Pyre

Perumal Murugan

Also by Perumal Murugan

One Part Woman

The Story of a Goat

Translated from the Tamil by

ANIRUDDHAN VASUDEVAN

Black Cat

New York

Cover design by Becca Fox Design

Landscape painting © Prashant Prabhu, Mumbai, India (prashantprabhu.com)

Courtesy of SaatchiArt; bicycle drawing © Allen Shaw

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First published in Tamil as Pookkuzhi by Kalachuvadu Publications Pvt. Ltd, Nagercoil in 2013

First published in English by Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Books India in 2016

Published by Penguin Books, Penguin Random House India in 2017

Michigan Tamil Sangam literature translation grant

An initiative to bring the best of Tamil literature to the world.

சிறந்த தமிழ் இலக்கியங்கள் உலகளாவிய ஏற்பிசைவு பெறுவதற்கான முன்னெடுப்பு.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic paperback edition: February 2022

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

ISBN 978-0-8021-5933-5

eISBN 978-0-8021-5934-2

Black Cat

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

ONE

The sun was blazing overhead when Saroja and Kumaresan stepped off the bus.

Beyond the tamarind trees that lined the road, all they could see were vast expanses of arid land. There were no houses anywhere in sight. With each searing gust of wind, the white summer heat spread over everything as if white saris had been flung across the sky. There was not a soul on the road. Even the birds were silent. Just an ashen dryness, singed by the heat, hung in the air. Saroja hesitated to venture into that inhospitable space.

‘Step down with your right foot first,’ Kumaresan had said to her. She was now unsure whether he had said this in jest or if he had meant it. By habit, anyway, she had descended from the bus with her right foot first, but she was not sure he had noticed that. The courage she had gathered until then suddenly vanished, leaving her feeling uneasy. When her feet touched the ground, she had prayed within her heart, ‘May everything go well.’ She could not think of a specific god. She only knew the name of Kumaresan’s family deity, Goddess Kali, but she would not have been able to confidently recognize the goddess’s idol in the temple. The only Kali she knew was a goddess with widened eyes, terrifying teeth and her tongue sticking out. She could not pray to that Kali, who only inspired fear.