Tamil poet Salma wrote her first novel in stolen moments. When her chores for the day were done; when her children were away in school; when her husband stepped out after his afternoon nap, she would extract her notebook from its hiding place and start writing. Thus was born Irandaam Jaamangalin Kathai, written between 2002 and 2004. The novel has now been translated into English by G.J.V. Prasad, and titled The Dark Hours of the Night (published by Simon & Schuster).
Much like Salma’s writing in those early years, our interview too takes place in snatches. As a Rajya Sabha MP and media spokesperson for Tamil Nadu’s ruling party Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Salma is often on the move. “I haven’t been able to write anything for the past few months,” she says over the phone, travelling in a car in New Delhi. Does she miss her quiet writerly life? “After being locked up at home till I was 33, I’m able to see the outside world now. I enjoy travelling and meeting people, for which my political work is apt. I try and write when I have the time.”
The Dark Hours of the Night follows the life of Rabia, an adolescent girl living in a conservative small town in Tamil Nadu. Salma weaves multiple threads around the women in Rabia’s life — her mother, aunts, neighbours, best friend Mathina — each of them poignant and throbbing with life, love, desire, rebellion, anger. Much like her characters, for a long time Salma too led an isolated life at home with a joint family in Thuvarankurichi near Tiruchi.
Shrouded in secrecy
“I wrote the novel during a difficult phase in my life,” she recalls. “My personal pain and that of those around me are reflected in it.” By then, Salma had already published a collection of poems, Oru Maalaiyum Innoru Maalaiyum (2000). She, and some other women poets, faced threats for one of the poems in the book. Which is why when the novel took shape in her head, she decided to write it in secret. “I didn’t even tell my husband,” she says. But he caught her red-handed one day and hid the manuscript away.
Salma was heartbroken. “I finally found out that he had kept it locked up in his cupboard,” she recalls. After retrieving it, she travelled to Tiruchi and Madurai with three notebooks of the manuscript, looking for ways to safeguard it. “I considered getting it photo-copied, but that would mean waiting for a long time at the copier’s, which was not possible given my circumstances,” she says. She just had to ensure it reached her publisher safely.
“Finally, Kannan Sundaram of Kalachuvadu [her publisher] sent someone to collect it from me,” she says, adding that she couldn’t be at peace even then. “I was worried he would lose it along the way,” she laughs. The manuscript eventually made its way to a printing press in Chennai. “I later found out that they refused to print it citing the nature of some of the content,” says Salma.
When her novel made it past all the roadblocks and was published, Salma says the initial reception was not encouraging. “The Tamil literary scene was not appreciative of new voices back then,” she says. But gradually, the book got noticed, especially after its Malayalam translation came out. Salma started getting invited to literary events. She heard from readers who said they liked her work. An earlier English translation, titled The Hour Past Midnight, was longlisted for the Man Asian Prize in 2009 and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2010.
Modern women in rural India
While The Dark Hours of the Night is heart-rending in its description of the back-breaking, invisible labour of women at home and the way their individuality, likes and desires are snuffed out by the men in their lives, it also has portions that make one laugh at the no-holds-barred conversation among the characters. The raunchy small talk among a group of women in a tightly-packed room at a funeral, for instance, is hilarious.
Salma says that the story is peppered with the many interesting characters she has interacted with in her village. “These are women who have probably not read a book in their lives, but their mindset is so liberated, and they are very individualistic.” Two decades after the book first came out in Tamil, Salma says that the lives of the women she wrote about have not changed much.
“I don’t think reading a book will bring about drastic change,” she says. “I wrote this story to spark a new beginning, to create a discussion.” But young women do come forward to tell her how her political career has inspired them to stand on their own feet. “Some of them go to college in Madurai and Tiruchi, unlike before when they were forced to discontinue their education after a certain age,” she notes, adding that change is gradual.
Despite all the travel between Delhi and Chennai, Salma makes it a point to spend a few days every month in her village, meeting people and taking stock of things to be done.
On guard
Salma is now working on the second part of the novel that will be based on Rabia and Mathina as adults. “A lot of readers were curious about their lives,” she says. It is almost ready, and is likely to come out later this year in Tamil followed by the English translation.
The author and poet confesses that writers, in these days of censorship and banning of published literary works, have to be watchful of what they write. “Since I’m also in politics, people are watching. I have to be careful with what I say,” she says, adding that she does tend to hold herself back when writing.
Works like Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, winning the International Booker Prize is only proof of one thing, says Salma. “If a voice arises from a place that has not been heard before, it will get noticed.”
akila.k@thehindu.co.in
Published – October 10, 2025 06:15 am IST
