Rising Daughter, Silent Mother and Fading Grandmothers narrates the organic research journey of Rekha Govindan Kurup (the author) as a modern-day city-bred daughter of Kerala, India wanting to redefine, reclaim and re-inform her relationship with body and sexuality through the discovery and investigation of Matrilineal Nayar practices. Rekha did not grow up in a traditional Nayar matrilocal joint family, but instead she lived with her father, mother, and sibling in a nuclear home like many women of her generation. Her mother too, did not grow up in a matrilineal family. However, most of her grandmother's generation was born in matrilineal Kerala and grew up in a matrilocal and matrifocal system. In conversation with her mother and grandmothers, Rekha makes a sincere effort to reconnect with the matrilineal past of Kerala, its history, the lived experience of women within that system, and most importantly, the female-centered rituals practiced within the system that empowered the fruitful blossoming of a young girl into an adult woman.
About the Author: Rekha Govindan Kurup is a freelance writer, poet, artist, blogger, social media activist and more importantly sees herself as a modern-day feminist yogini. Rekha is a native of Kannur, Kerala (India). She grew up across the different states of India. Following her marriage, she went to United States where she has been living for the last 14 years, At the peak of her decade long career in IT, she gave up her Silicon Valley job to engage in service activities. She served as the West Coast director for the Youth Development Initiative of the International Association for Human Values. Life took an unexpected turn when her deep longing to understand and embody the feminine led her to the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP; now known as Sofia University) in Palo Alto, California, where she got M.A in Women's Spirituality. Over the last few years, Rekha has passionately engaged in reconnecting with her feminine purpose through various academic, spiritual and social engagements. Currently Rekha is focused on expanding her scope of interviews to include more grandmothers, mothers, and daughters across the depth and breadth of Kerala, and create socially active matriarchal platforms (or centers) in the state to pass on the lived memories of the matrilineal generation to the sons and daughters of patrilineal Kerala. Her upbringing in India in the eastern philosophy combined with her life in United States gives her the ability to bring a unique perspective to contain, assimilate and research cross-cultural differences and commonalities.