Elsien's Traveblogue

After a wonderful week in Goa I felt that I wanted to do something a little more active than beach holidaying with a load of old and some younger hippies, lovely as they may have been. It was a choice between seriously getting into yoga with the old or getting stoned with the younger hippies. Instead I decided to find out more about the culture that Kerala is famous for: kathakali and other theatrical dance performances, most linked with Hindu temples and using Hindu gods and heroes as the subject matter.
First stop, by pure coincidence, happened to be the venue at that precise moment of the annual Kerala Youth Arts Festival, where I saw some great traditional dance as well as some kathakali. One of the dancers almost lost his heavy head gear during the performance. The dancing is accompanied by a sort of chanting, singing the text of stories from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, some of the Hindu 'bibles' and some terrific drumming.
More terrifying drumming during a "theyam" session in a village nearby, a voodoo-like experience where the chief priest dressed up as the god to whom the temple is devoted - some incarnation of Shiva - gets into the part and into a trance. His face painting, headgear and costume are pretty terrifying too, and the drumming is haunting and loud. I counted 7 or 8 drummers and a sort of trumpet. There's lots of oil lamps - the sessions are at dawn and at dusk - smoke, fire, throwing offerings about, mumbling and muffled roaring from the priest in trance - with all the preparations I watched spellbound for some 3 hours. Devotees, dressed in black, had spent all day at the temple, bathing in the probably filthy river. It was an incredible and unforgettable experience.
At the Theatre Festival I'd met a local journalist who interviewed me for his paper, the Calicut Express - keep your eyes out for it. He took me backstage to speak to the dancers and the make-up people and look at the costumes, fabulous. I also met some dancers from the Kalamandalam Academy who study kathakali there and who told me they'd be doing an all-night performance at a temple near Cochin where I was headed anyway. It was absolutely mind-blowing - I'll try and write a proper description one day, but for now I'll only tell you that it started at 9pm and finished at 6.30 am with a gigantic final battle between the Gods and the Demons which raged all around the temple auditorium, with earsplitting but genius drum background. I got invited to stay at the Academy itself by the vice-principal and one of the lecturers, one of the drummers.
In the meantime there is some more Indian music and a temple festival here - I'm getting absolutely stoned on culture at the moment. I'm off to an elephant temple festival near here soon, invited by a family I met at the kathakali temple. I'll write about it next week.