Echoes of Change: A Village in Transition

Set in the early 1970s, Koveru Kazhuthaigal captures a pivotal moment in rural life when traditional ritual status and payments in kind were giving way to cash wages. Through the eyes of Arokkyam, a washerwoman (vannatti) serving a Dalit community of agricultural laborers, the novel unfolds as a powerful tapestry of resilience, transformation, and the quiet struggle of individuals caught between the past and an uncertain future.

The title, meaning ‘Mules,’ serves as an ironic reference to the vannaan and vannaatti, who once carried their washing on donkeys. Despite their crucial role in Hindu rites of passage, Arokkyam and her husband, Savuri, are Catholics who look to the priest at the Church of Saint Antony for guidance and blessings on both personal and communal occasions.

With extraordinary depth and detail, the novel reconstructs a way of life that has since faded—reclaimed with pride and narrated with unflinching honesty. It highlights a profound truth: the cruelest burden of the caste system is not just its oppression, but the inescapable dependence it creates for survival.

"The past is never dead. It’s not even past." — William Faulkner