[3] Although she was part of the most powerful landholding Brahmin caste of Kerala, Lalithambika's life-work was the exposure and destruction of the hypocrisy, violence and injustice with which women were treated in Nambudiri society.

[4] As a wife, she now lost all contact with the outside world and her day consisted of a claustrophobic routine of hard physical labour in smoky kitchens and damp closed courtyards, petty domestic politics and the fears and jealousies of other similarly imprisoned women.

At the end of a working day that began before dawn, she would put her children to sleep, bar the door and write in the light of a tiny lamp.

The frustration and degradation of her caste sisters moved Lalithambika to expose their plight in her celebrated Malayalam novel Agnisakshi (Fire being the Witness).

On the rare occasions when antharjanams left the house, they had to envelope their whole bodies in a thick cloak, and carry a leaf umbrella whose canopy reached to their waists, so that they could only see their own feet when walking.

They thus habitually went with their upper bodied uncovered, and many reformist and missionary movements in early twentieth century Kerala clothed lower caste women by force to uplift them.

[6] From her marriage with Narayanan Naboothiri, she had three sons, Bhaskara Kumar, N. Mohanan and Rajendran and four daughters, Leela, Shantha, Rajam and Mani.