Books Review: Tales of women who live on their own terms

The High Priestess Never Marries has stories of women who make their own choices and face the consequences — stories of a woman who treks to a cliff in the Nilgiris with honey gatherers of the Irula tribe, or another, who marries her goddess. Sharanya Manivannan said these stories were the result of a search of answers to how a woman can love without compromise. “Initially, it was the question of whether a certain kind of woman in a certain time, place and society can have both partnership and freedom. All around me, I saw that there was a compromise. What if you felt you had a birth right to partnership and freedom? What do you do if the answer to this question is in the negative? That is where the book really started off,” said the author. 

At the end of writing this book, Sharanya thought that she would have the answers to the question on love and freedom. “Instead, I found other questions,” she said, adding, “What do you do with your heartbreak? What do you do with excess of love? How do you grow and learn from heartbreak?”

While the answers eluded her, the author found a revelation. “I found that it is possible to love freely and endlessly, once you reject the scaffolding of partnership and wrong love, as long as you don’t expect it from a certain beloved. The book took on a spiritual aspect, as you can love nature and all of creation,” she said. 

There is also a rich retelling of mythology, through a feminist perspective. Sharanya explained, “Take, for example, the story of Kanyakumari. In terms of ritual worship, people go to Kanyakumari to pray to the goddess for marital and fertility related issues. If you look at the story, it’s ironic that the goddess was cheated out of marriage. I empathised with her, with the betrayal, followed by rejection and pain. I wonder if the people who go to pray to the goddess hear the story and empathise.” 

The feminist overtones are a natural extension, said the author. “It emerges from the position of being a woman in the margins of societal acceptability. The feminism is inherent and liberated,” added Sharanya, who is thrilled that the book has made it to the three bestseller lists, including Amazon, BuzzFeed and Ladies Finger, and was also nominated for the Tata Lit Live! 

Sharanya, who had also written a children’s book called The Ammuchi Puchi, said writing for children was an intuitive process. “I had to be careful not to preach or condescend,” she said, adding that the year will keep her busy with three new projects.