When Gods Go on Holiday

Come Navaratri it is revelry time for the Goddess. Across India this festival is celebrated and in places like Gujarat and Bengal the whole region reverberates with dance and music. For Gujarat the place comes alive with gaiety and in the unending sessions at night the girls in their best attire dance in ecstasy. In the South too these are days of celebration and in Kerala this is the time when young children are initiated to their first lessons of learning. People shut down all activities and worship their tools, books for the scholars, weapons for the warriors, for farmers their agricultural implements and tools.

And in the south there is a colorful procession that goes from Kanyakumari to Thiruvananthapuram and back. This is the Navaratri procession where Lord Muruka accompanied by Goddesses Saraswathi and Monnooti Nanka, from various places in Kanyakumari district, make a trip to Thiruvananhapuram in full regalia. Lord Muruka comes from Velimalai Kumaraswamy temple, Saraswathy from Padmanabhapuram Palace temple and Munnooti Nanka from Sucheendram temple, all taken to Thiruvananthapuram. That is by foot and they travel almost 80 Km. It was a grand festival of the extreme south when people celebrated across the road, recently less as new generations are more and more alienated, also different other religions have become more wide spread. These are customs that need to be honored, what keeps the cultural identity. Sacred reminders of India's legendary past, pre-colonial bounty..

Complete with elephants, police gun salutes and protocol officers the trip covers the long distance taking two days to reach either way. The local people call it a trip by the ‘Marumakan’ (nephew) to see the ‘Mamanar’ (uncle), that is Murukan going to see Lord Padmanabha at Thiruvananthapuram. The famous Padmanabha Swamy Temple premises see great rejoicing and music concerts are the major event. Once in the city the Lord and the two Goddesses stay at three different places, Goddess Saraswathy at the Kuthiramalika Palace, Lord Muruka at Chenthitta and Munnooti Nanka at the Aryasala Goddess Temples.

With a member of the Travancore royal family escorting with the ‘Udaval’, or ritual sword, kept high, accompanied by police, officers and a large number of people the procession halts at two places midway, at Kuzhithurai Siva temple and Neyyattinakara Sreekrishnaswamy temple. When the procession reaches Kaliakkavilai the border town between Kerala and Tamilnadu the Kerala officers and the Ministers receive the procession, seen off by the respective Tamilnadu counterparts. There is a ritual gun salute and a police band. For the South, particularly Tamilnadu and Kerala, these are Muruga territory, and these are the unseen rulers, coming.

On the sides of the National Highway people wait in their hundreds to welcome the Gods with lighted lamps, fruits and flowers. The flower bedecked carriers and palanquins carried by selected persons, are rained with flowers by various people, mainly the flower merchants. At Kuzhithurai one can see huge flower beds, ‘pookkalams’, arranged which are several metres long. It is a curious scene and people stand and watch this centuries old ritual of Kerala and Tamlandu. This procession, it is believed, started after the Travancore kingdom shifted capital to Thiruvananthapuram few centuries back, from Kalkkulam, in Kanyakumari, later Padmanabhapuram. But till the linguistic reorganization of states Kanyakumari was in Kerala, the Tamil speakers, though Malayalam is not much different, opting to join Tamilnadu at the time. How it became an inter state festival.

The Saraswathy idol, kept at the Padmanabhapuram palace, erstwhile capital of Travancore, is believed to be the one worshipped by legendary Kambar, who wrote Kamba Ramayanam. This is the worship of ‘Vidya’, knowledge, and the Hindu pantheon gives great importance to Jnanamarga in life. The Navaratri procession continues unabated through centuries and it is an occasion when the Gods come to the people, normally it is the other way round. Many of these ancient rituals of extreme south date back to the era of Chera kings, one from the main kingdoms called Mooventhar, Chera, Chola and Pandya that ruled the Southern peninsula. Travancore royal family is believed to be of Chera descend, many present day leading Hindu communities in the south consider themselves descended from the three. Myths and beliefs are beyond logic and these festivals keep the unending chain of culture through generations.