Published in the Spectrum, Deccan Herald, April 18th, 2017 (Time to soak in the revelry)
Go to link :
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/606871/time-soak-revelry.html
Original Draft :
Every
year, during the months of April and May, different villages in
Kodagu celebrate an interesting festival called Boad namme.
Usually these celebrations are associated with shrines of Bhadrakali.
Residents of Chembebelloor (also called Chembebeliyur), Bilugunda and
other villages roister around their respective temples on different
days.
The
observances, however, begin with a stringent period called Pattani,
when a number of foods (including those cooked in oil, using coconuts
or non vegetarian), and certain common activities (such as cutting
coconuts within the house), are prohibited.
The revelry that
follows has boys and men wear various guises and dance around the
village. During that night and the following day, these performers
masquerade accompanied by musicians who mostly play percussion. Going
from one house to another in the village they bring vehicles on the
roads to a brief pause.
Some
of the entertainers participate in Band Kali,
where they have mud smeared all over their clothes, heads, arms and
legs. Some others, the Puli Vesha
(tiger guise) performers, wear shorts and have their bodies painted
in tiger skin patterns. When money is thrown at them they stoop down
in impossible angles and with much care pick up the notes with their
mouths instead of their hands. Many other enactments, including those
by cross dressing males, are performed as well.
Chembebelloor
The Chembebelloor Bhadrakali is west
facing and there is a small Mahadeva shrine inside the temple. One
performer carries the moga, a parasol with a mask upon it, of
Bhadrakali and performs the theray. A theray, a sacred
dance ritual by costumed dancers who emulate spirit deities, is
organised at the shrine. During the day of the Kudure aatta
(horse play), teenaged boy
representatives wear horse shaped cane frames around them. One
horse performer comes from each of the three keri (hamlets) of
Chembebelloor.
According to Coluvanda Jappu,
Chembebelloor village comprises of three keri : Podakote,
Podikeri and Nadikeri. The villagers and the performers from each of
the three keri all gather in the ambala, a public
gathering place, in the centre of the village.
We were guests of Uncle Suresh
Subbaiah's extended family in Chembebelloor last year. There was one
performer, in black rags and a tin over his head, who called himself
a bear. There was another who came guised as 'Black Money', dressed
in a black robe and with money notes strung around his neck. Others
included those in various priestly garbs; some of them came as
saffron clad Sannyasi monks while one man came dressed as a
Padri. Last time's attraction, however, was a set of men who
dressed up as Spartans, in purple chitons and hoplite helmets with
red coloured mock horsehair tufts on top.
Folk singers from the Kundera and other
families paid a visit. They sang the mane paat, a song in
praise of the resident family visited, as they did in each house,
while they struck on drums that they carried. John Napier, an
Australian ethnomusicologist, was also present in the village to
record the event.
Later we went to the temple yard where
we sat and watched with the rest of the villagers. Some villagers
with leafy twigs kept in their shirt collars entered the temple at
the head of procession, as per tradition. All the actor and musician
performers entered the shrine after them.
Bonda
The Bhadrakali temple of Bilugunda is
in what was the village of Bonda and now between the Bilugunda and
Nalvathokkal villages. It is south facing and has two entrances: one
leads to the south and the other to the east. During the Bilugunda
Boad namme, the people from Bilugunda enter from the east while the
people from Nalvathokkal enter from the South.
One year the dand theray, or two
theray, happens and the next
year the naal theray, or four theray,
happens in Bonda. During the dand theray, as in last year,
Bhadrakali and her sister Karikali are impersonated while during the
naal theray the two daughters of Karikali, one of them being
incapable of speech, are also emulated. The Bonda theray
performers dress in white panches (sarongs) around which are
tied red skirts that are held up by canes. Upon each of their white
turbaned heads they hold up flat wooden framed white umbrellas each
of which have flowers and a metal mask of the fanged goddesses. At
the back of this parasol hangs a red cloth.
The
chief oracle wears a white panche,
is independent of the theray
and
is called a Thiralekara.
One horse performer comes from
Bilugunda and one from Nalvathokkal. The nine extended families and
eighteen houses of Bilugunda take turns every year to have a teenaged
boy become the horse performer and a younger boy dress as a woman.
Traditionally the horse and the woman performances happened on
separate days but now due to time constraints they are being combined
to happen on the same day.
The Bilugunda horse performer last year
came from my paternal great grandmother's Madappanda clan house.
Mandepanda Dali and other folk singers sat within the Madappanda
house and sang the Dudi paat as some of us listened. Last
year's Nalvathokkal performer belonged to my maternal great
grandmother's Bonda Mukkatira family.
The horse performers wore white
coloured turbans, long shirts, trousers and horse frames. They were
accompanied by a procession comprising of their respective family and
village members. A Thiralekara walked before each performer while
another man carried a native Oide Katti war-knife and walked
beside him. Two other men carried dudi drums and sticks. A
young girl carried a lighted oil lamp on a plate.
A small boy from Bilugunda, who, as an
exception, was from the Iynanda family, was dressed in a simple red
sari. In his hands were held a mirror and a betel leaf and he walked
behind the horse performer. A woman of the house accompanied him in
order to help him with the dress if required. Likewise there was
another young boy from Nalvathokkal as well.
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