When Men And Women Sing For Nagas And Slither Like Snakes

Now since they are through with Kerala’s heavy-rain monsoon month of Karkidakam for the year, Puthanpurakkal Sathyanarayanan and his family are out from an indoor hibernation and are back to the ritual art they have been performing for generations: Pulluvan Pattu. For Malayalis, this is the time of Chingam ahead of Onam, when the slender coastal state gets sunlit after what is ideally three months of downpour.

Playing the ethnic single-string violin called pulluvanveena, Sathyanarayanan sings out with verve rustic verses from one of the two dozen songs he has learned in younger days from their household head in a semi-hilly village of Palakkad district. Assisting him on the verses are members of his family, strumming on the earthen-pot pulluvarkudam to the beats on the handy bell-metal ilathalam cymbals.

Yesterday was all the more auspicious for the team, given that the star was the serpet-associated Aayilyam as per the Malayalam lunar calendar. Personally too, it was a different experience for Sathyanarayanan and fellow artistes as they lined up to perform in an upcountry temple 3,000 km away from their verdant Pallarmangalam hamlet near Ottapalam. At the Uttara Guruvayur shrine east of the Yamuna in the national capital, the five-member team generated an air of piety early this week amid an eight-day annual festival that peps up its precincts with a range of traditional arts.

“For us, the season is now on. We will start yet again performing till end-May,” says Sathyanarayanan, 43, leading his team comprising his sister Premalatha, wife Bindu and one of their two sons, Sajith on Monday. Not surprisingly, the much bigger and more famous Srikrishna temple at Guruvayur in central Kerala, too, hosted an allied nagakkalam, which is an ornate image of a twine of serpents done on the floor using five natural colours. The sprawling sketch, using powders of white (from rice), yellow (turmeric), black (burnt paddy husk), green (dried acacia leaves) and red (turmeric rubbed with the white mineral, lime), is optional and indicative of a detailed ceremony that has venues across God’s Own Country.

As a member from the Pulluva community traditionally into this Dravidian art that invokes the serpents considered as gods in ancient Hindu culture, Sathyanarayanan was initiated into the songs at age 10 by his father Palappuram Sankaran, who died four years ago as a septuagenarian. “We perform wherever invited, mostly in other households besides, of course, temples,” he says. “Of course, these days Pulluvan Pattu finds slot in cultural festivals too.”

The artiste feels a bit awkward when he says that his repertoire is limited to some 25 songs. “True, our father knew much more,” concedes Premalatha, with a streak of reverence. “All the same, each ditty takes an average of 15 to 20 minutes. Some are still longer.” Sathyanarayanan points out that the stylised serpent images take no less than two-and-a-half hours each to complete. “The deities vary, and thereby the kalams too. It can be Santhanam, Nagayakshi, Nagaraja…. Well, if it is the complicated Anantashayanam, then we take almost seven hours to do it,” he reveals.

Folklore scholar Sasidharan Klari notes that the subaltern Pulluvan Pattu literature banks itself on tales from the Mahabharata epic. “The focus in the episode involving Vinata and Kadru,” he points out, referring to the mythological mother of birds (who bore two sons Aruna and Garuda) and her sister respectively. “Besides, there are numbers invoking the snake gods and songs also hailing the Palazhimathanam,” he adds, pointing to the Puranas-mentioned churning of the Ocean of Milk using serpent king Vasuki as the rope.

Researchers point out that Pulluvan Pattu and Nagakkalam, which have their moments bordering on exorcism and occult, are among those traditional Kerala arts that involve both men and women in performances. Alongside the multi-hued image of the serpent gods, it is the females who dance in ecstasy to the all-male music featuring vocals and drum-beats. The women, with arecanut flower-bunches in their hands, will sway wildly in a state of trance amid high-decibel ululation that shrieks through the settings decked up with tastefully-cut tender coconut leaves hung from ropes that also accommodate mango leaves, tulsi shoots and bright-red ixora flowers. Men enter, slithering like snakes. The temples traditionally hosting them range from the south to the north of Kerala, with the numbers growing in the new age.

Back in their native land by this weekend, Sathyanarayanan and tem are all set to get busy till next summer. “We perform mostly in central Kerala—in the districts of Palakkad and Thrissur. Each Pulluvan Pattu venues prefer local aristes,” he says. “Yeah, there is a break in between. That is during the Mandalam time (November-December). For, it’s the time we observe penance to take our yearly pilgrimage to the Sabarimala hill-srhine.”

Legend has it that Pulluvars are beings that Shiva made out of the sacred darbha grass and deputed to spend life on earth, invoking the serpents the lord of Kailash wears round his neck. “We have to live up to His decree,” adds Sathyanarayanan.