Oh Wow, Avvai

Just can8217;t help a cheer for Avvaiyaar, the Tamizh Thaai or Tamil Mother. I rather think all of us would like her a great deal, she was such a pukka old lady. Was she around in the second century BCE, or the eighth or the twelfth century CE? Tamil scholars suspect there were actually three Avvais who got coalesced into one sharp-tongued feminist, a pro-poor and anti-humbug wandering bard, before whom the fiercest kings with the biggest mustaches trembled like schoolboys. Perhaps she lived so long because of the magic gooseberry given by a Siddha yogi of Kanjamalai near Salem in TN, famous for its medicinal plants to King Atiyamaan, who in turn gave it to her? Or was it her practice of kundalini yoga that kept her alive for well beyond the normal lifespan?

We know that she knew kundalini yoga because of the lovely poem, the Vinayagar Agaval, attributed to the earliest Avvai. In this long mantra she praises her favourite deity, Ganesha, and thanks him in the ninth verse: 8220;O Vinayaka! You came like a mother to sunder the bonds of samsara8221; Thaai-yaai enakku thaan ezhundh8217; aruli/Maaya piravi mayakkam arutthaai. Avvai describes how Ganesha, after teaching her the steps of kundalini yoga, lifts her aloft with his trunk into the very heaven of Thiru Kailai Sri Kailash: 8220;Kailash8221; being the sahasrara or crown chakra, the liberating door in kundalini yoga.

Avvai also wrote the 8220;Aatichhoodi8221;, aphorisms for little children that are still taught. She trawled the Tamil countryside in eternal padayatra, singing to the poor for a bowl of kanji gruel and scolding sloppy or warmongering kings into better behaviour. Once she went by foot as usual to a gathering of poets at a royal durbar. The other poets came in closed palanquins and did not look about them. Avvai however used her eyes and had only word to offer as her poem: 8220;Varappuyara!8221; This meant 8220;Varappu uyara8221; or 8220;Raise the dams and bunds8221;, for the land was parched by drought and the king had neglected to maintain his irrigation system. The king wondered if he could afford to deplete his treasury, but Avvai explained patiently: 8220;It is only by taking away from the rock that a sculptor creates a work of art. Those actions which seem to take away actually add to mankind8217;s real wealth.8221;

Way back, Avvai snapped at a debate that there were only two castes: male and female. And she united all castes, Shaiva-Vaishnava sects, regions and languages in her seamless view of Hinduism: 8220;The Thirukkural, the Vedas and Upanishads, the Shaiva hymns of Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar, Manikka-vachagar and Tirumoolar and the work of Vyasa the Mahabharata, enshrining the Gita: read all these texts as One Text8221; 8212; Oru vaasagameinru naar!