Nine Lives (12 page)
Beside Prashant was his childhood friend Shiju, who had come all the way from his job working in the railways in Chennai for the performance. ‘In 1995, when I was thirteen years old, I was diagnosed with cancer,’ he told me. ‘It was non-Hodgkins lymphoma and I underwent chemotherapy in Chennai. After a while the doctors said there is only so much we can do for you – now you just have to turn to God. My grandparents, who live in a village not far from here, came and told the goddess Bhagavati about me. She told them that within a month I would be completely well. Her power strengthened the hands of the doctor who took care of me, and I made an immediate, miraculous recovery. As no one – least of all the doctors – could explain it, we all believe that it was the goddess who cured me. Since then my family have never missed a single
theyyam
at this shrine. Each year we come all the way from Chennai to seek blessings and give thanks.’
We were still talking when the drumming began. Within a few minutes it was loud enough to hurt the ears, thumping into the body with an almost physical impact. I withdrew some distance from the shrine and the make-up hut, and took my seat in the front row of the crowd, as the
thottam
song of invocation was sung.
This time, Chamundi was the first deity out, a much more sinister
theyyam
than any I had witnessed the previous year. Red-faced, black-eyed and white-armed, with rouged lips, large red metal breasts and a halo of palm spines that looked like the blade of a giant circular saw, the deity emerged into the clearing rattling her bracelets and hissing like a snake. She circled the shrine, her face distorted and twitching from side to side, like a huge lizard. Her mouth opened and closed silently, her ruff of palm spikes swivelled and every so often she let out a loud cockatoo-like shriek. There was something agitated, disturbed and unpredictable about this eerie figure strutting malevolently around the edge of the crowd, glaring every so often at some individual who met her gaze; yet there was also something unmistakably regal about her, demanding attention and deference. Two priests, stripped to the waist, approached her, heads bowed, with a bowl of toddy, which she drank in a single gulp.
As she was drinking, the drums reached a new climax and suddenly a second deity appeared, leaping into the clearing with a crown of seven red cobra heads, to which were attached two huge round earrings. A silver-appliqué chakra disc was stuck in the middle of his forehead, and round his waist was a wide grass farthingale, as if an Elizabethan couturier had somehow been marooned on a forgotten jungle island and been forced to reproduce the fashions of the Virgin Queen’s court from local materials. His wrists were encircled with bracelets of palm spines and exora flowers. It was only after a minute that I realised it was Hari Das. He was unrecognisable. His eyes were wide, charged and staring, and his whole personality seemed to have been transformed. The calm, slightly earnest and thoughtful man I knew from my previous meetings was now changed into a frenzied divine athlete. He made a series of spectacular leaps in the air as he circled the
kavu
,
twirling and dancing,
spraying the crowd with showers of rice offerings
.
After several rounds in this manner, the tempo of the drums slowly lowered. As Chamundi took her seat on a throne at one side of the main entrance to the shrine, still twitching uneasily, the Vishnumurti
theyyam
approached the ranks of devotees, in a choreographed walk, part strut, part dance. All of the devotees and pilgrims had now respectfully risen from their seats or from the ground, and stood with heads bowed before the deity.
In one hand the Vishnumurti held a bow and a quiver of arrows; in the other a sword. These he used to bless the devotees, who bowed their heads as he approached. With the blade of the sword he touched the outstretched hands of some of the crowd. ‘All will be well!’ he intoned in a deep voice in Malayalam. ‘All the darkness will go! The gods will look after you. They will protect you and be your friend! Do not worry! God is everywhere!’ Between these encouraging phrases in the local dialect he muttered a series of Sanskrit mantras and incantations. The personality of the deity was quite distinct from that of Chamundi – as benign and reassuring as the latter was disturbing and potentially dangerous, even psychotic.
The deity now returned to the shrine, and taking a throne, looked on as the various priests and attendants prostrated themselves before him, each offering a drink of toddy. Like Chamundi, Vishnumurti drank the offering in a single gulp. This was the signal for the spiritual surgery to begin and the devotees to queue up and approach the deities for individual advice and blessing. Vishnumurti’s queue was noticeably longer than that of the goddess; only the brave – mostly elderly women – approached Chamundi.
One by one the petitions were presented. Old women asked for grandchildren, unemployed men for jobs, young women for husbands and farmers for good harvests. To each, Vishnumurti offered reassuring advice: ‘Your family will be showered with blessings,’ he said to one woman. ‘The evil times are over. Peace and calm will return to your family home. You will be like Saraswati, illuminating the darkness.’ ‘I will look after you,’ he said to an old man, ‘and I will take care of your sons. Both your kids are going to be fine. Don’t take the path towards evil and you will always be able to lift your head in public! Never worry.’ To a little boy: ‘Listen to your parents and you will do well in your exams and have a bright future.’
After an hour or so of this, the queues began to dwindle, and the drums struck up again. Such was the reassuring calm of the gods’ surgery that nothing prepared me for what followed.
As the tempo rose, the attendants handed both deities coconuts which they took over to a sacrificial altar and threw down with such force that they exploded.
