Around nine hundred years ago in southern India, there lived a female mystic called Akka Mahadevi. Akka was a devotee of Shiva. Ever since her childhood, she has regarded Shiva as her beloved , her husband .It was not not just a belief;for her it was a living reality.
A King saw this beautiful young woman one day, and decided he wanted her as his wife. She refused . But the king was adamant and threatened her parents, so she yielded.
She married the man, but she kept him at a physical distance. He tries to woo her,but her constant refrain was, “Shiva is my husband”. Time passes and the King’s patience wore thin. Infuriated,he tried to lay his hands upon her. She refused. “I have another husband. His name is Shiva. He visits me, and I am with him. I cannot be with you.”
Because she claimed to have another husband, she was brought to court for prosecution. Akka is said to have announced to all present, “Being a Queen doesn’t mean a thing to me. I will leave.”
When the king saw the ease with which she was walking away from everything, he made a last futile effort to salvage his dignity. He said, “Everything on your person— your jewels, your garments— belongs to me. Leave it all here and go.”
So, in the full assembly, Akka just dropped her jewelery, all her clothes, and walked away naked. From that day on, she refused to wear clothes even though many tried to convince her.
It was unbelievable for a woman to be walking naked on the streets of India at that time — and this was a beautiful young woman. She lived out her life as a wandering mendicant and composed some exquisite poetry that lives on to this very day.
In a poem(translated by A.k Ramanujan), she says:
People,
male and female,
blush when a cloth covering their shame
comes loose.
When the lord of lives
live drowned without a face
in the world, how can you be modest?
When all the world is the eye of the lord,
onlooking everywhere, what can you
cover and conceal?
Devotees of this kind may be in this world but not of it. The power and passion with which they lived their lives make them inspirations for generations of humanity. Akka continues to be a living presence in the Indian collective consciousness, and her lyrical poems remain among the most prized works of South Indian literature to this very day.
