Amma bonds in love, not blood

I came across this hard-hitting blog post by DGP R Sreelekha and the next moment I wanted to ask her, “Shall I borrow this confidence for a few minutes?” A great and candid way to  protest before her most beloved Attukal Amma, urging everybody  to stop Kuthiyottam, a very old and painful ritual young boys are subjected to, at the Attukal temple, during the world famous 10-day Pongala festival. Attukal Amma and her Pongala attract universal attention in Kumbham (March-April). Smoke billows from hundreds of thousands of temporary hearths and float above the city.  There is nothing like this anywhere else in the world. The way the whole Thiruvananthapuram city makes arrangements for women to make this offering, is amazing. This year Ms Sreelekha is not offering Pongala to her favourite deity. She expresses her anguish and concern over a primeval ritual Kuthiyottam, which involves young boys, aged 11 years and less. According to Bhadrakali Pattu, a ritualistic hymn sung in north Kerala, Bhadrakali demands offerings of roosters, seeds, turmeric, golden thali, golden eye, Thottam pattu, kuruthi, Kuthiyottam, Pongala, thookkam, vedivazhipadu and aivarkali.

Elders at Attukal remember that offering roosters to the Goddess of Attukal was usual; prior to that, animal sacrifice was also practised. And in Thottam Pattu, there is a mention of Bhadrakali reaching the house of a Thiyya family and asking for the sacrificial offering of their young son. However much the temple Brahminized Her, the smell of blood still wafts before Attukal Amma’s sanctum every year during the Kuthiyottam ritual: the stench of blood from the pierced flanks of boys lingers in the air for a few days. I shudder at it. I have deep love for the Goddess of Attukal that developed during the making of my book, but I will not motivate my small son to undergo this ritual, however much I want Her grace for him. The ancient ritual of Kuthiyottam is conducted at Attukal and nearby Bhadrakali temples after all the women return home offering Pongala. There are two myths relating to the bloodletting in Kuthiyottam. The first is that when Palakan is killed and Devi is searching for his body, some boys made fun of Her. 

Enraged, Devi demands a sacrifice of those boys. However, thankfully She is satisfied with ritual bloodletting from their bodies. The term Kuthiyottam is derived from the detail of the practice in which the boys’ flanks are pierced by silver needles, which are called chooral. ‘Chooral’ literally means ‘cane.’ In the old days, cane was used for the piercing, instead of silver needles. ‘Kuthi’ means, ‘pierced.’ Radhakrishnan Asari, who is in charge of conducting this ritual, told me in a hushed voice, corroborating the common belief: “This, in fact, is a substitute for human sacrifice … Ammachi wants blood once in a while.”

The second myth is that the boys are the companions who followed Devi into battle with Darikan, got wounded, and yet went to meet Lord Shiva to apprise Him of Devi’s valiant actions. So, when Devi is taken in procession outside the temple after the Pongala, and as She proceeds to the temple of Manacaud Shastha, Her brother, these boys form the vanguard of the procession. The piercing of the flanks is done for all the 1,000 boys by Radhakrishnan Asari, personally. Two silver needles in the shape of Devi’s khadgam, interconnected with a silver thread, are used for the piercing. The first needle is pierced through the flesh above the right upper rib. With the second needle fastened to the silver thread piercing the left upper rib area, the ritual piercing is completed.

The piercing is done on the Pongala day, when the day’s proceedings are over and the night’s nivedyam is done, and the Goddess is about to go out at the head of a procession to Manacaud Shastha Temple. The piercing begins before the procession starts, making the boys stand facing Devi’s threshold in front of the big balikkallu, around one o’clock in the morning. Before 2014, the Kuthiyottam boys used to be kept awake to be present during the special deeparadhana during festival days at 12 midnight. However, this practice of keeping the young boys awake till midnight for the deeparadhana was stopped by the temple authorities after the astrologer, Raman Akkithirippad, conducted a deva prashnam, a conclave of astrologers, and forbade it. If the Goddess doesn’t ‘want’ the small boys to be awake till midnight, I am sure Attukal Amma  would not want this bloody offering from young children.

Many Bhadrakali temples in southern Kerala follow this practice and most of them are symbolic in nature.  The temple may do one more devaprashnam to ‘check’ whether the divine mother of millions of women needs the blood of young boys. I am certain; it will be a deep “No” from the Goddess who is sweetness incarnate. If the temple says this is a primitive custom and can’t be altered, we must know there is no other temple in Kerala that has undergone changes like that in Attukal. The wooden idol is adorned with a golden Anki, buildings are built and demolished for the Goddess, hospitals and wedding halls are constructed and controlled, and they have even changed the identity of the Goddess and calls this primordial nature force Kali as Kannaki. Along with prosperity new rules were made for Attukal Amma, new “rituals” were introduced to make money. 

To strengthen the idea of the Brahminical Goddess concept, practices like human and animal sacrifice were abolished along with chicken-slaying; instead, rituals like gurusi (this used to be a human or animal sacrifice; now it is a symbolic act of cutting a large cucumber and pouring blood-coloured arattha water prepared by mixing slaked lime and turmeric, and covering it with a bronze uruli. The cucumber is cut with the Goddess’s padaval and the red fluid fills the floor in the darkness of the night, which is an awe-inspiring sight), raktapushpanjali and splitting of ash ground were introduced, to save lives. It is a painful sight, to see those boys, controlled by tough men, total strangers to them.  None of them smiles, none of them enjoys this. Most distressingly, they don’t know what is going to happen to them on the ninth night of the festival. I have spent five years in the temple doing research, and I witnessed many misdeeds.  I am just a writer. A child will never love a Goddess that demands their blood, for sure. And that would be all Amma needs from them. Their love.

(The writer is the author of Attukal Amma: The Goddess of Millions)