Arattupuzha: The Oldest Pooram, and the Temples That Arrived Late

The best known thing about Arattupuzha, outside Kerala, is that another festival came out of it, and the story is worth telling.

Thrissur Pooram is the most famous festival in Kerala and one of the great spectacles in India. Its origin, as the tradition tells it, is a grievance.

What happened:

• A number of temples from the Thrissur area were participants at the Arattupuzha Pooram
• One year, in the late eighteenth century, they were delayed by heavy rain on the way
• They arrived late and were refused entry to the pooram
• They took the matter to Sakthan Thampuran, the ruler of Kochi
• He responded by organising a festival of their own at Thrissur, at the Vadakkunnathan temple
• Ten temples were brought together around the two principal participants, Paramekkavu and Thiruvambadi
• That festival became the Thrissur Pooram

Why the new festival worked so well. Sakthan Thampuran was an administrator of considerable ability, and what he designed has held up for over two centuries.

• Two principal groups, Paramekkavu and Thiruvambadi, in structured rivalry, which drives the standard of the whole thing
• The Vadakkunnathan temple ground as a single stage, which everyone can see
• The kudamattam, the competitive exchange of ceremonial umbrellas, performed by the two sides facing each other
• The ilanjithara melam, one of the great percussion performances anywhere
• The fireworks, which are the finale

What the story tells you about festivals generally. This is a useful case because both ends of it are documented and recent enough to be traceable.

A festival that is now the defining cultural event of central Kerala exists because a group of people were once shut out of somebody else's festival and went and set up their own. That is a much more common origin for religious institutions than anyone likes to admit.

A visitor at a Kerala pooram will spend most of their time listening to percussion, and it repays understanding, because it is not background noise.

The instruments:

• The chenda, a cylindrical drum played with sticks, held vertically and struck on the upper head, which produces the characteristic sound
• The kombu, a curved brass horn
• The kuzhal, a reed pipe
• The elathalam, cymbals, which keep the cycle
• In panchavadyam the ensemble differs, with the timila, maddalam, idakka, kombu and elathalam

How a melam is structured. This is the part outsiders miss.

• A melam is built on a tala, a rhythmic cycle, and the performance progresses through stages
• It begins slow, with a long cycle, and each stage halves the cycle length while the tempo rises
• The whole thing therefore accelerates in structured steps over a considerable time, often more than an hour
• The players are following a precise structure, not improvising freely
• The final stage is very fast and very loud, and the arrival at it is the payoff the whole performance has been building toward

Why it works on people who know nothing about it. The structure is doing something that does not require training to feel.

A very long, very slow beginning, with each stage tightening, produces an accumulating physical tension across an hour that resolves in the last few minutes. That is the same device a good piece of music anywhere uses, executed by a hundred drummers standing in a line in front of a temple.

Panchari melam and pandi melam are the two principal forms encountered at poorams, on different talas, and connoisseurs follow the distinction closely.

The audience. Kerala percussion has a knowledgeable public. People attend for the melam specifically, know the players, discuss the performance afterwards and hold opinions about which ensemble is better this year. It is a concert tradition that happens to take place at a temple, and it should be listened to as one.

No account of a Kerala pooram is honest without addressing the elephants directly.

What they do at a pooram:

• Elephants carry the thidambu, the processional image of the deity
• They stand in a line, in caparison with the gold covering called the nettipattam
• Men on their backs hold the ceremonial umbrellas, venchamaram whisks and alavattam fans
• The kudamattam, the changing of umbrellas, is performed from the elephants' backs
• They stand for long periods in crowds, in heat, with continuous loud percussion

The welfare question, which is real and should not be avoided:

• Kerala's festival elephants are captive animals, and there has been sustained concern from veterinarians, courts and animal welfare bodies about their conditions
• Problems documented over the years include long standing hours, transport in heat, restricted movement, inadequate rest, and handling practices
• Elephants in musth, a periodic hormonal condition in males, are dangerous, and incidents at festivals have caused deaths of mahouts and members of the public
• There have been regulations and court directions governing the use of elephants at festivals, covering fitness certification, transport, rest and crowd distance
• Compliance has been uneven and the subject is contested within Kerala

What a visitor should do:

• Keep well clear of the animals. Do not approach one, do not stand in the narrow space behind or beside a line, and identify your exit route before the procession comes
• Never feed or touch an elephant
• Do not use flash photography near them
• If an animal appears agitated, moves its head sharply or the mahouts start shouting, move away immediately and do not stop to watch
• Follow the barriers and the police without exception

On the wider debate. People in Kerala hold strong and opposed views. Some regard the elephants as inseparable from the tradition. Others, including many devotees, argue that the tradition can continue without them, and some temples have begun using mechanical or effigy alternatives.

