Who Owns a Story Once It Has Been Told?
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...