 "'Let’s go see Agasthya': Chronicling Kerala women's fight against forest department to scale a peak")
Agastya Ne Kaanam - Part I: Trivandrum - Bonacaud - Athirumala Base Camp
DAY ZERO
“We have enough dry fruits, but haven’t packed any glucose tablets. Maybe we can purchase them from a chemist when we step out for dinner?” Nisha Kallupurakkal’s voice reached a news channel reporter interviewing Sulfat M Sulu in an adjacent room. He stepped out and gestured at her, Divya Divakaran, Sachithra Soman and Rema Alok (fondly called Remachaichi by others) to keep the sound low. The women were waiting their turn to be interviewed about their expedition to the Agasthyakoodam peak, which would begin the next day. Manacaud Tourist Home in Trivandrum was their chosen halt for the night.
For these vocal activists, who had fought a three-year battle against the Kerala Forest Department to grant access to women for the trek, the irony of being requested to lower their voices while they waited to speak about their struggle and inspirations, brought out a collective smirk, knowing head-nods and a soft chuckle among themselves.
Meanwhile, in their own homes, the group’s Trivandrum-based members Shyni Rajkumar, owner and trainer at Dauntless Explorer’s Club (the first women’s bullet riding club in Kerala); Shirly Sneha, a criminal lawyer; Meena Kootala, an information assistant at a medical college; and VM Cicily, a civil lawyer, were cramming items from their own final checklists into their backpacks and preparing to get a good night’s sleep.
The nine-member squad was to depart for Bonacaud Forest Station at dawn the next day and undertake a two-day uphill climb to the Agasthyakoodam peak.
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Day Zero, Manacaud Tourist Home: Divya Divakaran checks into her hotel room
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AGASTHYAKOODAM
Termed Agasthyamala as a tribute to a Hindu sage Agasthyamuni, the 1,868-meter high peak is also the second highest mountain in Kerala and part of the Agasthyakoodam Biosphere reserve in the Neyyar Wildlife Sanctuary. Owing to the Vedic sage’s connection to numerous religious epics and myths in Hinduism and his idol atop the peak, it has been a pilgrimage for devotees of Agasthya since decades, but also a popular destination for outdoor enthusiasts due to the trail’s diverse landscape and terrain.
Since 1990, in an attempt to protect the biosphere’s diversity from unchecked human and commericial activity, the Kerala Forest Department introduced a regulation, mandating pilgrims and hobbyist trekkers alike to gain an entry permit. It has since designated a three-month period each year for the trek, starting with the Makkaravilakku festival in January at the Sabarimala Temple, and concluding on Shivratri in March.
With this regulation, the Forest Department also established a further directive, banning women and children under the age of 14 to climb the peak.
Between 1990 and 2015, requests for permits from female trekkers were declined by the Forest Ministry, terming the trek as ‘too unsafe’ for women. Another unofficial reasoning specified by the officials since 1990 had been that a woman scaling the peak goes against sentiments of an indigenous tribe dwelling in the forest area, the Kanikkarans, who believe Agasthya kept a vow of celibacy. Hence, women climbing the peak and coming close to the idol would disrupt the spiritual grounds which form Agasthyakoodam’s position in religious epics.
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Day Zero, Manacaud Tourist Home: Divya, Sulfath and Rema soon after arriving in Trivandrum
In 2016, the forest was enlisted as a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve Network site and registrations for trekking opened up online, elevating the interest of trekkers and devotees alike. Due to the growing popularity of the reserve, this regulatory gender bias eventually fell under the scrutiny of local feminist activists like Divya Divakaran and Sulfath M Sulu, who joined forces to initiate a support group, protesting against the notification with fellow activists and NGOs.
A three-year protest ensued; petitions to and meetings with the Forest Ministry and Kani tribe leaders, demonstrations outside the Chief Wildlife Warden’s office and Bonacaud base station, and finally, a legal case against the ministry. Their three-year agitation ensured a legal removal of these gender-exclusive guidelines for the season beginning 14 January, 2019.
Within two days after the news of this regulatory change and online registrations (on a first come first serve basis) officially broke in January 2019, over one hundred women managed to gain registrations to climb, among a total of 4700 trekkers.
