Book Review: Antharjanam: Memoirs of a Namboodiri Woman

When Devaki Nilayamgode wrote down her memoirs in Malayalam in 2003 at the age of 75, she titled it Nashtabodhangalillathe meaning ‘with no sense of regret’. Predictably, the sense of ‘no regret’ pervades her memories that span 14 small chapters. Although memories of her childhood and the early years of her married life form the major portion of her narrative, she sketches in between the life-world of Namboodiri Brahmin women or antharjanam, as she had experienced and observed in her childhood. Even in old age Nilayamgode is attached to her memories with the curious mind of a toddler, describing vividly anecdote after anecdote.

Until the mid-20th century, the world of Namboodiri women revolved around their homestead and temple. Traditional shastras and their clever interpretation by Namboodiris imposed severe restrictions on women’s mobility. Nilayamgode recalls that discrimination against a girl child began at birth and although reform had set into the Namboodiri community by the time she was born, the birth of a girl was still considered inauspicious and ‘soft knocks’ and ‘muted whispers’ by midwives and maids informed the family of her arrival.

When an antharjanam went out of her house, even when accompanied by maid servants, she was required to cover herself with a cloak and a cadjan umbrella so as not to be seen. Maids and washerwomen were the only people with whom the antharjanam had regular contact, apart from the occasional female visitor. It was not unusual for a young girl of 10 or 15 to be married off to a person older than her father, as a second or third wife. The condition of widows, especially of young widows, was pathetic as widow marriage was seldom practiced, until reform shook the Namboodiri community. The personal belongings of an antharjanam were clothes and trinkets which were carried in a heavy wooden box to her spouse’s house after marriage. Luxuries of life were denied to them, even the luxury of sleeping on a cotton filled mattress unless they were sleeping in their husband’s quarters.

The education of a girl child was limited to studying the alphabet in order to read scriptures especially the epic Ramayana, but Nilayamgode remembers that her mother had personal copies of other books like the Sivapurana, Bhagavatha and the Mahabharata. She fondly remembers that on rare occasions reform-minded male siblings handed over books to young girls secretly; that they had to satisfy their appetite for letters with smuggled books reminds us of similar experiences of Rassundari Debi in early colonial Bengal.

Nilayamgode has a narrative style that infuses life even into mundane things. She recollects that elongated earlobes, hanging right down to the shoulder weighted with gold earrings, were considered a feature of beauty for a woman, although the stretching of the earlobes was a tortuous process. She remembers that very often earlobes were attacked by men, at a time when domestic violence was not unfamiliar to the Namboodiri household, and even the aavanippalaka (the flat plank on which Namboodiris sat and offered puja) was handy enough for a Namboodiri to beat up an antharjanam. By the 1950s, elongated earlobes as a sign of beauty gave way to smaller earlobes, men began sporting short hair and wearing shirts, while women began to wear saris and blouses. While recounting the social and economic conditions of the period, she sprinkles it with amusing tales. My special delight was to read about the etymology of ‘sack-rice’. Cultivated from paddy sown in dry fields and harvested from the inundated fields after the rains, the rice arrived in jute sacks from Burma during the Second World War with an unfamiliar odour. Later on, any rice perceived to be inferior in quality and with an odour and often distributed through the ration-shops in Kerala was referred to as ‘sack-rice’.

By the time Nilayamgode got married in the early 1940s into a progressive and reform-minded family, the Madras Namboodiri Act of 1933 brought about reform in the Namboodiri community. Nilayamgode became an activist of a reform body in its closing years during which period she came close to many of the male and female stalwarts of the Namboodiri reform movement. Activist antharjanams have unambiguously criticised the patriarchal agenda of reform movements and the limitations of such reform. The author consciously tries to draw parallels between women’s lives in Kerala with experiences described in Dalit autobiographical narratives, such as, Joothan by Om Prakash Valmiki and Akkarmashi by Sharankumar Limbale. She mentions the powerful character of Lucy in Malayalam novelist Sarah Joseph’s novel Mattathi when recalling the life of antharjanams who suffered silently in the inner quarters. As is well known, Dalit autobiographical narratives portraying human lives denied dignity and selfhood under the casteist and patriarchal imposition of traditions, beliefs and ideologies are filled with anger. But the absence of ‘regret’ in her memories enables her to sideline or altogether avoid reflecting critically on the exploitation, resentment and domination that mark the period she describes. Avoiding the complexities of social history, she is willing to admit that from the mid-20th century women of all creeds have a shared history of struggle. J. Devika’s erudite introduction places the memoir in its historical context and both the translators have done an exemplary job by retaining the pleasure and flavour of the original version written in Malayalam.