Leprosy has haunted humans for centuries, causing stigma and isolation. In Tamil, it is called Peruviyathi, the most feared disease for its disfigurement, not death. Author Imayam’s Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel Noiputtru captures this harsh reality in 1960s India. The book vividly describes the disease’s effects, treatment, and the grim life of patients forced into isolation. A doctor in the novel says, “You will survive only if you feel the pain. Otherwise, your story is all but over.” The novel follows Chinnasami, a patient whose changing face tells his ordeal. Similar is Ganesan from Pasitha Manidam, who suffers leprosy despite his wealth and caste. His swift social fall shows that leprosy spares no one. Patients face cruel rejection, denied service and shelter. Unlike Ganesan's restless wandering, Chinnasami is confined to a leprosy home, often for life. Leprosy treatments then could slow but not cure the disease. Only in the 1980s did the WHO introduce Multi-Drug Therapy (MDT) to control it better. Yet in Noiputtru’s time, patients rarely returned home. Many became beggars, losing their identity. Ponnusamy in the novel laments lost dreams amid long confinement: “The land will swallow all our aspirations.” Some stories of hope exist, like Muthumeenal's return to society in Mul, but Imayam offers no easy comfort. His characters live with deep anger and despair. As Krishnamurthy says, “The disease eats the body like a termite... Its hunger will be satisfied only when we die.” Imayam’s bold storytelling sheds light on leprosy’s forgotten cruelty, demanding we remember those cast aside for centuries.