erumeli.com

Okay, this is for those who are a bit confused by the unique words that refer to different aspects of the Sabarimalai pilgrimage and Erumeli. (I still feel a little awkward writing Erumeli – the spelling which I am used to during my school days has a Y at the end!)

First, Petta. The erumely town junction — where the road to Pampa and Sabarimalai, the road to Mundakkayam (from where one can proceed to the hill ranges of Kumili and Idukki and Munnar) and the road to Kanjirappalli and Kottayam meet, and where you have the Kochambalam (the little temple) of Lord Ayyappa and the Vavar Mosque facing each other — is called the Petta or Erumeli Petta.

Petta Thullal: Thullal is a crude kind of dance. In literarature, often, thullal is used instead of dance, but in everyday usage, thullal can be best be considered a joyous jumping around! Petta Thullal, thus, is the dance that the Ayyappas do in Petta. They start at the Kochambalam, and after a darshan of the Ayyappa idol, dances across the street to the Vavar mosque, do a Paikrama (a ritual circling) of the mosque and continue dancing their way to the big temple (Valiyambalam).

Ayyappa: You would have noticed that the word Ayyappa is used for both the Lord (Sri Ayyappa) and his devotees. That is according to the custom, where once one starts the ‘Vruth’ and starts following its rules, he is referred to as an Ayyappa. So, the pilgrims often address each other as Ayyappa. And in Erumeli, the shopkeepers and locals keep referring to them as Ayyappans. The standard greeting for an Ayyappa when he meets anyone in Erumeli is to say ‘Swami Saranam’ and he gets a Swami Saranam back. This is something almost any oldtimer in Erumeli does naturally. People in my generation might feel a little self concious saying it, but even my father, who was sometimes in charge of accommodation for the visiting pilgrims in the Erumeli St. Thomas School, used to greet an Ayyappa with a heart ’swami saranam’.

You know, if you lived near Nerchapara as a child, you would probably lose all fear of cemetaries. I lived in Nerchapara when I was 5-10 years old, and the cemetary was always there – just a few meters uphill from the church, following the climbing hill, and protected by an iron grill gate and a stone wall.
I did my LKG (nursery then, this was before pre-school was LG and then UKG) and studied till 4th in the Nirmala English medium school. So on way to school, we would pass the stone cemetary downhill. On our way back home, we would walk past it uphill. Something that close to your school can’t be scary.

And sometimes, at night, I would be walking past the cemetary back home from Erumeli Petta after a bit of shopping. Or from some function in his school. There were no streetlights then, and we all knew how to figure out where the road was by the feel of the road under our rubber chappals. And we would look at the sky, where a crack of gray would show where the rubber trees would part above the road. It was quite easy. In fact, all we were worried about were the snakes. So we would stomp hard while walking at night. Snakes can hear the virbations on the ground, we all knew from school. No one thought about ghosts, dead people, eerie voices.

When I think back, I think me and my siblings were more worried about looking out the window into the dark than walking past the cemetary.

As we grew up, my younger brother and I and a boy from the neighbourhood developed the habit going to the cemetary, just to sit and chat there at night. It would be pitch black, and we could only barely see each other. Imagine a road up a hill. Trees, darkness, on the left and right in the night. A grey crack in the darkness above, which would be the sky. In the distance, up the hill, the black walls of the cemetary with solitary light burning inside somewhere, which is the sole light source as far as the eye can see. And a dark shape or two, sitting stationary against it, staring down at you. And all his forgotten fears would come back for a second. He would start, and then stop. And then walk on as if they never did.

It was hilarious. And no one died of a heart attack, thankfully.

Just came across this while doing some general Ayyappa research. Seems CNN-IBN’s Naveen Nair recently landed in Erumeli and shot some videos and interviewed a few pilgrims and the Vavar Swamy mosque president. Here is a link to the video on the CNN-IBN site – I do not how long it will remain on their site though. So if the link is dead, please excuse.

Every year, some news channel shows clips from Erumeli. And I always manage to miss it. Erumeli is curious for those from the North often because of the strange communal harmony here. The Hindu pilgrims who come to Erumeli on their way to Sabarimalai come here wearing black, are supposed to have their darshan in the Lockambalam (Little temple) and then dance across the road to the Vavar Swamy mosque and enter its premises, dance around the main mosque and then proceed to the main temple down the road some 10 minutes away. Once, when someone talked about Erumeli in Lok Sabha, during the Ayodhya days, many BJP members got agitated and created a ruckus. Make what you will of that. I don’t think Sri Ayyappa would have been pleased.

When I went to Erumeli this time, some told me that TV crews keep coming to Erumeli and asking pilgrims to dance for the camera. The CNN IBN video’s some portions seem to be like that. The Ayyappas are supposed to dance their way forward, and at least in one portion, they seem to be dancing for the camera. It’s a shame. All the crew has to do is wait, and they would have got some animated dancing anyway. If I get a better video, I will defintiely post it here.

I was wondering how to start this blog – the plans for this site are quite unclear at the moment to me. But let’s look at it this way. Domain and hosting for one year costs less than Rs 1000, so why not have a site.

What can be expected here in the future? Say, a brilliant erumeli photo gallery. I have a few photos myself, I have come across someone in Flickr who has antoher collection of erumeli photos, and I can probaby get some photographer in Erumeli to click some during the Makaravilakku days.

Then what? Writeups of the temples, mosques and churches in Erumeli and nearby areas; schools and other educational institutions, major shops, banks…

History of Erumeli, of course. There is the real history, and there is the folklore.. and old stories which my mothermight remember..

And so it will go on. If you are from erumeli or connected to erumeli in some way, do let me know. Maybe we can together do something interesting here.

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