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Nisha Kallupurakkal, en route Bonacaud Base Station
BONACAUD - ATHIRUMALA
When visually documenting nine women bracing an arduous 23-kilometre uphill trail across two days, traversing a landscape that was denied to them until they fought the system for it, there are defining anecdotes to be shared about their childhood and formative experiences which inspired them to ask questions against gender discrimination when it comes to access to spaces — their individual stories culminating into a united quest. Furthermore, in those revelations about the bureaucratic battle with the Forest Ministry itself lies the answer to what compelled them to not stop at the favourable court order, but physically attempt the climb.
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Bonacaud Base Station: Shirly confirms her prior registration receiving an entry permit
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Bonacaud Base Station: Sulfath signs her entry in the forest register
“LET’S GO SEE AGASTHYA
Growing up in a traditional family in Kollam, Sulfath (now 54), invariably questioned her family’s religious beliefs dispiriting women from acting on their inherently inquisitive and culturally curious instincts. “I grew up in an environment where spaces and activities which my brothers and father had access to, my mother, sisters and I did not. In our family, women were not allowed to visit libraries. To understand what these books contained that had made them inaccessible to women, I secretly read the ones that my father brought home from the local library, in the courtyard of our family home when everyone was asleep.”
But they would get returned before she could finish them, and the hunger for knowledge made her browse through other books on her father’s shelf. “Though a strong believer in Islamic religious guidelines, his personal library contained books about atheism for his own perspective, which I happened to pick up and start reading.”
This chance inquiry into scepticism and a lack of coherent reasoning for gender favouritism around provoked in her questions about faith, first.
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Sulfath and Divya, 2 kilometres ahead into the Bonacaud - Athirumala trail
Miles north of Kollam, in Malappuram, Divya Divakaran grew up in a spiritually unprejudiced environment, yet within the clutches of patriarchy. “As they say, women are not just victims, but also agents of patriarchy. Observing my mother’s inherent preference for a son over a daughter evoked existential questions within me as a daughter, but more importantly as a woman.”
At some point in those childhood years, these questions took a more investigative turn. “I became more interested in exploring gender-based discrimination in public spaces, albeit as innocently as an eighth grader, entering playgrounds and local libraries dominated by men.”
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Day One: Left to Right - Shiny, Divya, Nisha, Sulfath and Rema cool off and hydrate while crossing the first water stream
Though many years apart, both Sulfath and Divya became teachers in separate fields and institutions in Malappuram, where they actively protested against various discriminatory regulations in workplaces through their own networks, before the Agasthyakoodam fight brought them together.
Sulfath lead agitations against norms like compulsory saris for female teachers, to initiating protests against cases of sexual harassment of female teachers in Kerala. For Divya, a defining step was the local organisation WINGS, an organisation dedicated to enabling women to take part in sports like volleyball and badminton as a way of encouraging them to come out in public grounds.
In 2016, along with her companions from WINGS, she took part in the Pulikali (which had also historically been a male dominated tradition) along with three other women. “On the fourth day of Onam (Naalam Onam), three of us painted ourselves as tigresses and danced for four hours to entertain the local crowd. The encouragement we received due to the success of our involvement in Pulikali inspired an optimistic belief in me that access to Agasthyakoodam could also be investigated and fought for.”
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Meena Kootala scrubs her face at a rivulet
When she resolved to investigate further into the gender-specific exclusion, one of Divya’s first steps was to start a WhatsApp group to connect with others in Kerala to inform about and inspire disagreement with this regulation.
The title of the group, ‘Agastya Ne Kaanam’ comes from a poem titled ‘Agastyahridayam’, written by an eminent Malayali poet Madhusoodhan Nair. It translates to “Let’s go see Agasthya”.
With 54 current participants, the group later evolved into the centre for discourse about their course of action.
Echoing Divya and Sulfath’s sentiments about exclusion, one of the first to join was Meena Kootala. “It is not for a committee of male wardens to decide where entering a forest is safe or not for women. Additionally, a tradition disallowing women to experience a trek which is so rich in varied landscape, because of a sage’s idol on the peak who believed to be celibate, reveals how women are reduced to mere physical objects.”
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Rema stretching her arms after completing a short pranayam
For 52-year-old Rema, who is currently nursing a knee injury, a physically demanding activity like trekking, “enables you to connect with your body beyond how it looks”. Describing it as a potentially personal and meditative form of resistance for women to realise their mental and physical strengths, she says, “As women, we have always been made to feel conscious about how we look and dress, made to believe it is important to groom ourselves in a certain respectful way, but on the contrary, the look of a disheveled mountain man has been romanticised, for men.”
