Hanging by a Thread

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, makes 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.