A gentle breeze was passing through the coastal town. The crowd around the temple premises had become thin. They are leaving. The Lord has retired. Am inside the iconic Guruvayoor temple in Kerala.
Inside, the tall ‘Kalivilakku’ (Oil lamp lit before the performing art in temple) is lit, its long wooden stem in stark contrast to its contemporaries, in form and design. Onto the right of the Eastern entrance of the temple, the ‘Valiya Mani’ big bell, comes live, the resonance telling, we have just two more hours to another midnight.
I sit, leaning on to the decades old motley pillar, stretching out my legs relieving it from the day’s odyssey. Few are sitting scattered around. It is ‘Vividha Vadham’ (Killing of Vividhan), one of the eight stories from ‘Krishnageethi’ that the Zamorin crown prince Manaveda wrote in the sixteenth century for Krishnanattam, the dance drama he created.
Krishna’s elder brother Balaraman is spending time with his wives when a ‘Chethukaran’, a toddy tapper brings him a mud
pot with country liqueur. With great benevolence he accepts the offering. We are entertained to his histrionics and at the end of it,
he consumes and dozes off. ‘Vividhan’, with its dark monkey face, symbolically embodiment of evil, comes and his pranks irritate the women (Am watching this on a women’s day. How audacious!). Seeing Balarama dozing, he gets emboldened, takes the mud pot on the sly and consumes the toddy asking around if anyone wants.
I deviate from the story here. His round bulging eyes sees me among the spectators and selectively pointing at me emotes whether I would like to have some? I look around. My better half privy to the information looks at me amused. I keep a sober face. How the hell did this character know I consume a spot or two on weekends?
Well, in retrospect, the positive side was I felt myself a part of the cast and the story. A guest role would be a more modern perception. How do I identify with it all, a participant and a spectator at the same time? Was there within me an abstract of all that was being unfurled before me? The goodness incarnate consuming toddy could be anyone. Balaraman has it all so formalised but the youthful mind can be fluttering at the very prospect of flirting around. Vividhan’s pranks are a common sight among those going bonkers after an indulgence these days. And yet, the righteousness of it all plays out at the end. Vividhan has to pay with his life.
The ‘Valiya Mani’ strikes once. I trudge back listening to an excited chatter on the divinity of it all by the better half. A short while later, as a deep slumber consume me, two large swollen eyes keep haunting. Vividhan, it appears, has no intention of going to sleep.
Has the world been always like this all the time?
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