About

A long-forgotten figure from the history of women’s activism in early twentieth-century Malayali society, Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma suddenly pushed herself out of obscurity in 1993, when her autobiography, Pathikayum Vazhiyorathe Manideepangalum, won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi’s prestigious prize for the best autobiography in Malayalam. As the book so poignantly revealed, she rebelled not just against traditional restrictions but also against the stern limits to mobility of body and mindset for women in modernity—and the rebellion was lifelong. She was a staunch champion of women’s rights over their bodies and loved to travel, freely indulging in the risky business of ‘loitering’ in foreign places in India and abroad, and writing about it. She was a highly valued contributor on the Woman Question to the leading journals of her time and a much-revered and beloved teacher as well.

She paid a huge price for this unabashed embrace of freedom. She was punished, and her life and political legacy were denigrated and rendered invisible by both the left and right in post-independence Kerala. Undaunted, at the age of 83, she wrote her autobiography, self-published it, and won a coveted award. The Sahitya Akademi functions in a building that was once the courtroom where she was unfairly punished and sent to jail—knowing that the prize would be awarded there, she said that it was poetic justice.

Wayfarer Woman and the Wayside Lamps is a tribute to a feminist foremother who fought her way out of the darkness that modern patriarchy in Kerala had confined her to.