Festival Memories

It was cold and windy when I came out of the hall. It was an enchanting evening of Kathakali. The trauma of Nala and Damayanti lingers on my mind.On the way back home my mind went back to the old days in my native place.Our temple which is the main temple of the erstwhile royal family have eight days of festival very year. On seven days during the festival there will be Kathakali enacted by great masters after midnight .We will be eagerly waiting for those days.From the first day itself all members of our family plus our neighbours will go to the festival.  We will start after having dinner and walk to the temple.By the time we reach there the procession of fifteen beautifully decorated elephants would have started accompanied by the Chenda ( Drum) melam.It is lovely sight to see the elephants in all their splendour in the oil lights.Elders will settle down in a comfortable place in the temple grounds.From then on we children are free to roam the whole place.

We will go near the elephants and watch closely how they eat the coconut leaves enjoying the Melam fanning their mighty ears.We also watch playing of various instruments in the melam with great wonder.Next thing in our routine is to go to the make up room  to watch the Kathakali artists sleeping while assistants are putting the make up .We watch the scene with great amusement. By the time we do all these the melam would be over.It will be well past midnight and it's time to see kathakali.

Though we do not know much about the complex proceedings our elders will tell us about the story of the day so that we will have an overall picture.We will watch the performance for some time after that we will become impatient.We will start roaming the temple grounds again.Now it is the time to see elephants sleeping lying on the ground with their trunks inside their mouths and snoring . It is our great chance to touch the gentle giants.We will see how each elephant sleeps and then go back to the performance .It would have reached it's climax by now.I clearly remember how horrified we children were on seeing the killing of Dushasana by Bheema.It was a great scene enacted by renowned masters.When the show will be over it will be dawn.Overcome by sleep we will start our walk back home. We children will sleep till noon dreaming about the elephants ,Kathakali, and the festival.The routing will go on for 8 days.

It was a really great time. Though this evening's show was good that experience have no substitute.