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Journalism of Courage
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.
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!
