Nine Lives(19)
“After that I lost all my fear of performance, and I knew for sure that this was the sacred path I was meant to follow.”
The following evening, after he had finished work, Hari Das joined me again. We went to a street restaurant in the main bazaar of Kannur, and ordered appam and stew. He looked exhausted, and I asked which was more tiring: building wells, policing Tellicherry jail or performing theyyam all night?
“Theyyam is the most exhausting,” he replied. “No question. During the season a dancer cannot eat properly or sleep after dark—you are dancing all night, almost every night. The god blesses you and you find the strength somehow. All you can do is rest between performances, and sleep all day to recoup your strength. If you do not do this, your body will give way. Theyyam dancers have a very low life expectancy; most die before they hit fifty. It’s very demanding: the costumes are very heavy and we use strings to tie the costumes on and these rub and inhibit the blood circulation. Many of my colleagues turn to drink, because toddy gives you strength and helps you to make the facial expressions.
“That said, all these different jobs are tough. The jail work is the most frightening, but the least demanding physically. All you have to do is wander around all day with a lathi [cane] and avoid getting knifed. There is no satisfaction at all in that job—the only point of doing it is the cheque for Rs 6,000 that arrives on the first day of every month. Nothing else.
“My second job, as a well builder, is different again. As a labourer you live by the sweat of your brow.” Hari Das opened the palms of his hands to show the calluses and blisters. “There is some little satisfaction in that job, getting a well built properly, with all the stonework nicely done. You’ve met my team. Every day we shovel and dig and line the walls of wells for the houses of farmers, usually Namboodiris or Nairs. When the well gets deep—fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty feet—we have to suspend ourselves on coir ropes and pulleys and dangle ourselves down the well shaft, sometimes resting on wooden slats or discarded car tyres. It’s difficult and can be very arduous. We keep going down, lowering the platform as we go, and when we hit water we have to remove the slush in baskets. Sometimes we slip, and some of my friends have had quite serious injuries that way. Very occasionally the well collapses and when that happens we can get really badly hurt. This is always a fear, but we still have no option but to carry on and to finish the job. It’s dirty work, in every sense. My wife won’t let me near the house until I’ve had a proper bath.
“As a labourer you sweat blood on the roads or inside the well shaft. But in theyyam you have to invest body, heart, mind and soul. If you do not feel for the story your eyes will be soulless and without expression. The blood has to come to your face from your heart. The hardest technically is the Vishnumurti theyyam, especially the opening scene where the demon king Hiranyakashipu doubts the existence of the god Narasimha, and to punish him, Narasimha, who is half-man and half-lion, breaks out of one of the pillars in his palace, smashes open the wall with his mace and devours him, tearing out his heart and drinking his blood.
“It is demanding mentally too. When the theyyam artist is setting out for a performance, however sad and despondent he is inside, he cannot show it on his face. He has to appear happy, and he should spread goodness and good cheer when he arrives in a village. But being a theyyam artist is also the most satisfying, and the only job of the three that really brings in both money and satisfaction.
“My wife certainly prefers it, as theyyam makes me famous in the villages. Before I was married, all the girls were interested in me for this reason, too. To be honest, there is a lot of unrequited love in a performer’s life. They are meant to respect us as vehicles of the gods, but actually many of the girls who are watching the performance are thinking of quite different things. It’s natural, I suppose. Many of my friends say I shouldn’t complain, but I don’t like it. Things can get very complicated. It is difficult to lead a happy domestic life and have admirers. In this job it is important to have a good reputation—one scandal could destroy you. So I keep these women at arm’s length.
“Brahmins are another problem. Twenty or thirty years ago they were very uppity. Now they are better, but they still have all the power. When they watch theyyam they have this sense of discomfort, as they know that the stories often criticise their caste, and seek to reform their behaviour. There are many thottam songs, for example, that tell stories showing the importance of doing good acts to your fellow men, reminding the Brahmins that their bad acts to those of lesser birth than themselves cannot escape the scrutiny of the sun and the moon which watch over everything. Their bad acts will not go unnoticed, and the songs advise them instead to adopt good and kind ways. Sometimes they tell this in a very angry manner. At other times these lessons are told very gently and poetically.