The Interview : Arundhathi Subramaniam

Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Arundhathi Subramaniam about her book ‘The Gallery of Upside Down Women.’

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RS: Your earlier books, Women Who Wear Only Themselves and Wild Women, subtly challenged conventional frameworks of spirituality and the ways female mystics are traditionally portrayed. In The Gallery of Upside Down Women, you push the envelope further - the poems are more intimate, playful, even unruly. Was it a natural evolution of your long-standing inquiry into spiritual stereotypes especially the ‘antiseptic, calendar art’ women saints or did this collection demand a more disruptive, gallery-hung-askew approach to these women and their legacies?

AS: What a lovely question. Well, it’s true that this book could never have happened without the previous two volumes -- especially Wild Women. So, yes, it is a natural evolution. Each book stands on the shoulders of the previous one. And before I knew it, a trilogy had taken shape.

At the same time, the approach to Upside Down Women is freer, more playful. I had already done the archival work: I’d been a reasonably diligent researcher and anthologist. I no longer had to offer context or backstory. I was free to be my own person – to dream my way into these women’s lives, to slip beneath their skins, to play at being medium and ventriloquist, to be inventive with tone and language, and generally, to have fun! I think they’d understand because they’re freedom-lovers themselves.

I still honour them, but the way one honours one’s sisters – with affection, humour, and sometimes with a gentle nudge in the ribs! I don’t believe my awe ever goes away, though.

RS: You describe the women in your book as your “upside-down tribe”—women who walked naked, aslant, or even inverted through history. What does “upside-down” mean to you in today’s world? Is it resistance, spiritual defiance, or a necessary re-orientation in a destabilised age?

AS: My upside-down tribe is definitely about resistance. These are women who refuse to be cowed, bullied, deceived, diminished, by patriarchy or an orthodox religious establishment.

Even now, their chutzpah takes our breath away. Think of Amrapali’s poem, authored twenty-five hundred years ago, about her ageing naked body. Think of Avudai Akkal asking those questions in the 18th century about the ostensible impurity of saliva or menstrual blood. Think of Akka Mahadevi in the 12th century choosing to walk the world naked. And think of Sule Sankavva, the 12th century prostitute-devotee, who offers us that magnificent archetype of the divine as the Shameless One.

But upside-downness is also a metaphor for the journey of the spiritual traveller. To consciously walk a path where there are no guarantees, no promises, no social rewards, no guardrails, isn't easy. Along the way, travellers begin to see through the hoax of conditioned reality even while working within it. Think of the Biblical metaphor of the wolf and the lamb feeding together, or the riddling language of poets, from Kabir to Allama Prabhu. I particularly love the 8th century woman tantric poet, Lakshminkara’s cryptic poem, which I riff on in this book. In her poem, she says:

Amazing! An elephant sits on a throne

held up by two bees!

Incredible! The sightless lead,

the mute speak!…….

Amazing! A mouse chases a cat!

An elephant flees from a crazy donkey!

It’s marvellous...

Do not doubt!

If you’re stunned, adept,

drop your doubts!

What does she mean? We don't really know. But she seems to be inviting us to a less rigid, more defamiliarized, more inverted way of looking at the world. In this sandhya bhasha, this twilight language, we hear the laughter of countless mystics echoing down the centuries.

So, eventually, upside-down becomes a metaphor for sanity. Which is why I often say, in an upside-down world, upside-down women are clearly the right side up!

RS: Many of the women you write about—such as Akka Mahadevi, Karaikkal Ammaiyar, Amrapali, and Lakshminkara—gave up not only social expectations but also traditional ideas of identity, beauty, and even how a woman’s body “should” exist in the world. While revisiting their lives, did you find yourself rethinking what we mean today by empowerment? Do their choices challenge the way we currently define strength and freedom for women?

AS: I grew up reading only of spirited female freedom-seekers in the West, never knowing that there were so many stunningly subversive voices right here. Unfortunately, we’ve turned so many spiritual warriors into toothless saints. But that is, of course, a familiar strategy of domestication — whether by religious or rationalist impulses.

