Hanging by a Thread

Tho Mu Si Ragunathan’s novel Panjum Pasiyum is set in the 1950s in Tamil Nadu. Its realistic depiction of the plight of handloom weavers makes it a significant work of its times. The weavers had to face competition with mill cloth, high prices of yarn due to import of expensive cotton from USA, accumulation of handloom stock caused by stagnation in exports, unscrupulous merchants and the apathy of the government.

The human aspects of the story are brought in by the families of Thathulinga Mudaliar, an exploitative businessman, and Kailasa Mudaliar, who is in debt to the former. The stories of their children Sankar, Kamala and Mani and how the weavers of Madurai and Ambasamudram organise and protest against the government to seek their rights, make for stirring reading.

In Hanging by a Thread the travails of the weavers, the socio-political movements of the time and the human interest stories interweave in a fluent translation. The different strands of the plot culminate in a victorious procession of the weavers of Ambasamudram seeking their rights from the government.