{"id":65239,"date":"2024-06-28T14:00:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T05:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/article\/2024\/jun\/28\/india-meenakshi-raghavan-kalaripayattu-82-year-old-woman-teaches-martial-art"},"modified":"2024-06-28T14:00:13","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T05:00:13","slug":"sword-granny-meet-the-82-year-old-dedicated-to-teaching-indias-oldest-martial-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=65239","title":{"rendered":"Sword Granny: meet the 82-year-old dedicated to teaching India\u2019s oldest martial art"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Amid rising crimes against women, Meenakshi Raghavan is dedicated to passing on the ancient skills of Kalaripayattu<\/p>\n<p>Today the pupils are mostly schoolchildren, aged from seven up to teenagers. The teacher is an 82-year-old woman known to all as Sword Granny. Inside her martial arts school \u2013 a large hall with walls adorned with trophies and mementoes \u2013 in Vatakara, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the session begins with prayers and warmup exercises.<\/p>\n<p>Then Meenakshi Raghavan takes the class through the precise movements of Kalaripayattu, India\u2019s oldest martial art, their bare feet padding across a floor of red dust mixed with medicinal herbs.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/article\/2024\/jun\/28\/india-meenakshi-raghavan-kalaripayattu-82-year-old-woman-teaches-martial-art\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amid rising crimes against women, Meenakshi Raghavan is dedicated to passing on the ancient skills of KalaripayattuToday the pupils are mostly schoolchildren, aged from seven up to teenagers. The teacher is an 82-year-old woman known to all as Sword Gr&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[646,59,62,61,617,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender","category-global-development","category-india","category-south-and-central-asia","category-womens-rights-and-gender-equality","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65240,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65239\/revisions\/65240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}