Love, revenge, tragedy and salvation — K.R. Meera’s novel The Poison of Love has it all. Stripping away all the pretence that lovers, in both ancient and contemporary times, have cultivated of this exhilarating emotion, Meera’s latest work is a testament to her prowess as a brilliant storyteller.

The sound of broken hearts echoes throughout the novel, cautioning one by sharing the tumultuous love story of Tulsi, a student of computer engineering, and Madhav, a journalist. The attraction between the two is instant and the need to satisfy immediate, and this overwhelming, all-encompassing attraction, love and eventual obsession sets the stage for Tulsi’s downfall. She calls it out herself, referring to her love as “a serpent that has swallowed its own tail … [that] twisted in circles, trying to consume itself. The hunger never abated.”

One of the most powerful contemporary voices in Malayalam literature, several of Meera’s novels have been translated, but it was after the 2014 English translation of her novel Hangwoman that the world took notice of her. It further helped when the novel was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.

A disturbing tale of love and revenge that highlights the apathy of a country towards its unwanted women

The Poison of Love — titled Meerasadhu in the original Malayalam — has been translated by Ministhy S. and in translation, continues to communicate the savageness and brutality of love and life, of survival and surrender. It is another addition to Meera’s oeuvre that reaches inside the reader and forces one to admit that the toxicity that exists in each of her characters is not merely fictional; it is a true human characteristic that we all are guilty of practicing.

Tulsi’s love for Madhav is her hamartia and the reader is introduced to Tulsi at her lowest. From the moment she meets Madhav, her thoughts scramble and her entire existence is disjointed. She is rushing towards him, but many a times one gets the impression that she is also rushing away from something. “Travel can exorcise the restlessness of the spirit, as well as that of love,” she says, and therein begins her journey towards becoming a Meera sadhu.

There is an overwhelming femininity attached to the novel, be it in the form of its female characters, entities or inanimate objects that represent female sexuality. The Yamuna river is one such element and is the nucleus of the story. Meera calls the river a Meera sadhu, with her “waters drying up, she is withered and shrivelled; curling up to sleep with a bowed back, her bones jutting out. Pretending devotion, unclean men wash away their dirt in her.” Tulsi is an extension of this metaphor, quickly suffocated by her surroundings, bowing down physically and spiritually and transforming into a symbol rather than resembling a human state. She is the altar where the men in her life come to wash away their sins.

Political and religious hues are not far behind in the novel. Meera dedicates the book to “all the Meeras of Vrindavan”, the holy town in Uttar Pradesh to which Tulsi escapes. The life she escapes to does not constitute an easy journey; it is riddled with trials and tribulations and Tulsi, the technology graduate, is responsible for “cleaning the floors splattered with urine and phlegm,” and she sleeps on a rusted cot amid the ever-present excruciating smell of death.

The ostracisation of these women who live at the temples and subsist in poverty, whether by choice or by force, is a jarring reality that Meera paints without holding back. In this way, she communicates a small facet of the apathy shown by the individuals and institutions responsible by highlighting the brutality of Indian society when faced with the ‘other.’

In particular, the utter desolation that women such as widows are plagued by throughout their lives is at its most concentrated in Vrindavan. With more than 5,000 temples, where every house is a temple, where “Krishna exists in every grain,” it is here in this town that Tulsi’s redemption, her victory and her loss, all climax in the midst of unwashed bodies waiting for death.

The author’s social commentary on the plight of women is encapsulated and represented by each and every Meera sadhu present in Vrindavan; “those who ran away from the luxurious palaces of their husbands for love, those who wandered insane through the streets … thief, brute — all women.”

Vrindavan is swamped by innumerable monkeys, only outnumbered by the Meera sadhus who resemble “ants scuffling along with their white eggs. Their faces resembled lamps that had died out, bereft of oil. Empty lives.” Ironically, Tulsi’s life before she shaved her head and joined the thousands of Meera sadhus was very similar: empty. Towards the end of the novel, she is found begging in front of the Govind Dev temple as she plans the next day with sadistic pleasure. “I needed wounds,” she thinks to herself. “To hurt myself more grievously, I needed more wounds,” she decides, anticipating the coming day.

Reading The Poison of Love is a similar experience of such sadistic pleasure.

The reviewer is a member of staff

The Poison of Love
By K.R. Meera
Penguin, India
ISBN: 978-0670089390
101pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 23rd, 2017