Theyyem: turning the world upsidedown

4: 30 a.m. The full moon hangs in an Indian ink sky, looking over Edakkad village in northern Kerala. We pile out of our auto rickshaw and walk along the edge of an earthen square, the village’s Pathan Pura Temple, 15 or so metres along each side, lit with fluorescent bulbs high overhead. Shrines of different sizes and types sit on each side, each glowing in candlelight: a small building painted in red and white and glowing from a door at the top of several steps, an open shelter within which sit branches and fruit, a table with more offerings. 

Near the latter, a human-shaped figure sits straight-backed in a chair, a green sisal skirt hanging around his knees, dark lines across his white painted face, chest and arms, his eyes inhumanly large and black. A small crown is being adjusted on his head by several make-up assistants. Later he will dance into the embodiment of the god Gulikan, walk on glowing ashes, don an eight or so metre high headpiece resembling a towering narrow palm leaf, leap over a table and wheel around this earthen temple until coming to rest again in the chair where we see him now.

By full sunrise, three hours later, he and three other men, each from the lowest castes, will dance themselves from mortals into gods: first Gulijkan, then Muthapan, Thiruvappan and Karnavar, names familiar to everyone in the area. Taken over by a god, becoming god during the dance, these men-gods will listen to the wishful and the needy, and bestow assurances of good fortune on all who approach them – including men with great wealth and political power, Brahmins, men from the city who will prostrate themselves in the dust at the feet of these lowest-humans-become-god. Here – in what is called theyyem, the ceremony of theyyem – tradition, faith, ego and need turn the day-to-day ordinary world upsidedown.

Theyyem, according to the reading I have done, is a spirit-possession ceremony held during the winter months at village shrines throughout the northern Malabar region. More than 400 versions of ritual are said to exist, each with distinctive costumes, jewellery, body painting, face make-up and gigantic headdresses or mudi.

Unlike kathakali (which we experienced a few days later), where actors impersonate gods, in theyyem the shamans, always male, actually become the deity they evoke. They acquire his magical powers and, as if to demonstrate the point, perform superhuman feats such as walking on hot coals and dancing with fantastically elaborate and towering head pieces.

By experiencing the theyyem, devotees believe they can partake of the powers of the god, appealing to him, say, for a child or the healing of some ailment or good luck in business.

Theyyem is especially fascinating for this aspect: the shaman-dancer-god is always (and apparently must be) a member of the lowest caste, for instance a cleaner or part-time prison keeper, who during the theyyem season becomes all-powerful in the experience of believers. Many people approach the god for blessings, but most remarkable is the approach of the very powerful who, in all other circumstances, would very likely not even acknowledge the man-god in his ordinary life. During theyyem, however, dealers in millions and powerful officials prostrate themselves in the temple dust, touching the shaman-god’s feet, appealing for help. Interestingly, interviews with theyyem shamans (in William Dalrymple’s chapter on theyyem in his “Nine Lives”) suggest they, as regular human beings, are fully aware of this temporary  inversion of power and even delight in it.

(This kind of reversal of status and influence is, according to my copy of the “Handbook of Living Religions,” widespread across India: traditional priests, diviners and shamans, working at the outside edges of established Hinduism, “nearly always” come from the lower castes and exert considerable influence over communities and the powerful in their priestly role.)

As with other dance rituals and story-telling forms in this region, masks (face painting and worn masks), costumes (including detailed body paint as well as elaborate skirts, headdresses, bells and jewellery) and gestural movements each have great importance and are give considerable attention. Dressing and make-up can involve hours of intimate, precise and delicate activity between the shaman-dancers and make-up artists – all men – in ways that give the proceedings a distinctly homoerotic atmosphere. 

In the theyyem rituals we saw, the dancing shamans also had, or took on, what seemed to my eye a bisexual identity: in their face and upper body make-up (accentuated lips and breasts), in their  body and facial gestures, and in their hip and leg movements. Whether this is intentional and an element of the tradition, I don’t yet know, but it certainly felt as if it is.

Although we arrived in the dark at 4:30 a.m., the ritual had begun the evening before and continued late in the night. When we arrived, the musicians – drummers and horn players – were fast asleep. The first theyyem figure of the pre-dawn ritual was just being made up, the only one, incidentally, made up in the full sight of everyone present; all others were hidden from general view as their body paint and costumes were being applied, then appeared suddenly as the fully visual embodiment of a god.

Meanwhile, at this still quiet hour, the dance or temple square is being swept and reconstituted from the night before, oil candles lit, garlands of flowers set in place, masks and other props also placed just so, ready for later use. A place, a home is being prepared for the gods, just as the masking and costuming – then the dance – are like invitations to the gods to enter the body. Men pass around cups of chai to some 60 or so Indian devotees, local villagers and a few tourists. Off in the dark, fires are being built under great cast cauldrons in readiness for the hungry multitudes to arrive over the day.

