Comments, Opinion and Write ups from our Members....
Please contribute yours in English or മലയാളം
M.P.Mridula writes.......
Theyyam was the high point of our summer holidays .The excitement would build up on the day of the theyyam with the repeated drumming that we could hear at Puthiyavalap.By evening we kids would be super excited waiting to go to the main Makkuni house for the theyyam.After the theyyam too we would still be enamored by the experience and then we would enact theyyam s on our own...mimicking bits and parts of the thottam paatu we had picked up, "Mundayadan makkuni karthakanmare.....etc " .We would also add our twists while playing...I remember once we interviewed one of our mock theyyams.
The last time I was at the theyyam, I remember one of the Vayanatukulavan's assistants came up to us and requested us to take a really good photo of the theyyam at the Kollam and to WhatsApp it to him.The experience of watching the theyyam just grows better and better every year.😀
THEYYAM: ADDENDUM
( Sri.P.M.K.Nambiar)
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In the theyyam write up by Sri.M.Karunakaran Nambiar, it is written that ‘malayan’ community performs all theyyams. Till late 1980,they had no koalam at all. They were only drumming (chendakottal). Up on their request, during Appanu(Anandan Nambiar) ammoman’s time prashna chinta was done and which got approval, thus ‘Gulikan’ was Introduced. That is the only Malayan koalam, we have in Makkuni. Appanu ammoman was managing the kottilakam at that time.
ABOUT DHARMADAIVAM: In Makkuni Dharma Daivam is always seen as karanavar theyyam. However,it is our Paradevatha, which is our kuladaivam. All over Malabar which ever kottam/kaavv has a bhagavathi kolam, paradevatha is always the ‘mathavu’, in our case thayiparadevatha (Mother Goddess).
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With paradevatha’s blessings, the family’s fame, “vamsha vardhana”, “sambal samridhi”and the well being of the tharavadu and its members, is taken care of.
VANNAN COMMUNITY: They still follow marumakkathayam(matriarchal society). They were very famous in the olden times for ‘bala chikilsa’. They have glorious ancestral back ground. They have four koalams at Makkuni .
The first theyyam was performed in chirakkal kovilakam approximately 350 years back by Manakkadan gurukkal – the chief guru of this community. He is highly revered by vannans and he has a memorial at Thrikkaripoor. All community members go to this place and take blessings before starting the theyyam season.
Manakadan gurukkal was a mandrikan, poet, vaidyan, and a great theyyam artist. He had performed all the 39 theyyams (onnu kura nalpathu) in the Chirakkal kovilakam, and for the first time received pattum valayum from the thamburan.
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