Bama’s Vanmam is in many ways a marked departure from her earlier works Karukku and Sangati. Moving away from her earlier autobiographical mode Vanmam steers clear of the familiar confessional, conversational tone and adopts a linear, descriptive,
During the December 2007 music festival in Chennai, I attended a dance performance by Alarmel Valli. The programme included a short piece, based on a verse from Madurai Meenakshiammai Pillaittamil.
Three miraculous events have happened on this earth: the birth of three men of great purity of soul (mahashuddhatma), many years apart in time—and in countries far away from each other. They taught the world a mantra of immense significance.
Meera Kosambi’s earlier collection of essays, Crossing Thresholds: Feminist Essays in Social History (2007) had introduced us to the writer Kashibai Kanitkar (1861-1948). This reviewer had been particularly intrigued by Kosambi’s section on Kanitkar’s utopian novella Palkhicha Gonda (The Palanquin Tassel, written in the late 1890s but published in 1928).
The structures of the institutions of family, society and the state acquire new dimensions when seen from women’s perspective. Factors like religion, social values and hierarchies intertwined with patriarchy play an important role in moulding women’s lives.
This collection of articles reflects in essence the dark brooding face of Kerala: the violence faced by women of all classes, castes and communities, experienced within families, at workplaces, and several institutions. What the studies also do emphatically is to extend what is already being established over several years now: that in addition to a socio-economic paradox,