I have held myself back from giving it all up and walking north with my dog several times over the last couple of decades, and I have met women on my journeys who did not share my restraint. You don’t need to look back to Andal or Miraabai to meet the woman mystic, even today, schooled, unschooled, regardless of caste or class, stripping themselves of the trappings of their origins, at Haridwar, Amarkantak, in Kanyakumari, in Mathura, at Ajmer, in gurdwaras, ashrams across the country, in Puttaparthi and Shirdi, you will find women who have walked away from children, family, property, material gain to follow the calling of their spiritual urges.
If women are already on the fringe of mainstream society, the woman spiritual seeker is on the fringe of that mainstream, and if those seeking outside the protection offered by the rules and disciplines of organised religion are even further beyond those limitations, exploring the periphery of true Freedom. Like madwomen.
The path of the woman mystic is vastly different from that of the man, in terms of infrastructure, backlash and expectation. This book is a long overdue account of four such women who map the inner landscape of spiritual India with their own vision and practice.
Women Who Wear Only Themselves by Arundhathi Subramaniam, published by Speaking Tiger, 2021.
The music is Sarasangi, by Mysore V Shrikanth and VK Raman.
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Books 1.5 On the fringe of the fringe of the fringe: Women Mystics