The battle

The snake gods keep watch from a roadside shrine as the procession with the Velakali dancers makes its way towards the Padmanabhaswamy temple.

Thiruvananthapuram’s Padmanabhaswamy temple was not just one of the anchors of spiritual life in the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore. It was also a patron of a number of arangams or art forms, some performed inside the temple and others outside.

Gouri Lakshmi Bayi of the erstwhile royal family of Travancore writes in Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple that 99 arangams are believed to have enjoyed the temple’s patronage, though details are now available of only around 55 of them. 

The cameras start clicking as the performers go through their opening moves.

Among the arangams associated with the temple is Velakali, a martial dance traditionally performed by a sub-group of the Nair community. The dance was generally performed during the temple’s annual Painkuni utsavam, one of its two major festivals. Staged on the eastern approach to the temple, the dance is believed to recreate the Kurukshetra war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas.

Only a handful of the Velakali performers are men; 

the rest are boys.

Now, much about the Padmanabhaswamy temple changed over one suspense-filled week last June. For that’s when a committee appointed by India’s Supreme Court to inspect the temple’s vaults reportedly discovered tonnes of gold, silver, precious stones and jewellery in the vaults. And in the blink of an eye, the Padmanabhaswamy temple went from being one of India’s important Vishnu temples to, arguably, the world’s wealthiest religious institution.

In the weeks since then, change has swept across the temple precincts: new security measures have been introduced, shops around the temple have been relocated, long term plans for managing the vaults are being drawn up and the contents of the vaults are quietly and methodically being inventoried.

The young warriors are all set for battle.

Meanwhile, the temple’s spiritual routines, including its festivals, continue pretty much as they have for decades if not centuries. As I wrote a couple of years ago, in March/April every year imposing figures of the five Pandavas are erected in front of the temple’s eastern entrance for the duration of the 10-day Painkuni utsavam or festival. Once made of wood, the fibreglass figures are an integral part of Painkuni utsavam.

Boredom writ across his face, a young performer waits for the final segment of the Velakali to start.

Gouri Lakshmi Bayi writes in Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple that the figures of the Pandavas are erected to ward off rain during the festival. The belief, she adds, is that the figure of Arjuna, supposed to be the son of the rain god Indra, is especially useful to keep rain away. Which is why the Painkuni utsavam is also called the pancha Pandava utsavam or the festival of the five Pandavas.

Every performer wears a breastplate of golden beads 
and carries a tiny wooden shield and cane.

Back in the early 1970s, the Velakali performance during the Painkuni utsavam was scrapped, possibly due to financial challenges. Over the years, there were some attempts to revive the Velakali tradition, but none of them worked.

During the final stages of the performance, the dancers are at the foot of the steps that lead to the temple’s eastern entrance.

Last year though, people who live around the temple chipped-in to raise the money required to revive the Velakali during the Painkuni utsavam. So last April, after 40-odd years, the Kauravas once again got to fight the Pandavas in Thiruvananthapuram.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see that battle. So when the date for this year’s Velakali was announced, I was determined to be there. As were a couple of thousand other people and a small army of photographers and television cameras.

Residents of one of the temple’s outbuildings keep an eye on things, as does a security camera.

One hundred dancers took part in the Velakali performance at the Padmanabhaswamy temple. Armed with small wooden shields and canes, the dancers are believed to represent the hundred Kaurava brothers. The performance, accompanied by music, ends with the defeat of the dancers who pretend to flee in disorder.

And as the Kauravas lost yet again and dusk crept in, a new cohort of armed guards quietly slipped into place to keep watch over the Lord’s treasure. 

One of the armed police patrols that guard the temple.

For the Goddess

Trivandrum has virtually shut down for most of the day. Not for a hartal or strike, but for the Attukal Bhagavathy temple’s annual pongala festival.

The smoke from thousands of open wood-fed fires rises heavenward, as women cook the pongala — essentially a sweet porridge of rice, jaggery and coconut — in pots of clay and metal as an offering to the Goddess, the presiding deity of the Attukal Bhagavathy temple.

It’s a women-only festival; one that is believed to be the world’s largest religious gathering of women. When I wrote about the Attukal Pongala six years ago, around 1.5 million were estimated to have taken part in the festival. This year, it seems the organisers expect around 3 million women to offer pongala. How reliable this estimate is, of course, another matter.

