Lalithambika Antharjanam
| Lalithambika Antharjanam | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 1909 Punalur, Kollam |
| Died | 1987 |
| Occupation | Writer, social reformer |
| Language | Malayalam |
| Nationality | India |
| Spouse | Narayanan Nambudiri |
| Children | Bhaskara Kumar, N. Mohanan, Leela, Shantha, Rajam, Mani, Rajendran |
Lalithambika Antharjanam (Malayalam: ലളിതാംബിക അന്തര്ജനം) (1909–1987) was an Indian author and social reformer best known for her literary works in Malayalam language. Her published oeuvre consists of nine volumes of short stories, six collections of poems, two books for children, and a novel, Agnisakshi (1976) which won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award and Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 1977. Her autobiography Aathmakadhakkoru Aamukham (An Introduction to Autobiography) is a very significant work.
She was greatly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and social reform movements among the Nambudiri caste led by V. T. Bhattathiripad. Later she contributed to the social reform in her own way. Her writing reflects a sensitivity to the women's role in society, and the tension between the woman as a centre for bonding and the woman as an individual. She was concerned particularly the nature of the sexual contract.
Lalithambika was born in 1909 at Kottavattom near Punalur, Kollam district, Kerala, in a conservative household. She had little formal education, however, she managed to learn to read and write, an unusual achievement at the time. 'Antharjanam' means 'she who spends her life inside'. Her first name is a compound of 'Lalitha' (the Red One,) and 'Ambika' (literally 'little mother', the name of a goddess).
Although she was part of the most powerful landholding Brahmin caste of Kerala, Lalithambika's life-work was the exposure and destruction of the hypocrisy, violence and injustice with which women were treated in Nambudiri society. She was not allowed to study in school, and could only glean scraps of information about the outside world through male relatives who were kind enough to tell her about current affairs. She knew a little about the ongoing Indian freedom movement, and longed to take part. In 1926, she was married in the prescribed way to the farmer Narayanan Nambudiri. As a wife, she now lost all contact with the outside world and her day consisted of a claustrophobic routine of hard physical labour in smoky kitchens and damp closed courtyards, petty domestic politics and the fears and jealousies of other similarly imprisoned women. But she also saw their courage and their determination to be human in spite of the unnatural conditions of their lives. In this world her only outlet was her writing, which she did in secret. At the end of a working day that began before dawn, she would put her children to sleep, bar the door and write in the light of a tiny lamp. Constant exposure to smoke and inadequate lighting began to destroy her eyes. When the pain got very bad, she would write with her eyes closed. The frustration and degradation of her caste sisters moved Lalithambika to expose their plight in her celebrated Malayalam novel Agnisakshi (Fire being the Witness). The novel was later made into a film with the same title in 1997.
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