Nine Lives (10 page)

‘Lord Shiva swayed around, and said, “All right, I admit I have had a drink or two. And it’s certainly been a while since I last had a bath. But your Honour, please: if I am to get down from this causeway maybe you could first explain to me what is the real difference between you – a fine, high Brahmin, as you say – and my family here, who you tell me are so unclean and filthy? You have asked me a question, now answer some questions of mine. Answer these questions satisfactorily and I promise you I will happily get down into the mud, and tell my wife and son to do likewise.

‘ “This is my first question: if I cut my hand and you cut yours, we both have red blood. Maybe you would like to tell me what the difference is, if any? Secondly, we eat the same rice, do we not, and from the same fields? Thirdly, do you not use the bananas my caste grows to offer to your gods? Fourthly, do you not use the flower garlands our women make to dress your deities? And fifthly, does not the water you drink and use in your temple rituals come from the wells that we Pullayas toil to build?”

‘Shankacharya could not reply to these questions, and seeing his stupefied silence, Lord Shiva asked him more questions, and continued to berate him. “Just because you use beautiful metal dishes to eat your food upon, and we use plantain leaves and cups of betel leaf, does this mean we are not the same species? You Namboodiris may ride on elephants while we ride on the backs of bullocks, but does that make us bullocks too?”

‘This relentless questioning not only confounded Shankacharya, it also made him wonder how it could be that an illiterate, ill-educated Dalit could ask such sophisticated and penetrating philosophical questions. So Shankacharya began to meditate, even as he stood there on the causeway of the rice field. Then his sixth sense opened and instead of the Pullaya and his family, he dimly began to perceive Lord Shiva, the Devi Parvati and their son Nandikesan. Shankacharya was horrified at what he had done, and there and then he jumped into the mud of the rice paddy and prostrated himself before his lord, reciting a series of
slokas
in his praise:

Salutations, O Lord of the mountains!

Salutations, O Crescent-crested Lord!

Salutations, O Ash-smeared Divine!

Salutations, O Rider on the eternal bull!

Salutations, O Lord of Lords!

‘After Lord Shiva had forgiven him, Shankacharya asked a question in turn: “Tell me, O Lord, why did you take this strange form to present yourself to me, your most devoted devotee?” To this Lord Shiva answered: “Truly, you are a wise man and well on the path to salvation! But you will never get there unless you understand that all men are deserving of respect and compassion. It was to teach you this that I took this form, for I realised that only then would you understand. You have to fight against prejudice and ignorance, and use your great knowledge to help people of every caste, not just your Brahmins. Only then will you attain true Enlightenment.”

‘Shankacharya bowed his head and replied: “Thank you, my Lord. Now I understand. But in order to make the generations to come also understand, I am going to initiate a
theyyam
which will celebrate you in your current form. Before I do that, however, I will consecrate some temples where I will install your idol in this form of the Pottan Devam so that we humans may worship you.” So Shankacharya made the shrine, and it is this form of Shiva as a Pullaya that is today one of the chief deities of this part of Malabar, and this
theyyam
which is now among the most popular of all
theyyams
. It is also one of the longest,’ added Hari Das. ‘I have seen
Pottan Theyyam
rituals which have gone on for twenty-four hours.’

‘This happened thousands of years ago,’ added Hari Das. ‘It was a form of true Enlightenment. The great modern reformers such as Karl Marx or [the Dalit political leader] Ambedkar are really only reinforcing the lessons taught to us by the great god Shiva.’

A couple of hours later, after he had washed and changed, Hari Das came to the house I was staying in outside Kannur, on a bluff above the sea. We sat drinking chai on the veranda as the sun set, and he began to tell his story.

‘I grew up in extreme poverty,’ said Hari Das. ‘Like me, my father was a day labourer, who also did
theyyam
during the season. Today
theyyam
can bring in much more than labouring – in a good season, after expenses, maybe Rs 10,000 a month – but in those days earnings were very meagre; maybe only Rs 10 and bag of rice for a single night.

‘I lost my mother when I was three years old. She had some small injury – a piece of metal pierced her foot – but it went septic, and because she couldn’t afford a real doctor she saw a man in the village instead. He must have made it worse. Certainly he failed to cure her. She died quite unnecessarily; at least that is what I feel.

‘To be honest, I can hardly remember her. All I remember is her kindness, and her kissing me and encouraging me to be good. But I am no longer sure whether the face I see when I try to think of her is actually her. There is no photograph. In those days no one in our community had access to cameras, or anything like that.

‘Within a year, when I was four, my father married again. I never lived with my stepmother. I am not quite sure what happened – presumably my father thought he could not cope – but I was given to my
peri-amma
, my mother’s elder sister, to look after. She lived in a different village, six miles away. The house had two rooms. It was unplastered, but it had a pukka tile roof. As my father had no money to give, my
peri-amma
had to pay for everything. I was lucky: although she was also very poor, she loved me, and was very good to me. So were my three stepsisters and my stepbrother. They were all ten years older than me, and they showered me with love.

