LUCK
Location: Tamil Nadu - India - Asia
Project: Murai - the right to perform
Ambassador: Saskia Kersenboom
SHUBHAM shubham NITYASHUBHAM.... GOOD LUCK good luck... lasting GOOD LUCK ....!!!! to ALL of YOU in the NEW YEAR.
in a few hours we are leaving for the very South of Taminadu by night train. We will arrive early morning in Tiruvarur and from there by car to Tiruppukalur where we will stay for the coming four weeks in an old style house oppostie the temple tank and temple tower. Such a view , that is \'Gopuradarshanam\', is said to bring good luck... and that is exactly what we need after this week. The last few days were mainly spent in Tiruttani, the place where my teacher, the devadasi Smt. P. Ranganayaki, had her rights (MURAI) to perform her temple ritual dance, song and rites. She was dedicated to the god in 1931, at the age of seventeen. When i studied with her in the seventies, eighties and ninetees, this temple to the god Murugan was a beautiful hill temple -like most temples for Murugan who is also called Subrahmanya. She taught me all the songs and dances she remembered from her grandmother and was very proud to show me off to priests, family members and temple personnel. The potlamp that she used daily in the temple (see photograph) is now offered by priests. Much more has changed since then.
Ranganayaki and her family used to live in the small settlement behind the temple. Only the priests and the temple musicians still live there now. The devadasi houses have fallen apart or are broken down and transformed into a large wedding hall. Apart from a lot of monkeys who seem to be very happy there, the place is in a bad, heavily polluted state and the two small temples that Ranganyaki also served seemed to be no longer used. WHAT happened since the Devadasi Act of 1947 forbade their ritual dedication??? Basically, the task of devadasi temple singers and dancers was not their song and dance but their power to \'remove evil eye\'. This evil eye is imagined to become active by jealousy, ill-wishes and bad spells cast by ill-wishing others. Eeven the gods are not danger-free form these attacks. Therefore, the devadasi was employed to remove the sticky quality of such evil-eye (called dristhi) by recitation of a sanskrit verse, song, dance and most importantly the triple rotation of the pot-lamp.
This custom is very old and widely spread over entire India. The Roma/ gypsies who travelled into Europe took it with them and it survives even today; in Hungary for example, as \"rontaash\': the power to cast and to remove the effects of evil eye and ill-wishes. Hindu Renaissance did not look favourably upon these beliefs and customs, and cast the devadasis in an entirely different role. Not their power to heal was highlighted but their independent status as women who inherited in the female line, and who could have sexual relations and therefore children, outside any civil marriage. This form of marriage was anyhow not for them, since they belonged to the temple and were dedicated to the god - a husband who cannot die. This status of \'never turning into a widow\' made them more powerful to protect danger, death, misfortune and illness than other women in ordinary wedlock. Women are the guardians and bringers of life, but some are stronger than others. The strength of the devadasis was conveniently forgotten and their irregular marital customs made them into \'public women\'.. So, society outcasted them in a kind of \"cultural cleansing\". The new Image of india was to be \"Spiritual\" above all, and NOT bound by parameters of vitality, power and LUCK.
Nowadays, however, temples like Tiruttani have exactly returned to these earlier preoccupations with vitality, life and LUCK or the LACK-of-it. As old Sanskrit texts say on ritual performing arts: SHUBHAASHUBHA Vikapakah.....: \"Luck or the lack-of-luck is what the ritual drama is about\". So it IS, in Tiruttani. We saw people rolling on the floor, in fully stretched position around the temple, women helping female devotees to keep their dress in place. We saw hordes of chanting men carrying offerings on their head, all dressed in black travelling through the South on a two month pilgrimage, hordes of women clad in red on their way, similarly to a powerful goddess. We saw many many men women and children, shaven bald in order to offer the life-force of their hair to god. We saw very low-caste men taking away the same \'evil-eye\' with salt through a triple rotation near a blazing fire of camphor. Gozso was aghast....: how can a MAN perform Rontaash????..... this is exclusively the domain of elderly women in Roma communities.
Ranganayaki\'s expertise lives on, in fact resurges as a dominant force, but through others. Her arts are forgotten. Her ritual skills taken over, perhaps mistakenly so. The temple musicians did not remember her compositions. Whatever they play bears no resemblance, and consciously distanciates itself from the devadasi heritage. Former colleagues, now receded into the unwanted history of time.
TIRUVARUR will be another story where one old devadasi is still in function -once-a-year- and where the musicians still play their repertoire. Our train is calling us soon. From there, i will tell you more about Good Luck and the Lack-of-it, in the coming month... if i\'m lucky to find a computer and internet connection.
SHUBHAASHUBHA....!!!, Saskia
