One Part Woman : A futile Attempt of the Woman for Emancipation M. A. Wasnik Assistant Professor, Dept. of English S.M.B.S. Arts College, Khamgaon. Email id: [email protected] Abstract: An attempt of this research paper is to scrutinize the issue of husband and wife who have not child that becomes the cause of woman‘s suffering and exploitation. She tries to remove the stain of a barren woman so she uses various option and alternatives to fulfill long desire of becoming mother. Her desire is nothing but a journey of emancipation from all the limitations of man-made patriarchal culture. She does not hesitate to give her own body to unknown man to fulfill her desire but her psyche forbids using last attempt for woman’s emancipation. All her attempts become futile because the deeply embedded patriarchal culture. To illustrate the discussion One Part Woman has been taken for the study. Key words: patriarchal, emancipation, futile, caste discrimination, violence, childlessness. INTRODUCTION Perumal Murugan is one of the finest literary figures in Tamil language. He was born in 1966. His novels project the spirit of the western region of Tamil Nadu where he was born. He has upheld the caste discrimination, violence, patriarchy culture and the struggles of the marginalized Hindu peasants in his novels. The novel deals with ancient and supposed cultural practices among Tamil Hindus. It is the story of a childless couple who has a strong desire of having a child, projected with compassion and dealt with suffering, frustration and anguish of the woman. Murugan was influenced by Tamili culture, tradition and language. The same we witness in this work of fiction. The novel also reflects patriarchal culture that makes a wretched condition of woman. That exploits woman in various ways and she tries to emancipate from the man-made culture but gets the same result. The husband and spouse on the center in One Part Woman are Kaliyannan (called Kali) and Ponnayi (Ponna). Ponna is the sister of Kali's adolescence pal, Muthu; they married while she was 16. The novel opens a dozen years later, with Kali and Ponna nonetheless very 112 plenty in love, and quite satisfied as a couple and with the existence they've made. Since the early days of their marriage, however, one dark cloud has hovered over them: they've remained childless. One Part Woman explores how this has affected them -- from how others, each own family and strangers, see and treat them, to their own feelings and frustrations approximately this -- and subsequently ends in the drastic final try and treatment the state of affairs that they're goaded and maneuvered into. The story frequently shifts returned to earlier times, scenes from their marriage or even before. Though there are tensions in their marriage, Ponna and Kali are provided as a devoted, loving couple. The most critical one is that of all the out of doors stress: among the apparent solutions to their not having a baby is for Kali to take a second wife. Ponna issues quite a piece about that possibility -- and Kali gently teases her about that -- however it is not definitely something Kali wants to recollect. Adoption, too, isn't visible as specifically viable alternative. Childlessness marks each husband and wife, but Ponna suffers more because of the patriarchal culture where women are treated as puppet in the hand of male. Particularly women are blamed for childlessness than men and Poona is not exceptional. Ponna perceives herself as humiliated throughout the years. "The humiliations she had needed to go through because of this one problem were infinite" --; she is likewise visible as horrific good fortune - - as even though she is tainted -- and this obscures her relationship with others, and especially with kids. On the other, her husband Kali does not face much humiliation because he is a man and he makes himself engage in his work -- he maintains busy -- and from time to time alcohol, but the lady identification and reason is so closely related to motherhood that Ponna seems to be faced by using what absolutely everyone perceives as her failure at each flip. She has strong desire to have her own child to get emancipate from male-dominated world. The idea of her barren womb keeps on haunting her and one kind of exploitation by the society but somehow she partially manages to come out of the psychological dilemma when she seems to have found the solution to her problem by invoking local gods and goddesses. 113 Ponna and her husband have to try many trials to appease the local gods and goddesses. The politics of appeasement does not work out according to their wishes for them. They invoke the God Murugan and the goddesses Pavatha in their own strange ways to appease them but they don‟t seem to understand the language of appeasement. They also lit sixty lamps for sixty days and prostrate at the feet of Murugan, pleading for his blessings.“The entire castor seed yield from that year became the oil in those lamps”(23). Ponna, with a lump in her throat states that “seeking a She faces the entire rigmarole of empty rituals in order to get the object of her desire. Therefore, she and her husband assiduously court their gods in all possible ways but all their attempts become futile and Ponna cannot emancipate from the suffering of a barren woman. The major focal point of this paper is to bring into critical scrutiny the events at Tiruchengode carnival where Ponna, the central female character, has to face the biggest paradox of her life. She wants to use this attempt to get freedom from all suffering of an infertile woman. This typical Indian lady is trapped in such a position where only the idea of conceiving a child by a god overpowers all other ideas. The writer criticizes the vacant religious practice at Tiruchengode festival. Even the business of prostitution brings to a halts at the time of this festival. The writer pinches: “That night there was no business in the prostitutes‟ street that was right in front of the temple at the foot of the hill” (98). The men demean their own importance at this festival by gossiping “Who is going to look at us? Today, every woman is a prostitute” (ibid). Ponna looks the besieged men in the crowd look like gods. They would fulfill her year‟s long desire of wanting a child that she could not conceive since her marriage with Kali. She is compelled to believe that every man is a god that night by her mother. She can cross any limitations to get her unfulfilled maternal instincts fulfilled. The unfulfilled desire haunts her and looks more significant to release herself from a barren woman. A woman like Ponna expects to fulfill desire in this festival. She has the firm belief in these superpowers and feels that it is a place of divine feats and her wish can only be achieved by mingling with the unknown faces in the crowd. Ponna sinks towards Tiruchengode with her brother Muthu and her husband decides to come on the 14th day when the gods go back to the hills. They begin the journey with the religious dedication “They 114 carried on as if the dust was nothing but holy ash smearing itself on them” (151). She has the conviction that she is heading towards spiritual kingdom. The place where Ponna has come is so crowded that it looks like an ocean of human faces. She is standing in midst of unfamiliar faces to get familiar with them. Ponna believes that men in the crowd are the incarnation of Brahma, Vishnu or Shiva- the three superpowers. She goes to the fair to put her loyalty, honor and chastity at stake. She, in reality, falls prey to the conspiracy and irony of circumstances. She finds it very difficult to find the right god in the crowd of gods. She imagines that the man in the crowd who will press her right shoulder can be the right person for her. Ponna gets confused to choose whether to sacrifice her chastity to that stranger or not. She shows her disapproval as if she were little bit ready to be one with that person (219). The face of that person reminds her of the face the boy with whom she fell in love in her childhood. Ponna prays “Please appear with a new face, one I am not familiar with (221). She prays more fervently “Come to me with a form I like” (ibid). Though she enters religious with her devotional gestures to make herself free from all sufferings, the culture and limitations of patriarchy pushes her back from individual self to the male-dominated society. But she has never thought even in her wildest of dreams to be touched by somebody else other than Kali. It is something against her moral conscience. He takes her to the north chariot street to concretize and normalize libidinal liaisons with her. He also feeds her with local delicacies. He addresses her as „Selvi‟ and serves her food with his own hands that she gallops as if it were the divine food to bestow her with divine energy. She feels “He has given me a new name so that no one around her gets suspicious” (225). Her shyness cannot last more and she returns his advances. She utters religiously “He is my god. My job is to go where he takes me...Like a rain-soaked chicken, she huddled in his warmth” (ibid).