Devaki Nilayamgode left behind a rich social document Antharjanam: Memoirs of a Namboodiri Woman

Nearly two decades ago, I called on an old lady in Thrissur. Mini Krishnan, Editor of Oxford University Press, who would oversee the translation project of these two narratives until it came out as Antharjanam: Memoirs of a Namboodiri Woman in 2011, had predicted that an interface with the author would do the English version a power of good. And sensing that I would gain newer insights into what Nilayamgode had left unsaid in her narrative, she spurred me on, and even mailed a typescript of my draft to Chintha Ravi, celebrated writer, film director and Left intellectual, for an informal evaluation. The narrative is woven out of various threads — tales handed down through generations, descriptions of the mores of the time, references to contemporary and past historical events, sketches of the prevailing agrarian economy, communitarian reforms accompanied by women’s empowerment, political changes and the nationalist movement, shift in social sensibilities and so on — all presented against the backdrop of Nilayamgode’s gradual evolution over six decades, from a child born into a sprawling, multi-generational family in a prosperous Namboodiri illam to a matriarch, in her own right, of a nuclear family. But Antharjanam also reminds us of the treasures we have lost forever — gifted toxicologists, idealistic social leaders, the simpler joys and unhurried pace of life.