Pulikurichi, a beautiful village in Tamilnadu with the population of around 300 with the literacy rate of 10%. Primary occupation was farming and secondary occupation was conducting 'kangroo courts'. She was the 6th child in her family. Her father was a teacher. It was a massive thing being a teacher in 1954. It was hardly 7 years of India's independence. When she was born, her father promised himself that to make her a first graduate in that village. All her siblings were not interested in studies and they loved taking care of the farmlands, cattles and home.
Contradictorily, she never interested in taking care of cattles, working in farmlands and handling household activities. She was an exceptional child in her entire family and a pampered one. She was one of the first women from her village commutating to the nearby village(slightly bigger than Pulikurchi) for her schooling. Fermented rice was the staple food in that village. It will be available in all the houses at point in time. You can enter any home and you can have. You can say this is the village belong to a single family bloodline. Marriage will be done within the family(not brother sister but with the cousins). She is an exception here too who got married to a guy outside her village.( This episode will be narrated in the later stage)
In villages, people wake up early around 4 am, brush their teeth , pack the fermented rice in the aluminum vessels and go straight to their fields and start their daily work. They return around 5 in the evening. Mostly they take bath in the evening either in the field or in the home built well. This is their routine. She was the one who changed the entire routine among the women in that village. She always takes bath twice in a day. One in the morning and in the evening. She is the only one washes her face with soap first thing in the morning when she woke up and last thing before she sleep.
One of her elder sister's daughter told me that she was a cult in those days. She used only pears soap to wash her face. That particular soap is not available in her village. In order to buy that soap, one need to go to madurai(which was around 60 kms away from pulikurichi) No direct bus from that village. You need to walk 2-3 kms from pulikurchi to thiruchuli. Take a bus from Thiruchuli to aruppukottai (20 mins travel) and then Aruppukottai to madurai(1hr travel). Once a month her elder brother goes to madurai and buy that pears soap exclusively for her. There were times when the soap is over she wouldn't even wash her face. She became a cult for all the girls and women in the village on how to carry yourself, how to persuade your dreams and how to be aspirational.
To be continued....
