The cover and end pages of Perumal Murugan and Appupen’s graphic novel adaptation of C.S. Chellappa’s Vaadivaasal are blood-red. It’s a visceral invitation, one that contrasts sharply with the pages within, rendered in stark black and white.
Considered a modern literary classic in Tamil, Chellappa’s novel, published in 1949, is about the spectacle of jallikattu and the social dynamics around it.
I’ll admit, I read the book with little knowledge of jallikattu, apart from hazy recollections of scenes depicting it in Tamil movies while growing up, and the more recent protests across Tamil Nadu in response to attempts to ban it. But the beauty of this graphic adaptation is that one can read it with little to no context about the traditional cultural sport.
Writer and illustrator Appupen’s initial frames set the story in Chellayipuram, a village famed for its bulls and bull fights. Panel by panel, with deliberate pacing, we are introduced to the place and its people. Amongst the visitors are Pichi and Maruthan, two young men from Usilanoor who have arrived amidst the throng. They have their own agenda: to tame the Zamindar’s Kaari bull and avenge Pichi’s father Ambuli who died at the hands of the very same animal two years ago.
Vaadivaasal: The Arena has all the elements of the best kind of potboiler: a high stakes event, a hero set on avenging his father’s death, a rival in the form of a Chellayi local, and the dark, sinister presence of the Kaari.
Peeling back the layers
Appupen brings each character to life in striking detail. Pichi is a balance of inner rage and outer calm, Maruthan his affable foil. But it is the old, nameless man who captured my attention from the get go. Appupen has captured each of his expressions with exquisite and almost tender detailing: the missing teeth, the bushy eyebrows raised in shock, a spittle of saliva, and his myriad expressions from admonishment to avuncular teasing to concern.
The Kaari is dark and brooding and Appupen uses silhouettes beautifully to capture its imposing presence. Appupen’s art conveys the brutal physicality of the event, a foil for Perumal Murugan’s minimalist adaptation of the text, which almost instinctively my mind read in Tamil.
At its core, Vaadivaasal is a meditation on masculinity and the rigid social and caste hierarchies that underpin it. But the story peels back the layers of muscle, brawn, and, in the case of the Zamindar, pride to reveal a fragile masculinity at its core. When the Kaari runs amok after being subdued by Pichi, the Zamindar chooses to get rid of this living, breathing extension of his pride.
“Who would risk their lives for two pieces of gold?” the old man asks early on in the story, referring to the prize on offer for besting the Kaari. In the end, it is the bull who pays that price.
The graphic novel adaptation of Vaadivaasal will be available in Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, and English, and I found myself thinking it would take the story to more young-adult and adult readers with little exposure to jallikattu in non-Tamil speaking and reading spaces.
I handed the book to my 17-year-old son who had no prior knowledge of the protests, the ban, and has most certainly never watched the Rajinikanth-starrer Murattu Kaalai (1980). Yet, his engagement with the story and the art was immediate.
An on-screen adaptation of the book, steered by director Vetrimaran and starring Suriya, is said to be in the making and will no doubt take the story to an even wider audience. But I’m glad my first brush with Vaadivaasal was through this graphic novel, its frames conveying barely contained rage, frenetic chaos and redemption.
The reviewer is a children’s book author and columnist based in Bengaluru.
Vaadivaasal: The Arena
C.S. Chellappa, Perumal Murugan and Appupen
Simon & Schuster
₹699
Published – March 21, 2025 09:30 am IST
