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‘Angyadi !’
Meaning Humanity after Every Communal Riot – A dialogue between Lord Muruga and Mother Mary!
A communal clash breaks out between Hindus and Christians in a village in Tamil Nadu. A church is set on fire. When the hamlet is engulfed in dark that evening, Mookayi, a Dalit Hindu woman notices a lady, covering her head in a hood, approaching her hut. As Mookayi asks her name, the lady, answers:
“ I am Virgin Mary. Will you please give me some water to quench my thirst?”
The astonished Mookayi could not believe her words and questions her again:
“ Are you the Maadha, for whom the Christian Nadars recently built the temple? Please do come in my dear mother, you really resemble our Goddess Kaliammal. Hey, Valliamma, Illikanni, Karupaayi, Dhevana, come soon and see who has come here! “
Sitting on the mat inside Mookayi’s hut, Mary tells the women:
“ I observed a big clash between two groups in front of my church. Later, when I saw fire feeding on my abode, I escaped from there and came here”
Mookayi curses a man thus:
“ Damned be he, who set your temple on fire, Maadha”
As the Dalit Hindu women feel that it would not be safe to shelter Mary there, they lead Her somewhere past the green paddy fields. Now a young man comes near them and speaks to Mary:
“ Aren’t you Mother Mary?”
“ Yes. And you?”
“ I am Murugan, who lives in that temple. Do come, let’s relax there for a while” Murugan takes Mary and the women to His temple Mantapa.
“ By the way, she is my wife Valli” he introduces his wife to Mary and inquires her:
“ Where are you heading to now?”
“ I was planning to seek shelter in some other church. But, what can I do , if a similar clash happens there too? Hence, I have decided to reach the place of Christ” Mary tells Muruga.
“ Please do not worry. I will arrange for that” Murugan calls his ‘peacock vehicle’, makes the Holy Mother sit on it and bids adieu to Her.
This could be a dream of a character Mookayi in the Sahitya Akademy award winning novel ‘Angyadi’ by veteran writer Poomani. However, as implied by the title, which is nothing but the utterance ‘Ammadi’ to represent a sigh of relief, Poomani runs a stream of humanity through his pen while portraying the barbaric communal riots in his book.
In a chat with Express, the author points out that he took a period of seven years to write the 1066 page novel, collecting data on the communal riots happened in the last two centuries at places like Sivakasi, Kalugumalai, Nagercoil and so on.
“ I could not have imagined that I would bag the Sakitya Akademy award in 2014, when my wife pledged her jewellery for publishing my first book Vayirukal in the early 1970s” he recalls.
B. Meenakshi Sundaram