What is undeniable though is that the festival has grown and changed quite a bit over the past few years. For one, what was essentially a local temple festival has transformed into an event that draws interest from across the globe.

Over the past decade or so, the number of women who offer pongala has, quite simply, exploded. Today, many of them come from across Kerala and, indeed, the world to participate in the Attukal Pongala. This growth has in turn meant an expansion in the geographical spread of the festival — this year, pongala fires have been lit in an approximately 7-kilometer radius of the temple — with the attendant logistical and security nightmares.

The Attukal Pongala’s growing popularity has also given birth to a flourishing ecosystem of festival-related enterprises — from stalls hawking apparel, cosmetics and religious bric-a-brac to those selling pots and ‘pongala kits’ that have everything needed to prepare the pongala.

Some of the growth associated with the pongala though has been less welcome — head-banging music played late into the night at little altars that have sprung up across the city to ‘celebrate’ the pongala and extortion rackets to fund these pongala ‘celebrations’.

And more changes could be in the offing. Just a few weeks ago, the Kerala High Court asked the state government to ensure that roads in Trivandrum are not blocked as part of the festival. It is debatable though whether this directive can be fully implemented. Meanwhile, the state government is working on legislation that will allow it enforce ‘reasonable restrictions on public movement’ on special occasions such as the Attukal Pongala.

It’s hard to say how these moves will shape the Attukal Pongala in the years ahead. But whatever may change, what is clear though is that the Attukal Pongala will continue to be a vibrant, if smoky, celebration of the Goddess. So check out this story I wrote in 2004 to learn more about this very unique celebration of the feminine.

A new year

Today is Vishu, which is traditionally celebrated as the first day of the Malayalam year. So Malayalees, as people from Kerala are called, celebrate it as New Year’s Day; not just in Kerala, but across the world.

Vishu is usually celebrated in April, on the first day of the Malayalam month of Medam. And though Vishu is observed as the beginning of a new Malayalam year, the month of Chingam (August-September) is considered the first month of the official Malayalam calendar. Vishu’s significance therefore, has more to do with tradition and the system of astrology followed in Kerala.

As a child, Vishu was one of the trio of festivals I looked forward to with great excitement — the other two were Onam and Christmas, though I must add that Easter eggs and chocolate Easter rabbits were also on the list of favourite festive treats. So perhaps I should be saying that it was a quartet of festivals I most enjoyed as a child.

Vishu kani

Vishu’s appeal was twofold: First, the thrill of being woken up by my mother at an ungodly hour, when the world outside was still dark — in reality it was probably around 5 am. And then having her close my eyes with the palm of her hand and slowly walk me to the corner where the family’s altar stood. And then, the thrill of opening my eyes to the alluring radiance of the Vishu kani — a silver tray laden with sparkling-white raw rice; a coconut; green mangoes; a bunch of bananas; a pumpkin; little containers with pinches of turmeric and vermillion; a small mirror; and another tray with gleaming sliver coins and gold in various forms, all laid out on a creamish-white, gold-bordered traditional Kerala mundu; lit by the wavering glow of several oil lamps. And all this benignly presided over by paintings and idols of various deities.

The other, and perhaps bigger, attraction of Vishu was the Vishu kaineetam ritual that came later in the day when my father — and occasionally an uncle, aunt, grandmother or elder sibling — would give me a shiny one rupee coin or a crisp ten rupee note as kaineetam. The sheer thrill of this pocket money was hard to beat, except, perhaps, when I heard tales of friends or cousins who got not just a rupee or ten, but hundred rupee notes or 100 dinar notes; pure anguish for a second or two thinking about all the Hardy Boys books I could’ve bought with that sort of kaineetam!

In our home, as in most other Malayalee homes, Vishu day festivities would be topped-off with a true Kerala feast or sadhya. The sadhya — a multi-course feast with an assortment of aromatic curries, crunchy chips, spicy pickles and heaps of rice rounded off with sweet payasams — is not quite my favourite food, though I do enjoy the milk or pal payasam.

The kani and the kaineetam are central to the very idea of Vishu, which is mostly celebrated by Hindus. The Vishu kani literally means the ‘first sight of Vishu day’ and the belief is that seeing the auspicious kani in the very early hours of Vishu day brings luck and prosperity right through the New Year. Hence, the assortment of ‘auspicious’ things like rice, mangoes, silver coins, gold, bunches of konna flowers and so on.

