Kerala’s Mysterious NORTH
Wild-eyed and orange-faced under a gigantic red headdress writhing with serpents, the dancer spun and gyrated. He leapt free from a circle of drummers, their naked torsos glistening with sweat as they rapped an incessant rhythm on their cow-hide chendas. The beat became louder, faster and ever more frenzied as the apparition strutted towards the crowd. He stamped his red-painted feet, bared white teeth, jabbed silver-fingered claws and hissed like a snake at us…at me, a transfixed arm’s length away.
“The mortal body has been seized by Gulikan, the incarnation of Lord Shiva… he is possessed,” Mohan Kumar shouted in my ear amid the mêlée while throngs jostled to make offerings in obeisance to the god.
Mohan is the ‘storyteller’ who brought me to the Theyyam ritual at a kavu (sacred grove) of ancient trees cloaked in vines in Kerala’s far northern Kasaragod district. I was the sole outsider at this mesmerism of noise, colour, smoky scents and mystical energy. It was thrilling, mind-blowing, but completely baffling.
At least, it would’ve been without Mohan’s expert voice in my ear. How else would I have understood that a Theyyam dancer is always a Dalit, an ‘Untouchable’ in the Hindu caste system, who once a year enters a trance and becomes a medium, “a vehicle for
