A Journey to Ayyappa
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[The shock wave sent by Shabarimala Deva preshnam has not yet subdued. Actually it is only starting to reveal the many facets of the ugly, money hungry and lustful caucus surrounding the Ayyppa snnidhanam.
After the devaprshanam ….

Preiya Thanthri and Chinna Thanthri said, “ Deva Preshnam wasn’t good. ……. And Ayypaa will reveal the truth”.

Borad members Said, “Deva Preshnam was great, will go ahead with the findings…..and Ayyappa will reveal the truth”.

Astrologer who did DevaPrshnam Said, “Everything was perfect, except that I am not a brhamin …. And Ayypaa will reveal the truth”.

A group of astrologers (who did not get the chance to do the devaprshnam) said, “ Devaprshnam was a farce …………… And Ayypaa will reveal the truth”.

Actress said.” I did this that bla bla bla ……… And Ayypaa will reveal the truth”.

After the sex scandal …..

china Thanthri said, “ I went there for the pooja ( Actually he does this sort of poojas in a regular basis ) …………… And he dared to add Ayypaa will reveal the truth”.

Every body else said, ….Ayypaa will reveal the truth…..]


This is off-season for shabarimala, and so the news did not reach sannidhanam fast enough.

Lord Ayyppa untouched and unscathed by any of these, was in a deep meditation. He knew everything, but did not open his eyes, his meditation continued. Shanthi… Shanthi…

Unlike in shabarimala, news reached pumba on time, where Vavar , was deeply agitated by all these nonsense in the name of his only soul mate- his lord. At one point he even pulled up his sword, but later calmed down by the blissful presence of his lord with in him. And he decided to climb the hill to see his lord.

At Sannidhanam; Ayyappa was in his meditation. Vavar appeared with folded hands and said “ Sharanam Ayyappa”.

Ayyappa slowly and gracefully opened his eyes, happy to see his great friend , got up and embraced him, with affection.

Lord Ayyappa, “Dear friend, what made you come here and wake me up from my meditation?”

Vavar (his eyes were red with anger), “ Didn’t you hear about all those nonsense? You must have. You know everything.”

Lord Ayyappa ( Smiling) ,” what do you want me to do. Investigate”?

Vavar; “why not. Let’s investigate. There are women involved, since you are a brahmachari, I will take care of that part.”

Lord Ayyappa; “Okay. We do investigate. Shabari will accompany you to investigate the part where women are involved”

Vavar : “ Why shabari the illiterate, low cast? “

Lord Ayyappa; “She may be illiterate and low cast. But she knew me. When she knows me, she can know anything. And I myself will investigate the others.”

Vavar and Shabari walked off.

Lord Ayyppa was trying to enter the dream of Chinna Thanthri to find the truth. But he could not. Thanthri’s dream was full, mostly with strange women, Ayyappa hesitated to enter. Losing patience, Ayyappa finally sought the help of Carl Jung , who by now was elevated as the lord of dreams. Carl Jung rushed in and cleared thanthri’s dream for Ayyappa to enter.

Ayyappa slowly entering into Thanthri’s dream.

Thanthri; “ Who are you. Did I see you somewhere? Look familiar…. Can’t remember .. cannot remember”

Ayyappa: “what do you remember mostly then?”

Thanthri : “ Lot of things.. Its life you know.. Got to do a lot of things.. need money..money…money”
( a bunch of currency notes also entered into the dream space)

Ayyappa:” Where is this money from?”

Thanthri :” It always follows me wherever I go. I have a life long bond with money. You just have to born into certain families. That’s all. Money follows. Devotees give money. What does the lord need? He does not need money, just some ghee for abhishekam. But devotees , you know .. they come like marching ants.. Yes like ants.. they bring money ..a lot. They threw the money to my feet. I told you, money comes to me, and it is natural. ”

Ayyappa:” What you do with that money?”

Thanthri :”Its life , I told you. You know long poojas and those darshanam to devotees, make me tired. We need enjoyment too. So I spend money for that. I spend money for things I want, like pretty women.. (continuing with excitement) You want to know the other day……

Ayyappa withdrew himself from thanthri’s deram.

Now he is into the dream of a Devasowm board member.


Ayyappa:” How are the things?

Member : “ Fine thanks ..Busy .. to start the projects..”

Ayyappan : “why projects?”

Member : “ We need to do a lot of projects.. Rope way.. Buildings ..Construction.. Construction is the key. You know a member have only 3 years. We need to do maximum during the time. Money come from the projects.. money.. projects.. money.. projects..”

Ayyappa just turning away ..


Memebr; “Bye the way you look familiar. But Can’t quite remember.?”

Ayyappa disappeared from his dream to enter the dream of the Astrologer who did devaprshnam.

Ayyappa : “ Is all the stars doing okay?”

Astrologer:” Stars are fine. But it is the people who make all the issues for me”

Ayyappa “You thing you are innocent?”

