It's Pooram season! Pooram means "festival" in central Kerala, and festival here means elephants. Lots of elephants wearing gold head ornaments, and estatic dancers holding fans and umbrellas riding on top of the elephants as they are paraded around, in, and through, throngs of people. We are proud sponsors of our local Pooram festival. There are several Pooram festivals throughout central Kerala, each features a different styles of dancers, but elephants are present at all Pooram festivities. The Cheruthuruthy Pooram includes five groups of dancers, musicians, and elephants, each originating in different villages.Early in the morning of the Pooram festival day, our villages' hired elephants parade past our house, accompanied by a cacophony of pounding chenda drums. The elephants for Pooram must have both tusks and must have the temperment to cooperate with humans. Keralites say that the pounding chenda drums and the whining brass horns sooth the elephants who "dance" to the music.
Hailed by local firends, we join the crush of the parade, avoiding the elephants' plodding feet. We march slowly to the Bhagavaty Goddess temple, surrounded by dancers, umbrella holders and exuberant young men. At the temple the elephant brigades
from several villages gather and thousands of people crowd around the temple. In all, 27 elephants plod through the central plaza, and line-up in front of the temple.Drums and horns blare while dancers frenetically spin and stamp in the dust. Women in white and gold saris gather together in groups under the shade trees while boys and young men swagger through the central plaza laughing and boasting with their friends.
This Porram festival concludes in the running of the bulls. Not real bulls, but papermache effigies, which are run, violently, through the crowded temple grounds. This is q uite a scene and not reccomended for anyone weak of heart or lungs.
From 2003-2004 Grady Gauthier and Justine Lemos attented several Pooram festivals in Thrissur District, Kerala, including their own villages' Pooram near Cheruthuruthy.
