Pyre (novel)

The novel is set in Kattuppati, a remote Tamil Nadu village in Southern India. Kumaresan and Saroja, newly married, arrive by bus to live at Kumaresan's house on a rock in the village. Their marriage is an inter-caste one, performed in secret after they eloped from Saroja's house in Tholur, and Kumaresan believes that no one shall know about Saroja's different caste if they deny it. When they reach their house, Marayi, Kumaresan's mother, curses her ill-luck that her son married Saroja. Her dirge attracts the attention of many village residents who flock to the house to see the new bride and tease her about the marriage. They do not believe that a person as fair as Saroja would belong to the same caste as them.

As days pass by, Saroja has to put up with Marayi's constant insults and the village folks' questions and comments about her caste. A visit to Kumaresan's grandparents turns sour as his grandfather hits him and says that he has brought disgrace upon the family. Saroja is reminded about their affair in Tholur where Kumarasen had come to work with Bhai Anna's help. Kumarasen worked in a soda-bottle packing and distributing unit for Soda Bottle Bhai and was Saroja's neighbor. They often stole glances at each other until some soda bottles exploded in Kumaresan's hands and Saroja left him some food. Knowing that her father and brother would never approve of their marriage, Saroja ran away with Kumarasen to get married.

At their village, a council decides to boycott them from any social gathering and a public well. Kumarasen and Saroja are still invited to a coming-of-age ceremony of a distant relative from another village. Kumarasen tries to settle down with a soda-bottle distributing business spread across a few villages. He takes Saroja with him to Virichipalayam, where he has found a shop with money raised from friends. Saroja hopes he would settle down in Virichipalayam and away from his village. They buy a plateful of presents for the ceremony they are invited to. They decide to go directly to the temple where the ceremony will be held rather than walk down with other people from their village. At the ceremony, Kumarasen is humiliated by his uncle and asked to leave immediately.

Back home, Kumarasen discovers that Saroja is pregnant. Saroja believes that a child's coming would convince Kumarasen to leave the village with her. Kumarasen has to leave the village for a couple of days to visit his shop but Saroja urges him to come back at night however late it is. That night, Saroja goes to the bushes near the rock to defecate and overhears Marayi conspiring with other villagers to kill her in Kumaresan's absence. Determined not to get caught, she hides herself deep within the shrubbery. When the villagers realize where she is, they set the bushes alight from all sides with Saroja within it, just as Kumaresan's cycle is heard returning to the village.

Describing the subject, Aniruddhan Vasudevan, the translator of the novel wrote in the translator's note:

This is a novel about caste and the resilient force that it is, but it is also about how strangely vulnerable caste and its guardians seem to feel in the face of love, and how it often seems to assert itself both in everyday acts of discrimination as well as in moments of most unimaginable violence.[6]