Kongu Nadu or the Kongu region of Tamil Nadu, comprising Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Erode, Karur, Namakkal, and Salem, long remained a stronghold of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). Perumal Murugan’s The Land and the Shadows, translated from the Tamil by Gita Subramanian, brings together two of his works, Nizhal Mutrathu Ninaivugal and Nilamum Nizhalum, to offer valuable insights into the M.G. Ramachandran (known as MGR) phenomenon from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Murugan, who was compelled to work in a soda shop run by his father at a touring talkies theatre, known as kottaiyee in the Tamil, and who went from village to village putting up posters for new film releases, happened to cultivate a taste for reading along the way. He went on to become a college teacher and a renowned novelist. The conditions in which he lived would have scarcely allowed space for intellectual pursuits, let alone sustained schooling. Yet the richness of his experiences and the vivid characters among whom he lived provided rich material for his literary pursuits.

Although grounded in the author’s formative years, the book serves as a microcosm of the wider Kongu region. It reflects a society that came under the spell of MGR, the film star-turned-politician and founder of the AIADMK. The work is not merely a memoir but also an ethnographic study, offering insights into the enduring influence of cinema on Tamil society. This phenomenon is seen lately in the frenzy surrounding the political entry and victory of actor Vijay in the 2026 Assembly elections.

An incident narrated by Murugan speaks volumes about the MGR craze. Along with his friend Karuvayan, he went to a village at an old man’s invitation to put up posters for Padakotti, an MGR starrer that had been released nearly a decade earlier. Yet the entire village, including women, assembled to see them. “You should see Saroja Devi in the film. She is like a parrot,” Murugan recalls a woman saying, while noting that it is difficult to identify the reasons behind the popularity of MGR.

He also compares MGR’s films with those of another great actor, Sivaji Ganesan. A woman complains that Sivaji’s films made audiences cry. She says she is angry that in Nichaya Thamboolam (1962), his character suspects his wife of being unfaithful. MGR’s films, by contrast, never created such distressing situations.

The real-life characters in the book — Burmakaran, operator Rajendran, the theatre owner, and even the screening of sami padam (a euphemism for erotic cinema) — stay with the reader.

The closure of the theatre and its impact on Murugan’s father, who ran the soda shop as his sole livelihood, is a quiet tragedy. After waiting in vain for the theatre to reopen, his father sold the equipment used to make soda. “There is just fermented water in the pot. We have sieved all the rice in it, yet we continue searching for a few grains of cooked rice,” Murugan recalls his father saying about life. He would have been content if he could find even a single grain. He died a year after the theatre’s closure.

While the book reveals a world largely unfamiliar to the current generation of readers, the translation sometimes falls short of capturing the pain of the writer.

The Land and the Shadows

Perumal Murugan, trs Gita Subramanian

Hamish Hamilton

₹799

kolappan.b@thehindu.co.in