Alamelu Janaki

       There was a time when I attended Hindu literary Festival at Chennai that was when Perumal Murugan’s Poonachi was out. So, people associated the significance of the black goat with multiple meanings- an allegory of state surveillance, metaphor for caste hierarchy, gendered oppression, poverty and the vulnerability of marginal lives. When the crowd questioned about the actuality of its representation, Perumal Murugan refused to offer a definitive answer. He said it is the reader’s discretion to associate, confront and relate to the text in their own convincing ways.      Similarly, in the preface of the English translated version of Pethavan as The Begetter , Imayam argues that once the story is written, it is no longer in his authority to offer interpretations and meanings.      This idea resonates in the long-standing debate in literary theory.   In the essay Death of The Author , Roland Barthes argues that on the death...

  Over years, my exposure to feminist literature and theories taught me to associate confinement as a major source of women’s unhappiness. I have likely believed that the pressing need of the society -to marry and to raise a family- as a major obstacle for a woman’s fulfilment. The domestic labour, absence of finances, familial restrictions are some of the prominent hindrances. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , there is a popular fable that answers the most sought question- “ what makes a women happy?”, the answer was the freedom to choose , the freedom of making a choice and executing it in free will. However, the clear solutions of education, financial independence and greater freedom of choice did not make the dissatisfaction in women disappear (or I think so).   The modern predicament has merely changed shape.   Reading Hooked by Asako Yuzuki , I was bothered by a different question- Why do so many of us continue to imagine that happiness exists somewhere else, in...