How Tamil writer Perumal Murugan was resurrected by poetry

Perumal Murugan declared himself dead following the controversy over his novel One Part Woman

In T S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”, the narrator-protagonist declares: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, / Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all —” In the Gospel of St John, Lazarus is the subject of Jesus Christ’s miracle, who brings him back to life four days after his death. In the uneven landscape of Indian literature, the only writer who can claim to have performed such a miracle is the icon of contemporary Tamil writing, Perumal Murugan. “He is like Jesus Christ,” declared his publisher Kanan Sundaram in a recent