“We do need feminism – anti-patriarchal struggles that address women as a collective. So that women can live full human lives without necessarily treading the heroic path. So that they do not have to murder themselves unable to cope with a society that places impossible demands on them. So that they can stop thinking that their journeys are unconnected, precarious, individual paths they must tread all alone. So that sharing and connection is still possible. That alone will save young Malayalee women who are not of the elite from teetering on the brink between suicide and mental illness.”

The shocking suicide pact by four young athletes living in the Sports Authority of India hostel in Alappuzha, on the stunning backwaters in central Kerala, points to a frightening social paradox in the lives and rights of women in a state where they enjoy social standards comparable to developed societies.Kerala’s women have shown the way in athletics and have used sport as an implement of social emancipation, following the lead set by PT Usha and others, to escape from the clutches of dominant patriarchy and religious conservatism. But the regressive forces are pulling them back in.When Aparna Ramabhadran and her three friends ate that poisonous fruit in their hostel, it was contrary to all what we know and teach about education, the value of sport and the empowerment of women. It baffled us. How could they?After all, the mostly teenage athletes staying in the sports hostel are great examples of how the state can help young girls in predominantly rural societies escape their destinies. They are inculcated with the qualities of ambition and desire, the value of physical achievement, and the concepts of nationhood and nationalist pride. Almost all of them would make it to the Indian rowing or kayaking team sooner or later. To constantly think of the glory of Asian Games medals and, in so doing, leap across the vast chasms of their debilitating history is in itself a great achievement.But when the fruits of high achievement were within their reach, why did those four girls pluck the low-hanging poisonous fruit?One reason is that though sport has opened up avenues for emancipation of Kerala’s women (perhaps the most athletic after Punjab), patriarchy and religious norms have dragged them down. While Kerala has been revamping its sport infrastructure with new stadiums for the National Games, so also the religious right has been busy: the biggest church in this part of the world, daring the renaissance architecture in Rome, is coming up in Kochi.This is just one part of the competing evangelism in Kerala, still a madhouse of caste and religion. How can there not be a Venetian church with Doric pillars when in the neighbourhood a Saudi-funded mosque stands with glorious calligraphy?While Aparna Ramabhadran lay dead, the Kerala High Court granted an eight-year term to four Muslim youths who had cut off the hand of a Christian professor. (The professor’s wife too committed suicide.) All four convicts stood laughing in front of the cameras with a sense of triumphalism as if their life’s mission had been accomplished.In Kerala there are two triumphalist narratives playing alongside. The first is to emerge from their huts every day, row relentlessly against the waves of discrimination in the hope of one day standing on a podium with that teardrop rolling away as the national anthem plays. The other is to be a jihadi, with put-on jihadisms and money borrowed from the Gulf, and then drag the state back to the medievalism from which Kerala emerged earlier than those Gulf countries.Women’s emancipation, empowerment and rise could have been Kerala’s pride but for its rising conservatism. One reported reason for the Alappuzha suicide pact was that the girls had drank beer and shared the secret with senior girls, some of whom chided them. In an urban cosmopolitan society, this would have been a reasonable rite of passage. But in Kerala, this could invite the might of the social sanction and for the 16-year-olds this was unimaginable.They had failed the moral test and in such a case winning a kayaking medal is subsumed by a larger crass narrative. “Kayaking champion loves beer” is just the headline that the sensation-seeking, obscurantist Malayalam media would have loved.Jawaharlal Nehru University’s J Devika wrote on Kafila, suggesting that the lack of feminism in Kerala is another reason for women’s suicide:Many young women are driven to death if they are seen talking to men. Devika recalls the instance of her friend who committed suicide for a similar reason.Between the pride of an educated Kerala and the bulge of its collective wallet hides islets of rhetoric inspired by Saudi Arabia, some borrowed from Rome, ideas transplanted from the Gulf where the Malayalee goes to makes his millions and comes back inflated with something more than money. Here in these islets they are waiting to chop off your hands, or push that young girl who joyously had beer down the cliff.When PT Usha ran, Kerala and India cheered. Her Olympic fourth place, along with that of Milkha Singh’s, is all that we as a nation had for a long time. In these famous defeats we saw victory. For Kerala, Usha’s running was emancipation itself. Usha and Shiny Wilson were Kerala’s feminist triumphs in a way. That is the reason why Aparna Ramabhadran rowed a kayak for her life, her muscles trying to obey her mind’s call to glory.It is only in Kerala that Aparna would have reached for the poisonous fruit. It still baffles us.Aparna’s rowing partner Nimmy Teresa told the Hindustan Times: “Last year’s gold in the pairs events at the Challenger Nationals in Bengal was memorable and gave us confidence that we could also enter the big league. But she left me midway.” She left us too.