During the next three hours, four shamans dance into gods, sometimes alone, sometimes together. Each dances into faster and more daring movements accompanied by louder and more intense music. The music especially – sharp staccato drum beats, blaring horns – builds an atmosphere of intensity, excitement, anticipation.

At various stages of the dance and at its finale, ten or twelve men – in simple white dhotis but with the movements of the wealthy, the powerful, like they just stepped out of fine clothes and chauffeured cars – bow in turn before the god or prostrate themselves in the dust at their feet, offering supplicating prayers along with material gifts and cash. In response, each receives the god’s hand on their head or shoulders and, we are told, assurances that all will turn out as wished.

By the end of the final dance, all the visiting Indians – a growing crowd of men, women and children – queue before the seated gods (the most orderly queue we have seen in India), each supplicant speaking to some need, each offering gifts (taken away by the god’s assistants) and each in turn receiving godly assurances.  The shamans will dance again later in the morning. The crowd, we are told, will continue to build. Something of a feast will be served.

I won’t forget this morning.

Now … thinking of this days later, it feels as if there was something toned down and modernized about what we experienced. It used to be, I have read, that the shamans rolled through fiery ashes and danced into body spasms through to god-being. Perhaps this is still the case in some temples on some nights. Our shamans, on the other hand, seemed to take a few symbolic steps in scattered ashes and their trances seemed acted, and not convincingly, at least to me. I read that there is another modernized dimension to theyyem. It has become highly fashionable among wealthy and politically powerful south Indian urbanites to bring their wishes and money to the gods, hoping for an edge, but perhaps also wanting a foot in the powers of both worlds: New India and the felt-mysteries of ancient folk-spiritual India. From what we saw, the man-shamans are pleased to oblige.

                                                

What was far more engaging for me were the theyyem preparations – lighting the oil lamps, painting the body and face of these men-gods, the powerful sense of other than ordinary energy in those masks, the meticulous, gentle transformative process of making man into shaman, the concentration approaching the ceremony. Fascinating, too, was watching the devotees’ personal appeals to the gods, the Malayalam spirit voice seeming to run pell-mell out along the god’s long black flickering tongue, the god’s cavernous speaking mouths, the supplicants’ bent heads, listening, so attentive, waiting for the needed assurance. And then there is that phenomenon of turning things upsidedown, and especially the man-shaman-god’s delight in this.

Water worlds: south long the Malabar

We have been traveling south by train along the south-west Malabar coast of India, first through Karnataka, then into Kerala State, ending the day in a delightfully secluded, palm- circled guesthouse on a hilltop overlooking a small crescent of equally secluded beach. The owner is of Greek-Indian heritage, a Greek Orthodox Christian. Greek traders, along with the Portuguese, Dutch, Jewish Arabs, Muslim Arabs and others have long carried out an ancient sea-based trade – spices, precious jewels, perfumes and silks from the far east – following the Arabian Sea trade winds, bringing great wealth to themselves and traders along the Malabar coast. The ancient Romans traded here as well, and likely the ancient Chinese.

(Malabar. Malacca. The Moluccas. Evocative, fantasy-laden words for me from long ago. Were there stories or poems read to me in early childhood that referred to these places – or later seemed to refer there? The child hears the quiet rains, smells the cinnamon winds, hears the far-off ships in the soft Indian Ocean night, safe in his mother’s arms. Malabar. One of those deep old personal places of the exotic, smelling of nutmeg and cloves, where handsome naked brown-skinned women and men lived, where I would one day build and live in a tree house, where familiar but mostly unfamiliar wondrous beasts roamed the earth and rose from the sea … one of those many-branched Orinocos of memory that one day I might explore more deeply and which I find, now as I think about it, has been one of those guiding stars in my reading for many years, taking me circling through histories of the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, of early maps of the region, paintings, travelers’ reports and tales, the sloshing to and fro of so many peoples, the times of slaving, revolt, prison building … into our own times.)

To the west the Arabian Sea, seen now, today, across palm-covered estuaries. To the east, at a distance, rise the western ghats, hills running down the spine of the Indian peninsula. On both sides, the further south we move, the many greens of rice paddies , coconut palms (a source of oil and coir rope), and market gardens. This is a green world and a water world too; some 50 or so river flow off the western ghats into the sea. The sea itself flows back into the coastal flatlands, creating serpentine “backwaters,” the roads and paths of villagers and townspeople. Today, many pole canoes along the shorelines, fishing, transporting produce, visiting family.

