Shattering the Glass Ceiling

Kanchana Natarajan’s discovery of an old Tamil text comprising Vedantic songs by Avudai Akkal at the Divine Life library at Rishikesh retraces a journey started by Avudai Akkal in the eighteenth century. A child widow from Shenkottai (a district in Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu), Avudai Akkal was initiated into Vedantic learning by the saint Sridhara Venkatesa Ayyawal. Documentations of the lives of brahmin child widows inside patriarchal families remain extremely disturbing because we are looking very often at the withdrawal of rights to little girls. A socially proactive and personally fulfilling life is denied to every single young girl who was subjected to all forms of societal onslaughts and deprivations once she came of age or was cursed with growing into old age as a widow. Prior to the advent of Venkatesa Ayyawal in her village, Avudai was subject to the trenchant ostracism that is directed at child widows in brahmin culture.