THEYYAMS

Red
Red
Red
Red dress as the living embodiment of the goddess
Red sky flaming with fireworks
Red rain as fire floats slowly down-the post-explosion aftermath
Red faces flushed with excitement at the night's spectacle
Red noise of the drummers' passionate beats, enfusing the atmosphere with wild abandon
Red

Theyyams are traditional dances of spirit possession. The dancer literally becomes the god or goddess after three days of fasting and prayer, working himself into a trance that explodes into the public temple with an all night dancing frenzy. As the living embodiment of the divine, he brings blessings and good fortune amongst the people. Women rushed to shower money over his sweating body and receive blessings, whilst children followed behind him moaning and wailing...

Traditions of carnavalistic expression have long been a subject of interest in anthropology. Times where social boundaries are transgressed, social norms broken, and social roles reversed. Like the valve on a pressure cooker, these rituals can provide society with a sense of release, allowing a segeregated space of disobedience for continued obedience in the everyday world, a means of 'getting it out of your system' in order to allow the system to keep functioning.

Although the night's Indian audience seemed just as bemused and confused as I did, I thought back to the Indian society of a hundred years ago. Repressed by the British and confined within their own caste system to strict codes of behaviour, for them at least, the theyyam could have been exactly that moment of release and opportunity to go beyond the repressing boundaries of the everyday world.

And I looked again at the world around me today, where bodies are continually repressed in order to be 'civilised', where going 'wild' is seen as 'mad' and likely to get you sectioned. What is becoming of us without these spaces of unhibited expression? Without these moments of madness? Surely we need these moments of transcendence, to step away from the world in order to step back again more fully alive? Where have our spaces of the 'wild' gone?