clothing, our mannerisms, our dialects, it is a way of life. It separates us distinctly from non-Tamil speakers because there are some parts of being a Tamilian that cannot be translated. It is very contextual, like any other culture is. The people who grow up in a place, who live and breathe that culture, who eat cook and love in a language will always know some things about it that cannot be taught or explained to an outsider. Not because we're not willing to share, but because those things are meant to be experienced, you learn and you become a people by naturalization. Some of those names starting from Poonachi, to Poovan, Semmi, Uzhumban, Oothan, Kaduvayan are names I haven't heard in a very very long time, not since my grandmother passed away. She used to share stories of her growing up years and names like these would pop up, shining light on a rural Tamilnadu that I didn't really know or belong to.
Growing up, my parents would take us to our native place-our villages to our kuladeivam temples. We still go there atleast once a year, and we combine the temple trip with visiting relatives. These men and women are mostly farmers, workers, small plantation owners, simple, hearty, generous and true people of the soil. I've seen their dry skin, their bare feet, cracked heels and calloused palms. I've seen them scale the arid lands and wet fields with equal ease. They are one with the earth in a way I could never be. They always shower us with gifts of vegetables, crops, groundnuts, pulses and coconuts when we go, even when we have the means to buy these things easily in Chennai. Even when they have so little themselves. They insist on us taking home the organic produce, which truly no city's supermarket can compete with. This book made me think of all those people, made me extremely grateful to have known and experienced all of that growing up. It made the story that much more relatable and real to me.
The old woman in the story, called fondly as Ayah, feels Poonachi is her daughter and nurtures her so. She plays with her, feeds her, let's her stick around her all day like one would their child. She is deeply attached to Poonachi and the motherless Poonachi survives because of her caretaking. As she grows older, Poonachi grows a mind of her own. Time and now, you'll see the old woman bicker or Poonachi wanting to break free from the suffocating love of the old woman. Poonachi wants to act like a grown up and the old woman would laugh because for her Poonachi would always remain a baby. She takes care of her when no one does, and she understands her even though they cannot communicate with each other. They are truly like mother and daughter, they cannot understand eachother fully well, but they love eachother, sometimes hate eachother and can't survive without one another. This struggle stood out to me and made me appreciate Perumal Murugan's nuanced writing allowing the reader to empathize with a female goat's mixed feelings about her mother figure.
The story also touches upon the complexity of ownership and domestication. When you own animals, you love and care for them as your own children. You feed them, bathe them, protect them and it sometimes feels like they're better off domesticated because they're well taken care of. But are they really better off? Animals are sentient beings with thoughts and feelings and emotions. Perumal Murugan takes you through a variety of them. You're privy to their conversations, their joy, their sorrow and it makes it unmistakeably wrong in the reader's mind for the old man and woman to claim ownership over these animals and do as they please with them and their kids. When Poovan is sacrificed, when Uzhumban is cut down, when Semmi is sold, when the nanny goat is separated from her kids, you find the justifications harder and harder to stomach. I could understand their predicament. This is the way of life in the villages. They grow these animals to serve them. It hurts the people too to watch their animals-members of their family-being taken away but there is no judgement served to one another because they do what needs to be done for survival. This is the fickle nature of life and one cannot fully blame anyone.
I thought the stark difference between men and women in their empathy and practicality was written so beautifully by Perumal Murugan. The scenes where the old man leaves behind Poonachi when she gets lost in the forest while the old woman wails and calls for her all night. The way the old man accepts his fate when Uzhumban is accidentally killed but the old woman wouldn't stop crying, lamenting and refuses to touch his meat. When they're struggling to feed themselves during the famine, the old woman still saves a portion of the flour to make gruel for pregnant Poonachi while her husband hates his wife who saves for the goat, plots to sell her for meat as they're starving themselves. Even then no person feels entirely evil because the old man is the one who treats Poonachi as God's gift when he first brings her home. He would call her good luck when she brought them money with her litter. He carried her to the grazing fields when his wife thought she was too weak. He never forgets how he was handed this little goat in a mysterious and special way.
Throughout this book, I forgot that I was a Chief Officer onboard an oil tanker somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean. I was transported, I was a little village girl, a spectator, a wallflower, a mangohill leaf, an old tree, a speck of dust in the front yard where Poonachi grows up. I was there with them the whole time. It made me wish I could go to CMBT, catch a mofussil bus to rural Tamilnadu, to the land of Asuras, to actually go see those villages, visit those houses and walk those lands where Poonachi and her owners lived.
To say I enjoyed reading this book would be extremely reductive of the whirlpool of emotions this book stirred in me. I know this is fiction and that Poonachi and the old woman were not real but it is so close to the truth, the story is so real that there must be thousands of women in Tamilnadu growing thousands of Poonachis (goats and daughters) in their care, that devastation never really eased up for me. But this is a grief I would love to carry with me. I wished I could share this experience with my friends who I know would appreciate this book. I wish reading was an activity that can be done together like watching a movie. Where we could pause and discuss after particular moments in the book and share our thoughts. Where we can sit in silences together sometimes when we feel heavy and cry tears when we're happy.
- 29 March 2025
