Скачать или смотреть Seasons of the Palm by Perumal Murugan: A Discussion

'Seasons of the Palm' by Perumal Murugan was first published in English in 2004, being Murugan’s third novel. It revolves around the themes of untouchability, caste, slavery and brutality, describing the inhuman way in which young kids from lower castes are subjected to indentured servitude until they are old enough to fend for themselves. The children have to work day and night for the higher caste landlords. They herd goats, clean up human waste out of bedpans, clear the dung from the cow pens, and perform the dirtiest work that nobody else will do. This does not get better as they grow up and become adults. Set in the late 1960s, ‘Seasons of the Palm’ tells the story of an untouchable boy Shortie and his friends Tallfellow, Stumpleg, Belly and Stonedeaf, who are all abused by their owners. The book does not have a specific plot, but explains the day-to-day activities of the children. If something goes wrong, like a goat gets sick or a sheep goes missing, they get severely beaten up, and they have to pay back for the dead goat by working for free for a year. Working tirelessly from the crack of dawn, they find solace only at dusk when they are allowed to take the sheep to graze. During this time, they play, talk, eat and joke to their heart’s content.
Discriminatory and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of over 165 million people in India has been justified on the basis of caste. With little land of their own to cultivate, Dalit men, women, and children work as agricultural laborers for very low wages. Most of them are barely able to feed their families and unable to send their children to school or break away from shackles of debt bondage that are passed on from generation to generation. They are forbidden by caste Hindus to enter places of worship, to draw water from public wells, or to wear shoes in caste Hindu presence. They are made to dig the village graves, dispose of dead animals and clean human waste with their bare hands. All of this exploitation and inhuman oppression denotes that most high-caste people do not consider the lives of the Dalits and other so-called untouchables to be of the remotest importance and we say we live in a digital, developing and self-dependent India.


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