She does so and finds a man she considers 'a god' to impregnate her. The following year, Ponnu's family takes matters into their own hands by luring Kali out of the house, while convincing her that he has given his consent for her to go to the festival. Kali feels betrayed by her reaction and eventually grows colder to her.

Kali is repulsed by the idea but brings up the subject with Ponnu, who responds by saying she would go if he wished so. As a last resort, their families put forward the suggestion that Ponnu go to the chariot festival of the androgynous god Ardhanarishvara, where on the 14th day, societal taboo relating to extramarital sex is relaxed and consenting men and women may sleep together. Kali is often encouraged to have a second wife, an idea he considers but ultimately rejects.

Desperate, the couple try several remedies, prayers and offerings but to no avail. Their childlessness becomes a source of constant taunts from family members and fellow villagers, who variously attribute it to family curses, God's wrath, or their ancestors' ill behavior. Despite having been married for 12 years, they are unable to conceive a child. Kali and Ponna are a couple living in Tamil Nadu. Murugan stated in an interview with The Hindu that there was no documentary evidence relating to the custom and that details about it were passed on orally. The existence of such a practice has been a subject of dispute. In the course of his research, he came across a societal practice that existed in the past to deal with childlessness, which he decided to include in the book. In 2005, Murugan was awarded a grant by the India Foundation for the Arts to do the background research for the novel. The original name of the novel comes from the word Madhorubaagan, the Tamil name for the androgynous form of Lord Shiva in Hindu mythology.

The novel is set in the Tiruchengode town in Tamil Nadu, from which Murugan hails, and its main characters in the book belong to the Kongu Vellalar Gounder caste, which he himself belongs to. The idea for writing the novel came to Murugan on witnessing couples around him suffer due to the inability to have a child. Set during the colonial era in the Southern state of Tamil Nadu in India, it deals with the social stigma that a married couple faces due to their childlessness, and the lengths they go to conceive. Initially published by Kalachuvadu Publications in 2010, it was later translated into English by Aniruddhan Vasudevan and published in 2013 in India by Penguin Books, and in 2018 in the US by Grove Atlantic. One Part Woman ( Tamil: pronounced ) is a Tamil novel written by Indian author Perumal Murugan.

One part woman