Death, Beauty, Struggle. Margaret Trawick
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her mouth and eyes shut. They had already broken the streetlight on the road to ensure perfect darkness. They pulled her head back by her braid. They cut off the braid. They cut off an ear. They hacked at her, all over her body.
In photographs, she stands bold, straight and beautiful, radiating confidence and strength.… In every picture, she stands straight, shoulders square, her courage writ large upon her posture.
In hospital, she lies on a stretcher, both her arms and legs, her body covered in bandages. Her head shaved, the scar of the lost ear turning a sickly yellow, a blood stain on the bandage on the left hand, her sister holding up the bandaged right hand because it hurts too much to put it down. “I am afraid now,” she says. Krishnaveni, the brave. Krishnaveni, the strong. Panchayat president Krishnaveni, the woman who was given the title of Vīra Peṇmaṇi (Heroic Woman) by the women of her village. Panchayat president Krishnaveni, first woman panchayat president in the state to be attacked with such cold-blooded brutality. (Jayanth 2011)
A message one may draw from this article is that powerful women of the lowest castes live in danger in Tamil Nadu. In fact, all women of the lowest castes are in danger, whether they speak out or not. The protection of a powerful deity may or may not mitigate this danger.
The Narrative
The narrative comprising the bulk of this chapter is a translation from Tamil of my tape-recorded interviews of Sarasvati/Māriamman.4 Although the interviews were conducted in 1975, Sarasvati may be in the same neighborhood, doing the same work still. She is, or would be, in her later seventies today. What is certain is that mediums for Māriamman practice now in Chennai, as Māriamman is a popular god, and spirit possession continues to thrive in urban as well as rural areas of Tamil Nadu. What I write below remains in the present tense.
The central portion of Sarasvati’s mud house is a shrine for this deity. It contains an image of Māriamman—a triangular black stone with an angry face skillfully carved on it, with gleaming metal eyes and long fangs. Weekly the priestess adorns the image, first rubbing oil on its face, then painting it black with ink, red with kumkum, or yellow with turmeric, carefully outlining the eyes, then wreathing it with flower garlands, putting on its jewelry, and laying a clean petticoat in front of it. She performs this ceremony with all the absorption of a young person before a mirror.
She calls her mud house a temple, and neighbors and visitors also regard it as such. At the time that I met her, she lived there with her husband, ten children, three sons-in-law, four grandchildren, and several buffaloes, goats, and chickens. Although, through her skill as a priestess and healer, she had acquired some material wealth in the form of saris, stainless steel kitchenware, and livestock, she said that she could not move out of the mud hut because of the tradition that mediums of Māriamman live in poverty. That was then. Later she built a larger house in the same spot.
On Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, or whenever someone arrives with a special request, she calls Māriamman to come upon her. At these times, and especially on the full moon and other auspicious days, her house will be crowded with supplicants. Several hundred people may come to her in a single day.
When she is ready to call Māriamman, she leaves the house, bathes, and returns, and sits cross-legged in front of Māriamman’s image. She closes her eyes and breathes the smoke from the camphor burning in a plate of ash before her. She yawns and is silent. In a few moments suddenly she shudders and lets out a roar. This is Māriamman. She caresses and scratches her body and tousles her matted hair. If someone has brought butter she smears it all over herself, eating some and giving the rest to visitors. She may stuff neem leaves in her mouth and wash them down with turmeric water. She laughs loudly, and begins to speak in a sign language to one of her sons-in-law or daughters sitting nearby, who interprets her gestures to the visitors. The gestures state who has come with what problem, and what the outcome will be. After this she whips her head around and around as in a bolero, scattering drops of water from her wet hair all over the room. Then she begins to speak, stating each visitor’s problem and calling the visitor up to her. There is a tightness in her voice as though she is in pain. She speaks with each visitor, ascertaining his problem and promising to cure it. At the end she emerges from the trance by opening her eyes.
People come to her for mental and physical illness, for demon possession, or for family problems, or because they cannot find work, or they are not doing well at school, or they cannot find a husband for their daughters, or for other difficulties. Māriamman will give them ashes or lemons (both cooling) as medicine, will touch the afflicted with her hair (which conveys her power) or will blow ashes upon them or brush them with neem leaves (sacred to Māriamman and used for all skin afflictions), or she may perform more elaborate ceremonies for them, or she may simply promise that she will make everything well. When she is out of trance also, the priestess may perform similar acts of healing. On festival days, she organizes celebrations for Māriamman. She also performs pūcei (puja) or worship ceremonies on behalf of individual patrons who wish to secure Māriamman’s blessing.
Although this priestess is particularly popular, there are many like her in Madras, men as well as women, though the majority are women. Similarly, the majority of the devotees of Māriamman in this city are women, who follow their own volition in coming to her temples. This priestess’ strongest supporters are well-to-do, middle-class, high-caste women, who give the priestess gifts of clothing, jewelry, and money and seem to value her friendship highly, though the priestess is of an untouchable caste and lives in what the wealthier people of the neighborhood call “the slum.” During trance sessions, the possessed priestess may sometimes be seen teaching one of her followers to enter a trance, coaching her in growling and spinning her head, and exhorting her, in the voice of Māriamman, not to be afraid. At least one of the priestess’ middle-class Brahman followers has now herself become a priestess to Māriamman and a successful trance healer, in opposition to the wishes of her husband, transforming the structure of her family to serve the needs of her new profession.5
Māriamman is often pictured as a beautiful woman seated on a throne made of a many-headed serpent, and at her feet, a disembodied woman’s head, Māriamman’s own head, which acts as an oracle, like the stone in our priestess’ temple. Therefore, when Māriamman speaks through the priestess, she sometimes refers to herself as one who has two heads.
Even as smallpox has died out, the popularity of Māriamman of smallpox has grown in recent years, as is evidenced by this priestess’s success, and on a larger scale, by the newly flourishing condition of a large temple to Māriamman near Madras, the Karumāriamman temple at Tiruvērkāḍu. Karu means black, because Māriamman herself is black. The temple at Tiruvērkāḍu has become one of the wealthiest temples in the Madras area. Since the early 1970s (about the time of the eradication of smallpox in Madras) the whole temple has been rebuilt, together with beautiful ornate temple cars and stone sculptures created by top artisans from out of state, a large tank, and a new monastery. On Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, buses to the temple at Tiruvērkāḍu are packed with people, as is the temple itself, so that it is almost impossible for all but the most aggressive to get in.
The worship of Māriamman in modern Madras is a blend of Brahmanical and lower-caste, non-Brahmanical components. The Tiruvērkāḍu temple has Brahman priests, who perform Sanskritic ceremonies for Māriamman. But associated with this temple, living separately from it, is a medium like our priestess. Our priestess also lives near a small, Brahman-operated temple to Māriamman, and such associations are the norm. South Indian Brahmans are strict vegetarians, but the mediums perform animal sacrifices to their own temples.
Our priestess is of an untouchable caste, but like some other Madras untouchables she knows the Brahman lifestyle perfectly and is able to imitate it down to the smallest detail. Unlike most untouchables, as herself she is a vegetarian. She was raised close to a Brahman neighborhood and her first name is a Brahman woman’s name. Her speech contains many Sanskrit words and borrowings from Brahman dialects. She is proud to have Brahmans among her followers. But in the state of possession, her speech and comportment alter radically. She belches, yawns, scratches her body, rolls in the dirt, and kills chickens by biting through their necks and drinking their fresh blood.
Māriamman is said to be born of earth.