Self-immolation is a horrifying act; and even more baffling is the fact that it is mostly women that predominantly take their own lives in this manner.
This is the premise of A Woman Burnt, a translation of Sellatha Panam, a Tamil novel that won the Sahitya Akademi award in 2020. Written by Dravidian activist and writer Imayam, and translated in English by GJV Prasad, the story has at its centre, the immolation of Revathi, an upper caste woman who marries an auto driver from the Burmese refugee community against her family’s wishes.
Did she do it to herself? Was it an accident? Did her husband do this to her? What could have possibly led a young woman with two little children, and her whole life ahead of her, to be doused in diesel and lit on fire? These are the questions ringing in the reader’s ears even as chapter after chapter delves into the loops that the family is thrown into in the aftermath of the incident.
Revathi is an engineering graduate. On the brink of a successful career and a comfortable life, she falls in love with Ravi and decides to marry him against all odds. When her parents attempt to dissuade her, she threatens to light herself on fire—for the first time. So they give in. They conduct a bare wedding and cut her loose, all the while cursing her and wishing her dead.
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Mere months into the marriage, Ravi starts beating her up. His mother tells him not to let her get a job, because she would surely leave him then. He drinks away his earnings and sends her to her parents’ house to bring more money. Revathi’s father and brother look the other way, while her mother gives her some cash to get by. She helps her birth her children and offers care in the brief windows when Ravi lets her come home.
Shame and disgust cloud their vision and it does not even occur to the family to put an end to the abusive cycle and get her a divorce. It is a stark reality even today that neither her birth home nor her marital home is a safe haven for a woman. In the worst of circumstances, she is shunted between the two places, valued only for her labour and the financial gains she can procure. Push comes to shove over and over, and she has nowhere to go.
When Revathi’s parents hear of the immolation, everything turns upside down. They take all the money they own—10 lakh rupees in hard cash—and run to the hospital. All animosity forgotten, they just want their child to live. But she’s suffered such terrible burns that there’s nothing to be done except wait for life to take its course. Their money is useless. Their social power is useless. Their caste pride is useless.
We see them lament, point fingers, self-flagellate and rage. They think of everything they could’ve done, should’ve done. And it is as though we are trapped in the hospital corridor with them, wringing our hands and burning with anguish, unable to listen to them ramble anymore and yet unable to get away from it.
What shines through is the author’s understanding of how the layers of casteism and misogyny baked into the social order operate and how inescapable they are. Imayam’s writing is sharp, ruthless when it captures the rage and helplessness each character experiences.
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A Woman Burnt is a worthy attempt to take the story to a larger audience, but much of the severity of the goings-on—reflected in the dialogues—tends to get lost in translation. The scathing retorts and profanity in the Tamil original make you flinch in places, while the same bits when said in English come across as a little blunted. For those who can read Tamil, this reviewer recommends the original.
Revathi is described as a willful woman, but we barely hear her voice. Not one to get into arguments or screaming matches, she lets her actions speak. Her immolation happens off-screen, so to speak, so all we hear are other people’s speculations. It makes one wonder if this was her final act of defiance in the impossible position in which the broken society put her. Her death leaves her family members with nothing but a lifetime of regret, guilt and grief…and her two inter-caste children. The question one is left with is, will they do better?
Indumathy Sukanya is a Bengaluru-based writer and artist.
