Rajesh Vijayarajan Photography
Vayanattu Kulavan Theyyam, Kasargod, Kerala
This is a god.
I’m not saying this is a man dressed up as a god. I’m not saying this is a man who believes he is possessed by a god, or whose body has been inhabited by a god. I’m saying this is a god. In the Theyyam tradition, after the headdress—the mudi—is donned, the wearer gazes into a hand-held mirror and experiences mukhadarshanam, the seeing of the face, and becomes the deity represented by the costume in a literal way. This is a god.
Oh, there’s an element of theater involved, to be sure. And I suspect fewer and fewer people completely believe in the literal transmogrification into godhood. But Theyyam is an old, old ritual—as old as Hinduism itself. Six thousand years? At least. Eight thousand? Probably. Maybe ten thousand years. Maybe more. Throughout those centuries certain men of this region have been engaging in the dance of Theyyam. It requires rigorous mental, physical and spiritual preparations, it requires years of study in dozens of different fields, it demands a level of devotion and discipline hard to imagine—all focusing on that one moment when they put on the elaborate costume and look into that mirror and suddenly there’s a god looking back at himself.
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