In July 1970 I set out from London to visit India for the first time, propelled by the discovery of my soldier great-grandfather's diary. His was an easy journey to follow since it took him, and his regiment, the goth Light Infantry, up the Grand Trunk Road from Kolkata to Kanpur where they then turned off for Lucknow.
He arrived in 1857, a year he would have marked as the start of the Indian Mutiny, unaware that for India it was the birth of its freedom struggle. Yet, despite my retracing of his journey igniting an interest in India, my next visit, in 1972, took me to South India, to the small coastal state of Kerala, simply because someone told me that elephants were used in temple festivals.
While I continued working as a film editor in England I began making increasingly longer visits to Kerala, primarily photographing festivals but gradually gravitating to more intimate rituals and ceremonies. One unexpected factor was that, having spent my childhood in Suffolk in an era when those who worked on the land told stories of ancient kings, witches, wolves, ghosts and gigantic black dogs, I soon sensed the existence of similar forces in rural Kerala.
A few years later, and by then based in Thrissur, I made my first visit to Kerala's northern region of Malabar. Having read vague descriptions and seen the occasional photograph my specific purpose was to witness Theyyam. While I had no premonition of any future involvement with Theyyam I was nonetheless deeply affected by what I saw, consciously asking myself what Theyyam must be like on the inside if the outside was so powerful? I began attending kaliyattams, Theyyam festivals, both to see more and to seek basic explanations. I soon discovered that though the word theyyam is believed to be a corruption of daivam, meaning quite simply God, it also refers to an ancient form of worship where empowered men with intricate make-up don elaborate costumes and headdresses to manifest as the 'carriers' of particular deities. Initially I struggled to grasp that these deities were not only formless but had to be 'called down from heaven' to 'occupy' the body of a designated theyyakkaran in order to interact with their devotees.
While this book will gradually, chapter by chapter, deal with different aspects of Theyyam, I should explain that almost all Theyyams are seen in the compounds of small rural shrines. It was at one such shrine, the Kunnavu Muchilottu-kavu, that I not only first saw Muchilottu Bhagavathi, one of Theyyam's most revered and beautiful deities, but met Lakshmanan Peruvannan, who then held the right to 'carry' her. It was an auspicious occasion since among those present was Murali Panikkar, Both men, Lakshmanan and Murali, are senior and respected practitioners whose contribution to this book has been crucial. While nothing overt was said, when I later began what turned out to be seven seasons of photographing Theyyam it was as if something inevitable was very gradually falling into place. Yet in 2001, at the end of those seven seasons, I began working on a book about Guruvayur Temple, another seven-year project.
Vedas (1206)
Upanishads (503)
Puranas (631)
Ramayana (749)
Mahabharata (365)
Dharmasastras (167)
Goddess (510)
Bhakti (248)
Saints (1520)
Gods (1299)
Shiva (383)
Journal (181)
Fiction (61)
Vedanta (372)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Visual Search
Manage Wishlist