After the north, it is surprising to see so many freshly painted and newly-built houses. People talk of the money coming in from Keralites who have worked in the Gulf. There are many such stories, but also other reports of abusive labour recruiters, disillusion. We talk with four men in their twenties, tradesmen from a village far in the north east of India, several days train ride away. They have signed three-year contracts to work in Dubai. This is their first time from home. One was married several weeks ago, another last year. Like us they are wide-eyed at the passing Malabar landscape, so lush, wet and green, the strange Malayalam script, the soaring coconut palms. Two are homesick already, all are apprehensive about flying, all are looking forward to the new experience. In faltering English, one speaks so optimistically of the “opportunity” ahead.

People are always shuffling around on the trains, facing one another, exchanging food; there are many opportunities for conversation compared to the buses. Today in a crowded ‘unreserved coach’ we meet Gopi, a “clerk” in “the service.” We share an interest in the theyyem shaman-dancers in this area. As it happens, he has read William Dalrymple’s chapter on theyyem in “Nine Lives,” given to him by a friend, and is eager for me to read it. I have – although I am not certain I have communicated this to him. Gopi is a gentle man and a gentleman – and is also able to be of practical help to us. We have mistakenly got onboard a train that will eventually turn east across the peninsula to the far eastern coast, and we want to continue south. It is Gopi who guides us through the transfer, which he is also making, and which luckily allows us to pick up our conversation down the line.

Sitting near Gopi is a chef, returned early from a Middle East contract because of even better paying work here. Across the carriage, a family – with three young girls – describes travelling from Assam state, a gruelling four-day train journey, to visit a brother and have a holiday. Remarkably, they are in good spirits. They are also watching their rupees. The man, a Christian, a rarity where he lives, has started his own small private and secular primary school: “I could have gone into government service. But that would be just for me. I want to give something to others, like I was given by my own schooling. Here in Kerala almost all are literate. Where I come from almost no one is literate. What chance do we have?  My girls know English. I want children in our village to understand the world. It is important to me – sharing what I know with others.”

Farther south through Kerala, we move by boat along the “backwaters,” inland channels, rivers and lakes between the rainforest hills still to the east (Western Ghats) and the Arabian Sea to the west. This is a flat, expansive green, gold and watery world. Gold palm fringes, multi-hued ripe green rice paddies, mud wet paddies being prepared for planting.  

Here pathways and roadways are waterways; the boat is bus and auto rickshaw. Our own bus-boat carries children to and from school, workers to rice paddies and market gardens, others home from market. Men in wide-brimmed straw hats (the direct sun scorches) pole passengers back and forth across the wider waters in dugout canoes. Along the canal proper there are walkway draw bridges, raised by men on watch as we honk our approach. Onboard are slung sacks of rice, bales of banana leaves, bamboo poles, garden produce. Dugout canoes pass by laden with small timbers, cattle feed, building mud, even one piled high with tins and plastic bottles headed for recycling. We motor past dense flocks of paddling ducks that are being raised for meat and eggs, sometimes bearing down into their midst, their tenders smacking the water with poles, herding the creatures to safety on shore. 

Farther south through Kerala, we move by boat along the backwaters, inland channels, rivers and lakes between the rainforest hills (Western Ghats) to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. This is a flat, expansive green, gold and watery world. Gold palm fringes, multi-hued ripe green rice paddies, mud wet paddies being prepared for planting. 

The main channel waters – in which people who live along their edge bathe and brush their teeth, and tourists, Indian and foreign both, pay considerable sums to ride converted “rice boats,’ often with all the very latest urban-techno amenities – are a sluggish grey-green, awash in garbage, mainly plastics, which floats and tosses about amidst small islands of choking water weeds in which more garbage is entangled. We pass people heaving garbage bags and other waste into the water. Many householders and villagers clearly use the backwaters, their back or front yard, as a garbage dump. Short ramps lead from shore to small outhouses, half-enclosed in plastic or vinyl sheeting, standing on poles over the waterway. Hundreds of rice boats are tied to shore, marooned by the glut of such boats, by over-pricing and fewer moneyed tourists, and perhaps by reports of the wretched state of the backwaters themselves.

As we move south, just hidden from the ocean behind dykes and sandbars, larger ocean-going fishing boats – many, as along the Malayan coast, with glaring eyes painted on the prow, the tips wrapped in colourful fabric – are harboured in the inland channels. Groups of men unload crates of fish, repair and hang nets, manoeuvre vans and pickups to take the catch to market, take baths in the putrid waters. Other fishermen paddle or pole dugout canoes, fish from shore, or use the cantilevered spider-legged ‘Chinese’ fishing nets we first saw up the coast in Cochin. Fish, rice, coconut and water and more water … yet another India.