That argument belongs to Kerala. What belongs to a visitor is the decision about whether to attend, how to behave, and whether to support operators and temples with better practice.

The Peruvanam Mahadeva temple at Cherpu deserves attention on its own account, quite apart from the festival.

What is there:

• A very old Shiva temple, among the oldest in Kerala
• A distinctive multi tiered sreekovil, the sanctum rising in stages, which is unusual and is the temple's architectural signature
• A large compound with the full arrangement of a major Kerala temple
• Two Shiva shrines within the complex, in an arrangement particular to this temple

Kerala temple architecture, briefly, since Peruvanam is a good example:

• The sreekovil, the sanctum, is the core, and may be circular, square or apsidal
• It is roofed with tile or copper, steeply pitched for the rain, and is sometimes multi tiered as here
• The namaskara mandapam stands before it
• The nalambalam encloses the sanctum in a rectangle
• The balikkallu, offering stones, stand in prescribed positions
• The koothambalam, the theatre, stands within the outer compound at major temples
• Deepastambham and rows of wall lamps

Why Kerala looks so different from the rest of India:

• Very high rainfall required steep roofs, which rules out the flat topped towered forms of the Tamil and north Indian traditions
• Timber was abundant and stone quarrying was harder in places, so wood is structural and carved
• The tradition developed with relatively less influence from the great imperial building programmes that shaped Tamil Nadu and the Deccan
• The result is a temple form that looks domestic rather than monumental, and reads as a set of enclosures rather than as a tower

What that means at Peruvanam. You will not see a gopuram or a towering vimana. You will see a walled compound with tiled roofs among trees, and the effect at four in the morning with oil lamps lit is one that no towered temple can produce.

Getting there

• Arattupuzha and Cherpu are in Thrissur district, Kerala, a short distance south of Thrissur town
• Thrissur has a major railway station and is well connected
• Kochi has the nearest airport, roughly 60 km
• Buses and autos run from Thrissur

Timings

• The temples open early, before dawn, with morning and evening sessions and a long midday closure. Check locally

When to go

• The Peruvanam and Arattupuzha poorams in Meenam, generally March or April, which is the reason to time a visit
• Thrissur Pooram, also in Meenam, at Vadakkunnathan in Thrissur town, usually a few weeks apart
• November to February for comfortable weather on an ordinary visit
• Early morning on any day

If you go for a pooram

• They run over days, not hours. Find out the schedule and pick what you want to see
• The melam is the thing to plan around. Arrive before it starts and stay for the whole arc, since leaving in the middle misses the point entirely
• Expect very large crowds, heat and noise
• Ear protection is worth considering. Kerala melam at close range is genuinely loud, and hearing damage from sustained exposure is a real thing, particularly for children
• Keep well clear of the elephants and follow the guidance above
• Carry water. Meenam is hot

Dress and conduct

• Kerala temple rules apply inside. Men remove upper garments and wear a mundu, and trousers and shirts are not permitted
• Women wear sari, set mundu or salwar
• Non Hindus are not permitted inside many Kerala temples. The processions and festival grounds are a different matter and are generally open
• Photography inside is not permitted

Combining the visit

• Thrissur town, with Vadakkunnathan temple, the Kerala Kalamandalam nearby at Cheruthuruthy for the classical arts, and the state museum
• Guruvayur, about 30 km
• Kodungallur, with its own major Bhagavathy temple, to the west
• Kochi and Fort Kochi to the south

Kerala Kalamandalam at Cheruthuruthy is worth a note. It is the institution where Kathakali, Koodiyattam, Mohiniyattam and the percussion forms are taught, and it runs visitor programmes where you can watch training. For anyone interested in what they are hearing at a pooram, it is the place to go.

A closing thought. Thrissur Pooram is filmed, broadcast and known everywhere. Arattupuzha, from which it came, is far older, far quieter, and involves gods arriving from twenty odd temples to spend a day together. If you can only see one, most people would say Thrissur. If you can see both, do Arattupuzha first.