Then the gods were handed
huge cleavers. From one side a pair of squawking chickens was produced, each held by the feet and flapping and crowing frantically. Another attendant appeared, holding an offering of rice on a palm leaf plate. Seconds later, the cleaver descended and the chickens were beheaded. The head of each was thrown away and blood gushed out in a great jet on to the rice. Then, as the drums reached a climax, both deities lifted the flapping carcasses up to their faces, blood haemorrhaging over their costumes and headdresses. Together Chamundi and Vishnumurti placed the severed neck of a chicken in their mouths, each drinking deeply of the blood for a full minute. Only then did they put the carcass down, on to its feet, so that the headless chicken ran off, scrabbling and flapping as if still alive. Only after another full minute had passed did the chickens finally pitch over and come to rest at the edge of the crowd.
One last triumphal lap of the shrine followed before the deities bowed to their devotees and headed back to the green room. There, as they stood with their hands raised in
namaskar
, their headdresses were removed by the attendants. By the time I had made it through the surging crowd, Vishnumurti had gone and Hari Das was back again. The make-up boy removed his busk and breastplate and he lay down on his back on a palm mat. He was spent, breathing heavily with his eyes closed. Finally he opened his eyes, and seeing me, smiled. I asked if he felt any of the spirit of the deity remaining in him.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s all over – gone. Now there is no relationship with that state of being. All you feel is exhaustion, and lightness, and sometimes hunger too. But mostly, just deep exhaustion.’
‘When is your next
theyyam
?’ I asked.
‘Tonight. The
kavu
is about three hours away by bus.’
‘It’s another all-nighter?’
‘Of course.’ Hari Das shrugged. ‘I’m not complaining,’ he said. ‘The season may be hard work, but it’s what I live for, what I look forward to for the rest of the year.’
The boy who had played Chamundi had his costume off now, and was heading down to the stream below the clearing to bathe. He looked at Hari Das to see if he was going to come too, but the latter indicated that he should go ahead.
‘These two months are very happy,’ he said. ‘I am very satisfied. I love coming out to remote places like this to perform.
Theyyam
has made me what I am. All my self-esteem comes from this. I am here in a village far from mine, because of my fame as a
theyyam
artist. The rest of the year, no one here would even greet me or invite me to share a cup of tea with them. But during the season no one knows me as Hari Das. To them I am like a temple, if not a god. Suddenly I have status and respect.’
The make-up boy was now cleaning the pigment, the sweat and the congealed chicken blood off his face.
‘Is it hard going back to normal life?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. All of us find it so.’ He smiled. ‘At the end of the season we just pack up our things and prepare to go back to our jobs – to being a bus conductor, or a well builder, or life in prison. There is a total disconnect with this life. We are all sad. But at least we all know it will come back the next season.’
Hari Das got up and together we walked down towards the steps of the makeshift ghat where Chamundi was already neck deep in water, washing himself clean.
‘The other ten months are very hard,’ said Hari Das. ‘But there is no way around it. That’s reality, isn’t it? That’s life. Life is hard.’
‘Of course, there are times when there is pleasure,’ said Rani Bai. ‘Who does not like to make love? A handsome young man, one who is gentle . . .’
She paused for a moment, looking out over the lake, smiling to herself. Then her face clouded over. ‘But mostly it is horrible. The farmers here, they are not like the boys of Bombay.’
‘And eight of them every day,’ said her friend Kaveri. ‘Sometimes ten. Unknown people. What kind of life is that?’
‘We have a song,’ said Rani. ‘ “Everyone sleeps with us, but no one marries us. Many embrace us, but no one protects.” ’
‘Every day my children ask, “Who is my father?” They do not like having a mother who is in this business.’
‘Once I tried to open a bank account with my son,’ said Rani. ‘We went to fill in the form, and the manager asked: “Father’s name?” After that, my son was angry. He said I should not have brought him into the world like this.’
‘We are sorry we have to do this work. But what is the alternative?’
‘Who will give us jobs? We are all illiterate.’
‘And the future,’ said Kaveri. ‘What have we to look forward to?’
‘When we are not beautiful, when our bodies become ugly, then we will be all alone.’
‘If we live long enough to be old and to be ugly,’ said Kaveri. ‘So many are dying.’
‘One of our community died last week. Two others last month.’
‘In my village, four younger girls have died,’ said Kaveri. ‘My own brother has the disease. He used to be a truck driver, and knew all the girls along the roads. Now he just lies at home drinking, saying, “What difference does it make? I will die anyway.”’
She turned to face me. ‘He drinks anything he can get,’ she said. ‘If someone told him his own urine had alcohol in it, he would drink that too.’
‘That can’t be easy to live with.’
Kaveri laughed harshly. ‘If I were to sit under a tree and tell you the sadness we have to suffer,’ she said, ‘the leaves of that tree would fall like tears. My brother is totally bedridden now. He has fevers and diarrhoea.’
She paused. ‘He used to be such a handsome man, with a fine face and large eyes. Now those eyes are closed, and his face is covered in boils and lesions.’
‘Yellamma never wanted it to be like this,’ said Rani.
‘The goddess is sitting silently,’ said Kaveri. ‘We don’t know what feelings she has about us. Who really knows what she is thinking?’
‘No,’ said Rani, firmly shaking her head. ‘The goddess looks after us. When we are in distress, she comes to us. Sometimes in our dreams. Sometimes in the form of one of her children.’
‘It is not the goddess’s doing.’
‘The world has made it like this.’
‘The world, and the disease.’
‘The goddess dries our tears,’ said Rani. ‘If you come to her with a pure heart, she will take away your sadness and your sorrows. What more can she do?’