‘My father would visit every so often, and I was fond of him, though in those days fathers were fathers and sons were sons. We would never play together – he was very formal with me, more like my guru – and sometimes when he came to visit I would run away rather than face the very strict interrogation he would give me about school. He had never been himself, and was completely illiterate, so he regarded education as very serious, almost a religious affair. My real affection was soon for my
peri-amma
, who was always there for me. I’m not sure about my stepmother. She’s all right, I suppose.

‘Maybe
theyyam
is in my blood, because although I never lived with my father, I always wanted to be a
theyyam
artist like him. Even as a child I would play at
theyyam
, beating a piece of tin to make a noise like the
theyyam
drums. As I grew older, I became very proud of him, and the sight of him being worshipped by so many people made me swell with happiness – who would not be proud to see their father being worshipped by the whole village? I went regularly to watch him performing the
theyyam
from the age of five, and by the age of nine I was certain that this was what I too wanted to do.

‘Eventually, soon after my tenth birthday, I went to my father
and asked him to begin teaching me. He looked at me and said, “Hari Das,
theyyam
is your birthright, but your body is not yet strong enough. You have to be as strong as a wrestler to be a dancer. Just think of the weight of some of the costumes you will have to carry.” I knew he had a point: some of the headdresses alone are forty feet high. So he asked me to wait and develop my body, and become stronger. This I did, practising weights with heavy stones, and wrestling and running and training every evening after school.

‘It was four years later, at the age of fourteen, that I finally began formal lessons with my father, and it was not until I was seventeen that I had my first performance. In between lay three years of intensive training. Together we made a temporary shelter, a shack of coconut leaves, which became my training place. First he taught me to drum, not on a real drum, but on a slab of stone which we would beat with sticks. This was to make me sensitive to the different beats and tempos of the
theyyam
drummers, for each
theyyam
has a different rhythm and you need to be aware of all the ways the drummers can subtly change the mood of a
theyyam
by altering the beat.

‘After that he would narrate the
thottam
story-songs that invoke the deity of each
theyyam
, and these I had to learn by heart, so that I would get the words exactly right. Some are short, but a few of the
thottams
are very long: there is one Vishnu
thottam
that takes two hours to sing in full. Then, in turn, we learned the
mudra
[gestures],
nadana
[steps] and facial expressions for each of the different deities, as well as how to apply the make-up: it is critical that this is exactly correct for each of the different
theyyams
, for unless the dancer has the skills, and knows all the moves, the gods cannot incarnate fully in the dancer – it is like not having the right equipment to make a machine work. My father was a good teacher, formal and strict, but also very patient. Sometimes that was necessary, for I was a slow learner.

‘Finally, he borrowed money from the village money lender and bought me my first costume. Some of these are very expensive: the headgear –
thallapaali –
for some of the
theyyams
can cost as much as Rs 5,000, while one silver anklet can cost Rs 2,500.

‘Before my first peformance I was very nervous. I was ambitious to become a great
theyyakkaran
, to have good improvisation and to add lots of colour to the traditional way of doing a
theyyam
. As a performer you can’t ever be boring, people lose interest, and I was constantly looking for ways to improve my performance; but I also feared failure. Unlike other Keralan dance forms such as
Kathakali
,
theyyam
is not a fixed composition – it depends on the artist and his skills and his physical strength. Also in a
theyyam
there is no screen between the performer and the devotees, so before you go out for your first performance you have to be as near to perfection as you can. You can train for the make-up and the steps and the story and the costume, but you cannot train for a trance – that comes only with a real
theyyam
performance.

‘For my first performance I was to be Guligan the Destroyer, and wear an eighteen-foot-high headdress. I don’t think I have ever been so frightened in my life. I was worried about silly little things: what happened if I needed to pee in the middle of a performance? What would happen if I fouled myself? But in the event, my first performance went very well.

‘All I can remember is going to the green room, getting made up and putting on the costume. Then I went to the Guligan shrine, and bowed my head before the deity, praying with folded hands. Usually the deity comes when you look in the mirror and see your face as the face of the god; but on that first occasion it happened even before I had looked, when I made the gesture of lifting my hands above my head. This is a formal invitation for the god to enter you. This act of worship, this call, directed at the heavens, brings the god down. If you pray to God with a sincere heart and focus on one deity with all your mind – like Arjun focussing the aim of his arrow on the eye of the fish in the
Mahabharata
, so that you can see nothing but that which you are aiming at, and the rest of the world does not exist – then that is the moment when you cease to be the dancer and become instead that deity. From that moment it is not the dancer who dances, but the god.

‘Things are unclear after that. I remember ceasing to feel like a man. Everything, body and soul, is completely subsumed by the divine. An unknown
shakti
[sacred energy] overpowers all normal life. You have no recollection of your family, your parents, your brothers and sisters – nothing.

‘My first sensation on coming back that first time was nervousness: about whether my god and the audience and especially my father had liked the performance. I felt a contrast between my body, which was tired from the exertions, and having to carry this weight for several hours, and my heart, which felt very light, despite all my worries and concerns. There was a sensation of relief, a bit like the end of a headache. Then my father came to the changing room and congratulated me, telling me it was well done, and I remember feeling as if some great thirst had been quenched.