72 chapter
coins and other off erings that are exchanged between devotees and the deity
via the mediation of the priest. Th e dancing, waiting and exchange of prasad
had been going on for about 40 minutes when a priest emerged from the
shrine on a ledge above the crowd and scattered dhara (water, grain and tulasi,
a sacred and medicinal plant) and fl ower petals over the devotees. Th e crowd
then slowly dispersed, but gathered again a few minutes later to circumambu-
late the main shrine as a group. On some days, a few possessed persons would
remain, collapsed and motionless or still rolling around on the ground near the
Siva shrine after the puja had fi nished.
After circumambulating, devotees leave the temple, and it is closed for a
few hours. Th e mentally affl icted devotees have lunch and then retire to their
rooms at the temple lodge for a rest. After the temple reopens at 4 pm they
circumambulate the main shrine with other devotees and visit other shrines
on their own. An hour or so later, deeparadhana, a worship involving waving
lights before the icon of Amma-Narayana, takes place in the central shrine,
and at 7 pm another Siva puja is performed after which devotees join in an
elephant-led procession around the temple.
Two nights a week, a ceremony for the possessed and mentally ill is held at
the kizhakke kavu, the separate, smaller temple to Kali that is just east of the
main temple complex. Th e kizhakke kavu is a compound that has no walls: it is
sheltered by a roof supported by pillars and is open on all sides. Th e large, can-
opied space of the kavu contains a small shrine, a space in which the possessed,
worshippers and onlookers gather, and a tree that is studded with hundreds
of nails. Kuruthy, as the evening ceremony at kizhakka kavu is known, opens
with the beating of drums by temple drummers. As the drumming continues,
priests pour water that has been colored with turmeric and lime to look like
blood on the base of a small tree that is said to embody Kali. Possessed persons
who become engrossed in the drumming allow the spirits to fall into them—
the spirits awaken or re-enter their possessees, who then begin to shake their
heads, sway or dance about. Some possessees casually hop up and down in
place while others cathartically thrash around on the fl oor. My impression
of this performance concurs with Nabokov’s description of a similar healing
ceremony in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu as being “like plunging into
another, more urgent dimension of human yearning, one in which frantic agi-
tation, passionate enthusiasm, and ecstatic self-absorption are permitted and
encouraged” (2000: 78). In the Tamil ritual, drumming was also used to—in
Nabokov’s terms—“stir” the possessed, underlining the importance of aesthetic
engagement in eff ecting the healing experience in both these settings.
Biju and I had several extended discussions with a 30-year-old man, Rajan,
who works at the temple lodge and was once possessed at Chottanikkara.