‘They are actually the right side up’

KARAIKKAL Ammaiyar was a sixth-century Tamil poet and one of the pioneering voices of the Bhakti movement, known for her intense devotion to Lord Shiva.

- PANKIL JHAJHRIA

Legend has it that she walked upside-down to Mount Kailash, the celestial abode of the deity, as an act of devotion.

This image inspired the idea of “upside-downness” in poet and writer Arundhati Subramaniam’s latest poetry collection, The Gallery of Upside-Down Women (Penguin).

The title, she explains, has been taken from the tale of Karaikkal and the radical life choices made by women mystics across time.

Alongside the Tamil poet, the book features other figures such as Lakshminkara, “the relatively unknown tantric teacher who feigns madness”; Shenkottai Avudai Akkal, “a child widow who breaks out of a cloistered orthodox life to question religious norms”; and Amrapali, the courtesan-turned-Buddhist nun, among others.

According to the poet, they are women who have turned the status quo upside down; their very presence “is a reproach to staid, lukewarm ways of living.” In doing so, they unsettle conventional divisions between flesh and spirit, the sacred and the profane, the body and what lies beyond it.

Arundhati adds that these women remind us that there are many ways to live — “with spirit, with depth, with laughter, with guile”.

“They’re actually the right side up,” she adds.