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In an upside down world, these women mystics are right side up

Arundhathi Subramaniam traces a lineage of unruly women mystics in her new book The Gallery of Upside Down Women

3 min readUpdated: Jan 7, 2026 03:01 PM IST

Arundhathi Subramaniam, poet in conversation with Anamika, Hindi poet and novelist at IIC discussing her new book The Gallery of Upside Down Women on women mystics

Arundhathi Subramaniam in conversation with Hindi poet Anamikaat IIC.

A new book of poetry excavates the defiant voices of women mystics systematically muted by history. At the India International Centre on Friday, author Arundhathi Subramaniam discussed The Gallery of Upside Down Women in conversation with Hindi poet Anamika.

Held as part of the long-running Art Matters series, the event saw Subramaniam describe her work as the culmination of years spent searching for female voices that have been either erased by the historical record or sanitised by sainthood.

The book was introduced by Ashok Vajpeyi, Hindi poet, essayist and Managing Trustee of the Raza Foundation, who hailed it as an antidote to what he called today’s “organised amnesia.” He described the text as belonging to an “upside down tribe” of women who reconnect us with roots, memory and meaning in a world increasingly adrift.

Where are the women mystics

Subramaniam spoke of mystics like Janabai, Soyarabai and Rupa Bhawani.

Subramaniam reflected that earlier in her life she had been drawn to figures such as the Buddha, Kabir and Antal, yet was persistently drawn back to one question: Where are the women? Even those remembered—like Meera Bai or Akka Mahadevi—often reached us with voices softened, flattened or stripped of their original daring.

Her book attempts to listen more carefully. What attracted her, she explained, was not sanctity but a shared love of freedom. “Poetry must have an edge,” Subramaniam said, “and make the reader alert, even uncomfortable.” She spoke of mystics like Janabai, Soyarabai and Rupa Bhawani, whose verse carries defiance, humour and an unapologetic sense of self—women who rejected a meek relationship with the divine, insisting instead on intimacy, argument and embodied experience.

Poems engaging with Sule Sankavva, Ambapali and Akka Mahadevi move between tenderness and audacity, eroticism and renunciation. In “God’s Forgotten Nickname,” Sankavva addresses her deity as “the god without shame,” one who enters every crevice of human doubt without judgment. Another poem revisits Ambapali, the court dancer of ancient Vaishali who became a Buddhist nun, reclaiming her voice from mere moral allegory.

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A living sisterhood

During their dialogue, Anamika reflected on the sense of void and resonance in Subramaniam’s work, comparing her poetry to the reverberating strains of a Rudra Veena, shaped by absence. Subramaniam responded by describing these women as a “living sisterhood”—an ancestry she wishes she had known earlier. “In moments of personal emptiness,” she confessed, “this dead poet society has kept me going.”

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Reflecting on her title, she observed: “In a world that is upside down, women who are upside down may actually be the right side up.” Such figures, she suggested, offer vital survival strategies: “how to walk naked, how to go skinny-dipping in yourselves, and how to find the best nickname for your god.”

Poetry, Subramaniam concluded, is ultimately “a play with grace and gravity”—a way of learning to live without losing freedom.