77-year-old Meenakshi Amma from Kerala’s Vatkara teaches India’s oldest martial art for free
77-year-old Meenakshi Amma from Kerala’s Vatkara teaches India’s oldest martial art for free
Age is just a number: 77-year-old Meenakshi Amma, a resident of Vatkara, Kerala, is passionate about pursuing India’s oldest martial art, teaches this art to her students for free Meenakshi Amma is the pioneer representative of India’s oldest Kalaripayattu fighting skills. She is working diligently in promoting this old art of martial arts. Wearing a saree, she can be seen practicing for hours. At the age of just seven, he started taking lessons in learning it.
Majority of Meenakshi’s students are girls whose age is between 6 to 26 years. Meenakshi believes that the younger you learn this art, the sooner you master it. There is no fee in his art school. At the end of every year, his students can give Guru Dakshina whatever they want. He has many such students who are taking this art forward by learning here. According to Meenakshi, my father never stopped me from learning Kalaripayattu. She considers this art a boon for herself. She was married to Raghavan Master who was himself a school teacher. He opened his own training school where anyone could learn this art.
It was here at the age of 17 that Meenakshi started training Kalaripayattu. Seeing Meenakshi’s dedication to this art, her two daughters and two sons also started learning it at the age of six. In 2017 he was awarded the Padma Shri. Seeing his enthusiasm at this age, it would not be wrong to say that age is just a number.