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Forest guides at their camp
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A portrait of Divya at the grassland patch, 3 kilometres before Athirumala
THE FIGHT FOR ACCESS – PART I
About the insurgence of their protest, Shirly remembers, “Our first call to action in 2016 was to petition for women’s allowance to the then Forest Minister Tiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, who surprisingly, immediately promised for a change in this regulation. But in 2017, the regulation stayed the same while the government and minister had changed.” The next step then was a stronger affirmation of their intention to trek the peak through a press conference, a demonstration outside the chief wildlife warden’s office and an RTI (Right to Information) application, questioning the reason for this exclusion.
“These efforts forced the Forest Ministry to grant us an audience with them and the leaders of Kani tribe. It was only then that the leaders of the tribe officially stated that Agasthya was a bachelor and women trekkers would make the peak impure.”
Around the same time, they also received the reply to their RTI application, which officially stated safety as a concern for this exclusion. Moreover, it was always known that the trek began on the day of the Makaravilakku festival in the Sabarimala Temple and ended on Shivratri, according to the Hindu calendar, even though it is a secular space. This contradiction between the statements of the Kani tribe and the RTI reply helped them make the conclusion that trekking to the Agasthyakoodam peak had always been a state-assisted Hindu pilgrimage.
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At the grassland stretch, Meena, Rema, their friend Davis Tom with forest guide and Kani tribe member Sujith
To avoid aggravated backlash against this revelation yet maintaining safety as a primary concern, the ministry suggested a group of ten women be guided for a trek to Athirumala to ‘test’ if they are fit and then open access for them until the Athirumala Base Camp, 6 kilometres before the Agasthyakoodam peak.
This negotiation was rejected by the women, citing their resolve for complete and unbiased access. Another symbolic reason, as Divya explains was, “Athiru translates to ‘boundary’. To agree to an allowance till Athirumala would still mean submitting to a State pronounced evaluation of our physical fitness.” (To be continued in Part II of ‘The fight for access’)
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Converging at Base Camp: Rema, Sulfath and Divya at Athirumala Base Camp canteen, along with Shanti Flora, who was the only woman among the batch of 100 trekkers who had walked up to the peak and back to Base Camp on the same day as Agastya Ne Kaanam had walked from Bonacaud to Athirumala
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Athirumala Base Camp: Shiny and Nisha share a lunch plate of kanji
Treading slowly across a 16-kilometre route through thickets and patches of cardamom, pepper and nutmeg plants, the nine-member team among 100 trekkers reached the base of Agasthyakoodam, late in the afternoon. They went to their dormitory, where they would rest and recover overnight. It was a place to leave excess luggage in anticipation of the next day’s steep 7-kilometre climb up to the peak. A warm meal of pazham pori (fried Banana plantain), kanji (a local rice porridge) and a cup of ginger coffee awaited them. A short 200-meter hike from the campsite leads to an empty boulder strewn patch which allows a clear view of the peak, where the trekkers collected to spend the sunset hour.
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Shyni, Rema, Nisha, Sachithtra, Shirly at Athirumala Base Camp
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Moonrise over Agasthyakoodam
Witnessing her first unobstructed view of the Agasthya hill looming massively over vast tropical grasslands and tea plantations was perhaps the most gratifying sight for Shyni Rajkumar. A popular member among India’s Royal Enfield riders’ community, Shyni has conquered various rider circuits, securing her mark on highways, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.
But empowering herself through riding was never a conscious thought for Shyni. Growing up without the conventional restrictions and among outdoor enthusiasts, it was something she had always gravitated towards and in fact encouraged for. Still, her childhood dream of trekking the Agasthyakoodam peak wasn’t complete yet, “I grew up hearing stories about the Agastyakoodam route’s varied landscape from my uncles and father who have climbed the peak. I was told that children under 14 and women are not allowed entry into the forest reserve, but I did not understand why. Even though I grew up inclined towards riding, I had always wanted to trek Agastyakoodam and share my adventure.
Hopefully, tomorrow, we will finally achieve that.”
Read Part II here .
—All photographs by Sahil Jagasia
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