And yes, you certainly can’t hang around these women – their poems, in particular – without asking yourself some tough questions about your own choices. They extend and redefine ideas of power and freedom in so many ways. Akka Mahadevi offers us an extraordinary image of unfettered womanhood – vulnerable yet invincible, defenceless yet proud, naked yet free. Lakshminkara is one of those women we’ve rarely been encouraged to remember – a fiercely independent tantrika and powerful teacher, not just a docile devotee and follower. And Karaikkal Ammaiyar is unconventional on every level. She chooses to give up youth, beauty and marriage, opts to look like a hideous ghoul, hang out on charnel grounds, and walk upside-down. Is she for real? We don’t know. What we do know is that there are several women who chose lives of self-determination, whom we’ve relegated to the shadows because they make us uncomfortable. It’s easy to call them ‘holy’ and forget about them. But their choices overturn sacred and secular norms in breathtaking ways!

RS: Your poems blur the line between the historical and the imaginary, the sacred and the subversive. How do you approach writing about figures who are part biography, part myth, and part collective memory? Where does scholarship end and poetic intuition begin?

AS: I’d never write a poem if a subject was just a matter of mild academic curiosity. Even when I play anthologist, it has to be a passion project.  The anthology, Wild Women, wasn't a labour of love, but of lunacy. It gouged years out of my life, and I worked in a fevered, single-minded way, without scholarships or grants of any kind - and I'm not complaining!

Which is a long way of saying that by the time my own poems started happening, I had already devoured these women, internalized them, marinated in them for years. And writing brought them even closer. Or to paraphrase Nammalvar, I consumed them and they consumed me!

Also, even if no expert, I am a reasonably seasoned spiritual traveller. Seasoned enough, as a poet, too, to recognize an alignment of authenticity and artistry when it happens. Seasoned enough to know the difference between imitation and authentic voice. If these poems hadn’t emerged from a kernel of firsthand experience, if they hadn't found their own flow and rhythm and urgency, I wouldn't have trusted them.

RS: There is a recurring emphasis on “skills” in this collection—how to find the right nickname, how to “gatecrash into the present,” how to “go skinny-dipping in the self.” Do you see poetry as a way of practising these skills in daily life? Beyond writing, what personal habits or spiritual practices help you stay steady and centred in a world that often feels uncertain or overwhelming?

AS: Yes, because after a point, you don’t need more information to navigate a disorderly world. You need skill. Which is why the first poem in the book says, ‘Meaning won’t save us. Never has. But rhythms will.’  I've been a fevered questor looking for the 'meaning' of life for many years, but I've begun to find that rhythm can often be its own raison d'etre. The 'how' is more important than the 'what' and the 'why', increasingly.

I have a daily kriya yoga practice that sustains me. But I also need to keep reinvigorating my routine – whether by going off email, traveling, reading, walking, watching the trees outside my window. Sometimes, a real conversation – when it is unguarded, devoid of the need to defend an identity -- can do it. There are so many ways to return to oneself.

RS: Your work is not only about women seekers but also divine feminine. It is about unconventional seekers who throw a tantrum and call it a prayer.  Do you feel we need to dismantle certain inherited frameworks before we can recognise the sacred in its more unruly forms?

AS: Well, for one, we need to stop equating devotion with docility, with sheep-like obedience. We need to stop seeing surrender as servitude, vulnerability as weakness. We need to stop seeing receptivity as passivity. Also, while there is a contemplative path to the sacred, there is also a wilder, more ecstatic path. We are often more comfortable with the former, because the latter can be threatening to our fragile sense of order.

I wanted this book to acknowledge both paths – that of the monk and the celebrant, the quiet woman and the exultant one. I wanted it to acknowledge the mendicant and the courtesan, the renunciate and the woman who engages with the material world but isn't manipulated by it. These women are inheritors and improvisers all at once. They remind us that interrogation and improvisation were built into our wisdom traditions. We were always meant to be collaborators with our past, not just puppets of it.

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Thank you so much for talking to The Wise Owl about your book. We wish you the very best in all your creative endeavours.