Astrologer:” Off course, I am! Not only innocent but very efficient one too. See, do you blame a big corporate if they are loyal to their client and give what they want. NO..See .. here the board hired me, I gave them what they want. They are very happy with that. Aren’t they? Then what is the problem. I did justice for my client.. If the thanthri or someone else want something , let them hire me… see I am open“

Ayyappa: “ What about the stars. Don’t they suppose to tell the truth?”

Astrologer: ” Chey.. Chey.. Don’t make a fool out of yourself sir. Stars always said one thing .. only one thing.. that is
…..Deepa sthambum mhashcharyam .. Namukkum kittanam MONEY… that is it...”

It was almost morning, Ayyappa decided to enter the dream of a poor guruswamy who visits the sannidhanam every year and brings only a coconut filled with ghee.

There was a fog of confusion and helplessness filled in his dream space. Ayyappa entered through the fog, slowly.
On the glimpse of the delightful sight, the guruswamy jumped up from his bed with folded hands, not opening his eyes , out of fear that he might loose the vision of his lord
Guruswamy shouted in top of his voice “ Swamiyaee sharanamyyappa”

Ayyappan: (touching his forehead) “How you been?”

Guruswamy: ‘Never been better than this one moment, my lord. I have only one to ask , please don’t go away, please stay with me.. please lord..”

Ayyaappa.” I will stay with you. All the time.. With in you.. Look inward.. Well you already knows that.. I will always be with you my dear..”

Ayyappa disappeared into the fog..

Ayyappa back into sannidhanam. Going through the reports from Shabari and Vavar. He stood still. Closed his eyes for a moment,
Vavar could see a clear drop of ghee rolling down Ayyappa’s cheek, or was it a drop of tear. He turned his face away. Vavar have never seen his lord’s eyes wet. He was always the noble, unbeatable, victorious warrior.. Villaly Veeran.. But now they defeated him.. they all joined together… no not defeat … but the pain.. See my lord.. After all he too is a human avatar..

When vavar turned to look Ayyappa again, he found him with his bow and fine arrow. Ayyappa set the bow straight.. Positioned the arrow, then he went into a deep contemplation before sending the arrow facing the dark forest.

His arrow passed through the thick forest, went beyond mountains and rivers and finds a pristine place, in the middle of the virgin forest. A small valley surrounded by mountains.

“Here, this is my place”, Ayyappa said.

Away away away away from the lustful caucus, into the thick forest.
Ayyapaa sits down in his favorite koormasan.
A huge leopard started circling him as if to protect the sanctity of the place.
Ayyappa closing his eyes into a deep meditation…

He sits there deep deep deeep deep in the forest, deep in the mind of a seeker, hidden away by the thick forest…deep inside…you don’t even know that he is there.

Now to see him, the seeker has to cross the forest, the thick forests of his own mind.
Climb steep mountains of hurdles that stand in front of him, he has to endure the pain of facing his own fear to climb high. But he must.

Once he reaches there, the bhakta has to rise to the level of Ayyappa.

Yes you have to rise to his level.
High up
18 steps high.

If you can do that
And only if you can do that
You will get the dharshan of the lord.

Then the lord will call you by his own name “AYYAPPA”

He will then embrace the Bhaktha
And you will hear the secret, from his holy tongue, in his blissful voice.

The secret of ‘Tat Tvam Asi ‘.

Asokakumar Nair.

The peanut seller
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“It is easy”, Surendran said, “she always sleeps in the afternoons sitting under the tree with her legs stretched”. And the old lady could not see well too. Surendran was convincing holding ten paisa in his hand and others agreed to him, but I was a little afraid. Nothing happens. It is simple. He explained his game plan, you three stand here, behind the tree; I will go to the old mondi (the lame one), give her ten paisa and ask her peanut candy for one rupee. She will give four bars, one each of twenty-five paisa. She won’t know in the sleep and she cannot catch us later, how could she know who gave her this ten paisa. We stayed behind the tree; Surendran went down the steps leading to street from the school courtyard. It was easy to spot him from a distance as he wore red shirt and red trouser made of cheap cotton cloth. Only a few kids wore the school uniform, blue trouser and light yellow shirts. Students are only advised to wear school uniform, not a must, as many kids came to the school only for the afternoon lunch, wheat uppuma (boiled wheat tempered with oil, mustard seed and red chilly).

The Kadala moopathy’s ( Old peanut selling lady) house was just two furlongs away from the school on the opposite side of the road. Every morning before the school started she came and sat at the same spot, by the side of the steps leading to the school courtyard from the road. Her seat was made of old cloths folded several time for the cushion effect, in front of her was a polythene sheet to place her commodities. She had everything what a lower primary school kid desired for, peanut, hard candies, peanut candy bars, ripe and salted karaka (a wild fruit) in two small separate heaps. She also carried different types of pencils to write on the slate, like the hard pencil which lasts long, soft chalk like pencils in different colors, stylus like part of some sea creature (called sea pencil) etc.