A golden shower tree or konna
in full bloom on Vishu day

Similarly, the Vishu kaineetam is a ritual intended to bestow prosperity on the recipient. Typically, older members of the family give kaineetam and, sometimes, new clothes to younger members of the family; the amounts given of course vary, but even a one rupee coin will do. Decades ago, in more well-to-do Hindu families, kaineetam would also involve giving money or clothing or both to other members of the household such as the domestic help, people who worked in the family’s fields, tenants and so on.

Like many traditional practices, the ones associated with Vishu also tend to vary from family to family and from one part of Kerala to the other. In some parts of the State, firecrackers are an important part of Vishu proceedings, while in others they don’t figure on the Vishu menu.

However, what does not vary is the conviction that each Vishu will mark the beginning of a better year; one of peace and good fortune.

When heroes visit

I’m walking towards the eastern entrance of the Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram and towering over me are five figures draped in billowing red robes. The Pandavas have stopped by on their annual visit to Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala’s capital.

In March/April every year, the Padmanabhaswamy temple celebrates the Painkuni utsavam, one of its two major festivals. And every year, the imposing figures of the five Pandavas are erected during the 10-day festival. Once made of wood, the fibreglass figures are an integral part of Painkuni utsavam.

In Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple, Gouri Lakshmi Bayi of the royal family of Travancore writes that the figures of the Pandavas are put up to ward off rain during the festival. The belief, she adds, is that the figure of Arjuna, believed to be the son of the rain god Indra, is especially useful to keep the rains away. Which is why the Painkuni utsavam is sometimes also called the 'pancha Pandava utsavam' or the festival of the five Pandavas.

While the figures of Yudhishtira, Bhima and Arjuna are large, those of Nakula and Sahadeva are smaller, with Sahadeva’s being the smallest. A nod, perhaps, to each brother’s place in the Pandava pecking order.

The figures are a big draw, even today. People gather around them; some gawk, some take pictures, while some touch the feet of each idol and whisper a prayer.

The Padmanabhaswamy temple itself is, arguably, the spiritual heart of Thiruvananthapuram. The presiding deity — Padmanabhaswamy — is an avatar of Vishnu and the idol in the temple is carved in the anananthasayanam posture; in which Vishnu is depicted reclining on the serpent Anantha. It is, in fact, believed that the name Thiruvananthapuram is derived from Ananthapuram or ‘the city of the one who reclines on Anantha’. The temple also has smaller shrines dedicated to Narasimha, Krishna and Ganesha.

For centuries, Padmanabhaswamy was the spiritual overlord of the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore. But in 1750, the deity also became the temporal overlord of the kingdom when Marthanda Varma, the then ruler of Travancore, literally handed over the keys of the kingdom to Padmanabhaswamy. Since then, the Kings of Travancore have described themselves as ‘Padmanabha dasas’ or servants of Lord Padmanabha and ruled in his stead.

Located bang in the middle of the city’s frenzied ‘fort’ area, a stone’s throw away from the always-busy arterial MG Road, the temple radiates tranquillity. The sight of the temple, especially the view of it across its pond, is like popping a serenity pill — the heart, dust, automobile fumes and the din from the roads around simply melts away.

While the temple celebrates many festivals, two big annual events are the 10-day Alpashi and Painkuni utsavams; the first held in October/November. Like the Alpashi utsavam, the Painkuni utsavam also ends with the Arat ceremony. During the Arat, processional idols of Padmanabhaswamy, Krishna and Narasimha are taken in a splendid parade and immersed in the sea off Thiruvananthapuram before being brought back to the temple.

An interesting aspect of the Arat procession is that it wends its way from the temple to the seashore by taking the most direct route, which involves passing through the city’s airport. Even today, the Thiruvananthapuram airport’s flight operations are paused while the Arat procession passes through the airport.

What also makes the Arat unique is the strong spirit of religious harmony that enfolds it, particularly as it passes through Vallakadavu, a Muslim-dominated neighbourhood. Residents of the area line the road to catch a glimpse of the procession. The most moving sight though, is that of the boys from the Vallakadavu Muslim orphanage lining-up outside the orphanage to see the Arat go by.