[Excerpt from Kalyanikkutty Amma’s autobiography, Pathikayum Vazhiyorathe Manideepangalum, in which she writes about her travels in Europe in the mid-1930s. She had, in the 1930s, written an account, in English and Malayalam, on this trip, as part of a women’s delegation invited by the International Student Service, called ‘A Peep at Europe’ in English and Njaan Kanda Europe, in Malayalam. In her autobiography, some chapters of this book have been included. I have translated the Malayalam version.]
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Memories of Interdining: Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma
[The famous events of interdining organized by the eminent anti-caste reformer from Kochi, Sahodaran K Ayappan caused paroxysms of rage to lash the caste-elite dominated town of Thrissur from 1917. Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma, who participated in one such event in the mid-1920s, gives a first-person account of it, and the consequences she had to face afterwards, in her autobiography Pathikayum Vazhiyorathe Manideepangalum. Below is a translation.]
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[Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma, though little-known in Kerala today, was one of the most vocal, bold, and well-read feminists of the first generation in Kerala. She paid an enormous price for her unbowed attitude, but her life was so much richer for the expansion of the mind she gained through travels all over India and in Europe as well as her deep interest in the most exciting debates of her times, including contraception, women’s rights, and nationalism. I have translated some of her articles which may be read here, but below is an excerpt from her autobiography Pathikayum Vazhiyorathe Manideepangalum (The Wayfarer and the Wayside Lamps). She studied in Queen Mary’s College, Madras in the early 1920s and remembered vividly the many great women and men she heard and met in the city which shaped her deeply cosmopolitan outlook.
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Swatantryavaadini 