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Leprosy is arsenic aged arsenic humanity itself. The illness and those afflicted by it look successful the Bible, testament to its agelong and troubling beingness successful quality history. For centuries, sufferers person been stigmatised, ostracised and pushed to the precise edges of society, condemned to lives of exclusion and silence. The Nazis branded them worthless and executed them. In Tamil, the illness is known arsenic Peruviyathi — a word that encapsulates its estimation arsenic the astir dreaded of afflictions, adjacent though it seldom claims the lives of its victims. The fearfulness it evokes arises not from death, but from disfigurement, isolation and the slow, relentless erosion of quality dignity.
The anguish and alienation associated with leprosy person agelong made it a potent taxable successful literature, inspiring immoderate of the modern penning successful Tamil. To this tradition, a Sahitya Akademi Award–winning writer has present added Noiputtru, possibly the darkest and astir unflinching literate exploration yet of a illness that has haunted civilisation for millennia.
Editorial | Taking the leap: connected leprosy successful India and discrimination
The writer, Imayam does not confine himself simply to depicting the squalid surviving conditions and nonaccomplishment of dignity imposed upon patients by society. In his diagnostic prose — spare, relentless and unsentimental — helium chronicles the illness itself with infinitesimal precision: its progression, the methods of treatment, the institutions created to incorporate the afflicted, and the grim resignation with which patients yet face their fate.
“You volition past lone if you consciousness the pain. Otherwise, your communicative is each but over. Your look itself bears witness. The hairs of your eyebrows person fallen. Your ears person thickened. Your chemoreceptor has flattened. There is nary uncertainty — it is leprosy.” Thus begins Imayam’s novel, arsenic a doc explains Chinnasami’s information to him.
By juxtaposing Chinnasami’s information with that of Ganesan, the protagonist of Pasitha Manidam, who is besides afflicted by leprosy, it becomes wide that the illness respects neither societal presumption nor privilege. Ganesan is simply a affluent Brahmin, yet his suffering is nary little brutal.
“The illness had transformed his assemblage and made his look unrecognisable. Ganesan intensely observed his older assemblage dice dilatory and watched a dreadful 1 regenerate it. He vowed not to inquire himself the accustomed questions: Why me? What is the meaning of this atrocious caller form? How agelong volition this ‘new me’ live? Is this hellish agony retribution for my indolent pleasures and aberrations of 30 years? If pleasance is to beryllium experienced, past symptom besides has to beryllium endured, isn’t it?” writes Karichan Kunju successful Pasitha Manidam.
Ganesan’s societal descent is swift and merciless. “He was not respected successful hotels and inns and was often denied rooms. He was not shown the courtesy of being served a decent meal, adjacent erstwhile helium offered to wage double. No 1 wanted him to enactment successful their homes, fixed however rapidly the illness had overtaken his body. Ganesan spent his days and nights wondering however to hole the problem,” Karichankunju records, laying bare the cruelty of mundane interactions. Ganesan, successful a way, resembles, Mohan, leader of the M.R. Radha starrer Ratha Kanneer. But Mohan is unrepentant.
While Chinnasami and others are confined permanently to a leprosy home, Ganesan is condemned to a beingness of perpetual movement, drifting from spot to place. He adjacent leaves a location successful Kumbakonam tally by European missionaries, overwhelmed by guilt erstwhile the quality of the nuns awakens intersexual tendency successful him.
Both narratives beryllium to a play — Noiputtru set successful the 1960s and Pasitha Manidam much earlier — erstwhile aesculapian involution could dilatory the illness done attraction and amputation, but ne'er connection a implicit cure. It was lone successful the 1980s that the World Health Organisation recommended Multi-Drug Therapy (MDT), a breakthrough that enabled India to bring leprosy mostly nether control.
In Imayam’s novel, the darker world of the play persists: astir patients ne'er instrumentality home. Rejected by families and shunned by society, they stay successful attraction centres until death. In Noiputtru, characters initially cling to the anticipation of betterment and reunion, lone to realise their destiny is lifelong confinement. Those who bash permission often extremity up arsenic beggars, stripped of some livelihood and identity.
“I wanted to physique a large location erstwhile I was successful my village. I wanted to crook 10 kaanis into twenty, and my output to surpass that of others. Do you cognize however galore dreams I had? Now determination is nothing. The onshore volition swallow each our aspirations,” says Ponnusamy, who entered the centre expecting to permission wrong six months, but remained determination for 10 years.
There are, however, uncommon exceptions. Muthumeenal, supported by her household and her hubby Ayyanar, manages to instrumentality to mainstream nine and aboriginal writes astir her acquisition arsenic a diligent successful Mul. In Senthil Jagannathan’s Mazhikan, a household stands by a pistillate diagnosed with the disease, though leprosy destroys their hopes of prosperity done fabric cultivation. T. Janakiraman’s abbreviated communicative Manam portrays the plight of a supporting histrion deceived into sleeping with a shaper successful speech for a promised pb role, lone to observe during a movie pooja the adjacent greeting that helium is simply a leper. In Thiruvaranga Kalambagam, a poem declares that adjacent a idiosyncratic with half-rotten limbs deserves worship if helium is simply a devotee of Lord Vishnu.
Imayam, however, offers nary specified consolation. His satellite is stripped of redemption.
“I americium not aggravated with the disease. I americium aggravated with myself and my body. The illness has heaped each the filth of the satellite connected me. I came to the location with my household due to the fact that I could not carnivore the words of the village. The illness eats the assemblage similar a termite. The termite is the henchman of Yama. It eats america arsenic we devour food. Its hunger volition beryllium satisfied lone erstwhile we die,” says Krishnamurthy, a companion of Chinnasami, capturing the devastating world of leprosy successful the 1960s.
