https://yarl.com/forum3/topic/215311-குள்ளன்-பினு/
“என்னடா, ஆள்களை அடிச்சவுடனே உயரமாயிட்டியா நீ?”
There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from not measuring up to the world’s expectations. Binu, in Samraj’s குள்ளன் பினு, is more than accepted by his parents, certainly loved by his sisters, but the world he inhabits has a fixed idea of what a man is. And Binu, quite short in a family of tall men, does not fit that picture. The story’s central concern is the gap between how the town reads Binu and how Binu reads himself.
Binu’s family background is essential. Binu’s grandfather Mathayi built the family’s fortunes through an illegal drug trade before moving into timber, and what the family passes down across generations is not just wealth but a template for masculinity built on physique. When another family sets up a competing business, Mathayi and his five tall sons don’t negotiate – they smash the place with their bare hands. Height and the capacity for violence are not incidental to this family’s identity. They are the identity. When Dominic (Binu’s father) dies, Binu is asked to step aside so taller men can carry the coffin. The dead man’s son cannot honor his father at the most basic human ritual because the optics of the procession matter more than the familial bond.
Against this backdrop, Binu’s childhood is sketched economically. He has no friends, plays with his sisters until they marry, then simply invents games he can play alone. He doesn’t rage against this exclusion. He reorganizes around it. When he grows older, he runs the family restaurant, drinks in the evenings, and arrives at a peace with what life has offered him.
The central incident – Binu defending his niece from the harassment of four young men who had dismissed and mocked him earlier – is where the story finds its energy. He climbs a pile of road-paving stones for height, moves unpredictably, and his shortness becomes an advantage when he ducks under their swings. What follows is equally well-constructed: the town’s perception shifts, but Binu, looking down at his tar-caked shoes that have given him nearly half a foot of unearned height, privately credits the adhesion rather than the (heroic? violent?) act. He holds onto those shoes, walks instead of cycling, visits the pastor and feels, perhaps for the first time, the experience of being met eye to eye. The story ends with Binu bathing alone in the river, shoes off, seeing his shadow stretched long in the evening light and startled by it. It is not real height – just the sun at a low angle. But for a moment he sees a different silhouette and doesn’t recognize it as his own.
At the heart of the story is a question it never quite states but keeps circling: what does it mean to be a man to yourself, versus what it means to appear as one to your community? The town’s answer is external and legible – you must be large, feared, capable of violence when called upon. Binu, in one public act, finally meets that threshold. But Binu’s own answer is murkier and more confused. He cannot accept that he earned the town’s respect through courage. He believes it was the tar. He has spent so long being measured and found (pardon the pun) short, that when the measurement finally goes his way, he cannot trust it. The shoes become a kind of borrowed credential – real enough to change how others see him, not real enough to change how he sees himself. The story suggests that social recognition of manhood and a man’s own sense of it can come apart entirely, and that a lifetime of exclusion can make the latter almost impossible to access even when the former is finally granted.
Where the story falls short is in how much it keeps us at arm’s length from Binu. We understand his situation clearly. What we don’t get, with any intimacy, is how he actually feels moving through it. His exclusion at his father’s funeral registers grief – பினுவின் அழுகையை மழை மறைத்தது – but that is all we get. Isn’t there more to Binu? We can guess, but the story doesn’t bring us close enough to know. The dialogue is a particular missed opportunity – there are only a handful of exchanges, and the ones that exist barely function as plot mechanics than revealing the characters speaking them. The writing works best when it trusts its images – the tar-caked shoes, the elongated shadow, the coffin procession. It works less well when it evokes feelings. For example, Binu who never visits his relatives (இந்த நிகழ்ச்சிநிரலில் மாற்றமே கிடையாது. உறவினர் வட்டுத் துக்கங்களுக்கோ, விசேஷங்களுக்கோ அவன் போவதே இல்லை) visits them after the central incident (உறவினர் வடுகளின் வாசல் வரை போய் உள்ளே போகாமல் வாசலோடு நின்று பேசிவிட்டு வந்தான்). Binu wants acknowledgement and recognition from his relatives, he seeks their approving nod. But the narration is so very restrained that barely any emotion is eked out. This is a story with a neat idea at its core, but in my opinion it just doesn’t go as deep as the material invites it to.
Transverse 