COIMBATORE: A passing incident he witnessed about 20 years ago inspired the citybased popular writer, M Chandrakumar , to examine the authority that social structures try to impose on women’s bodies.The autorickshaw driverturned-writer says his sixth novel ‘Veppamatra Velloliyil’ released on Sunday here, deals with a woman’s psyche in detail.Chandrakumar, 56, says the incident, which involves a woman and the way she dealt with a problem, had stayed with him and prompted him to write a 50-page story 10 years ago. He didn’t publish it then. “About two years ago, I reworked it and made it into this novel,” says Chandrakumar , whose 2006 novel ‘Lock-up’, based on his experiences in prison in a false case, was made into ‘Visaranai’, a Tamil movie that entered the competitive section at the Venice International Film Festival in 2015.“I don’t know the names of the people involved in the incident. But, it made me think about women, their choices and their freedom,” he says and adds that in his novel he has not named any character so that the sense of witnessing a stranger’s life is preserved for the reader.The novel speaks about a girl who, after her father’s death, comes to the city to work. “The society’s dominant attitude disturbs her. She is unable to handle it and ends up fighting with her employers and is forced to quit several jobs. After a point, she gets an insight about her life, based on which she takes a decision. But, I have left it to the reader to decide,” says Chandrakumar.Speaking about the book’s theme, the writer says today, several fundamentalist forces try to dictate what a woman should wear. “They do this in the name of culture. But, culture itself is a product of market forces. Today, clothing is seen as a cultural symbol. But, it is actually the garment manufacturers and the market that decide what clothes are put up for sale,” he says.

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