Fw: The Month of karkidakam, Its changing traditions- excerpted from haindavakeralam.com

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> The Month of karkidakam, Its changing traditions

>

> 20/07/2008 11:04:13

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>

> By DILIP KUMAR RAVINDRAN

>

> Long ago, and far away, for the farming community of rural

> Kerala, the month of karkkidakam with its torrential rains

> was a period of confinement and forced rest. While rains

> nourished the tender paddy in the fields, the people took

> care of their houses and themselves. As Mother Nature began

> her cleaning spree the women folk followed her habit. From

> among the plants they gathered leaves that served like wet

> sandpaper and cleaned the dirt from doors and windows,

> ritual objects and low wooden stool, their only furniture.

> And the wooden things gleamed in its natural grains. For,

> painting and varnishing was unheard of among rustic folk.

> Most of the houses had thatched roofs; only the rich lived

> in tiled ones. Karkkidakam was the month of sacred rituals,

> ancestral worship and healthcare.

>

> Women and children gathered the customary herbs associated

> with worship in temples and herbal medicine. It was a

> practical lesson too. One learned to identify the herbs

> while hearing stories connected with their beneficial use

> as home remedies. Ancient wisdom was handed over by word of

> mouth from time immemorial.

>

>

> On the evening prior to the samkramam there was a ritual

> ceremony of packing the Chetta, the presiding spirit over

> dirt, off. Women with broom went around cleaning and

> dusting and driving out the Dirty thing that hid in

> corners. Basically, it was a thorough cleansing before the

> twilight. For children, the ritual meant a serious part of

> life. In olden times life was ritual-driven. Women and

> children spent hours gathering sacred plants for the

> special offering.

>

> For the first ten days of the month of karkidakam,

> Sreebhagavathy, the goddess received the traditional

> offerings. In front of the Machu, the household shrine,

> there was a display of dasapushpam, the ten sacred plants

> in a gleaming brass plate, water in a bell metal pot with a

> spout, valkannadi, a mirror of polished brass, sandal paste

> and vermillion, before a lighted lamp. The sacred corner

> glowed like the sanctum sanctorum at dawn.

>

> The Ramayana was also kept there. In the mornings the

> oldest member of the family sat reading the Ramayana in a

> singsong style. After their morning bath girls and women

> would apply kajal to their eyes and have a bindi of

> mukkutti chanthu, the juice of a crushed herb.

>

>

> Married daughters came home for their annual health care. A

> medicinal porridge was specially prepared for the entire

> family. The old and the middle-aged had their herbal

> concoction, an annual preventive dose for rheumatic

> ailments. The bulls were given special diet as part of the

> agrarian economy and past time.

>

> At twilight after the lighting of the bell-metal lamp,

> children sat around reciting prayers. Night fell soon in

> those pre-electricity days.

>

> The dead were invoked on the day of the new moon. In

> kerala ancestral worship is part of religion just as

> animism has prevailed, although in pockets. The people were

> taught to sense the divine in plants, animals and spirits;

> to feel the sacred thread that runs through Nature; to know

> that humans are part of a divine design; to accept the need

> for harmony with their surroundings, to carry on the

> heritage of the past to the present.

>

> The end of karkkidaka would complete the reading of the

> whole Ramayana. So Karkkidaka is known as the month of

> Ramayana as well. Even now a few, who cannot root out their

> roots, follow the tradition. But, for the majority, the

> ritual is a temple-centered community affair now.

>

> Dhanwanthari is the patron saint of Ayurveda, Indian

> medicine. In the month of Karkkidaka the prasad given here

> is mukkidi, the juice extracted form medicinal plants.

> Having a doze of this juice daily for a month in the rainy

> season was the traditional preventive antidote for a

> year¢s epidemics.

>

> Change inevitable, has affected kerala and its traditions.

> Today, a wholesome tradition is reduced to a ritual for

> the first day of the month of Karkkidaka. The Ramayana

> resonates in the air because of the amplifier at the

> temple. Herbal medicines are available in powder form in

> shops. The agrarian life is replaced by consumer culture.

> And elephants enjoy Sukha-chikilsa. The torrent has receded

> from the plains. Yet the Monsoon meditates in the rain

> forests of the Western ghat that overlooks the Arabian Sea