The old lady had visitors all the time, Children and flies. Kids flock around her during the class intervals and on the lunch break, standing in a half circle around the polythene sheet with their eyes on colorful, sugary candies on the sheet. Most of the children went there to see the unwrapped and partially melted sugar candies, never had money to buy any, and then they meditated over their mental image of candies in the class rooms. Flies were a constant companion of her, swarming around the small heaps of sweets on the polythene sheet. To the greatest advantage of the flies, most of the time the old lady did not cover her items as it might obstruct the view of a potential buyer. Girls outnumbered boys whenever mondi had “chodokku” on her sheet. Chodokku is a wild flower in the shape of a small cup. Girls hold the open end of this cup with their thumb and index finger, blow air into it and gently hit the other side on their forehead by slightly releasing the grip to make a “tipk’ sound; some girls perfected this art with unmatchable dexterity. Occasionally some parents also came to her enquiring about their children, like how they were behaving around the school. To which Mondi said ‘tell them to use only the side walks, in the evening when they go home. You know that is the time the evening bus comes”.

Everybody called her either kadala moopathy or mondi. She did not have any other names. She never needed any other names as these two names distinctively and completely defined here for most people. She was lame, so the name mondi. She never complained to or cursed anybody for calling her by that name. She had accepted her deformity; then what is in a name. She is lame and she sold peanuts, and her two names told everything about her. If I tell you her name is mondi, you know how she walked and if I tell you her name is kadala mooppathy, you know what she did for a living. Which other name have this advantage. If I tell you ‘Valsalan’ was the name of a prominent person in my village, it does not give you any indication that he was a stringent communist and spent jail time during the emergency period, does it?

As he said, Surendran came back with peanut candy for a rupee for which he only paid ten paisa. He illustrated his triumph in detail while we all eat the peanut candy. But the celebrations did not last long, it was interrupted by a loud sneering of mondi. She shouted:- he is a thief. He cheated me. I thought it was a rupee. He cheated me, thief. He will suffer for stealing from me. I know him, the son of the sorcerer. He is the one who did it.

“Son of the Sorcerer” was not a curse. Surendran’s father was actually a sorcerer. Mothers called him home when their little ones had a fever, temperature or lingering common cold, as the first choice before they would take their children to the nearby primary health centre. He sits in front of the ailing kid with a handful of bhsamam (white ash) on a banana leaf and water in a kindi (samall spouted vessel to carry water for rituals ) ; uttering mantras holding his right hand stretched touching their forehead and sometimes snapping the fingers; and end it by applying the bhasmama on the forehead of the kid. But that was not the only kind of pooja he ever practiced. Occasionally he went out in the evening bus with strange people to perform his more vicious deeds and came back only in the morning. On those places he demanded rice and red clothes (pattu) for his rituals, both he always brought home after the witchcraft. That is the source of surendran’s red clothes.

No one else in the school wore red and red. Even in her half sleep, mondi was able to notice his red clothes, or was it the remnants of the mantra that his father uttered clinging to the red cloth and cheated him by telling the truth to Mondi.

“I am not going to let him go”, Mondi said.

“I know who his friends are too. I will hold them here until their parents come. I will tell their parents. I don’t let them go. I can’t loose money like this.”

“ I have three stomachs to feed. “

The two other stomachs she had to feed were of her grand children. Mondi’s daughter was once married to man from a distant village. He was an agricultural laborer. Mondi thought it would be a great help, when the couple decided to stay with her in her house. Thus he became the man of the house and often found work in and around the village. He hung his spade, the only asset he ever possed, on the front wall of the mud house every day after work. And when there was no work, the spade hung there all day on the wall revealing the proud presence of the man of the house , while he spend his time playing cards and drinking hooch. After their two children were born, time was really bad and some times he had to find work in the town and came back home only occasionally, until one day, he left for work and never came back. The spade, together with the mondi’s hope( of his return), dangled from the mud wall for some more time. But a few months later mondi’s daughter ran away with another man leaving the two kids under the sol responsibility of mondi. Next day Mondi sold the spade to a passerby for five rupees.

Mondi’s shouting dominated my thoughts for the day. And truly, in the night too.
“I know who his friends are too.
I will tell their parents. “
Mondi’s anger was mostly against the real culprit. But I too got frozen at the thought that mondi would leak this new to my father, may be to get her money fast enough.
Surendran pretended that he was not afraid of mondi’s threats and even said, he would seek the help of Dharman ( people called him ‘Pottan’ as he was deaf) to silence her. Pottan is the only one who can challenge mondi, and he would do anything if I could buy him two cigarettes, he said.

No, I told him. It is not going to work. Give her the money back. That is the only way, get it from the pocket of your father, when he come back from one of his nightly duties and sleep late in the morning. Pottan cannot help. Because I knew what mondi was capable of.

Once in a while there were other people, mostly young ladies from the neighborhood, challenged mondi’s monopoly of selling things in the school compound. They arranged more items and sat on the other side of the school steps. But with some magical powers of mondi, children never went to the new seller in good numbers. In a day or two, or a week to the maximum, they all left wrapping up their business and counting their losses. They all said one reason for their failure, unbearable smell. The pungent smell of urine drove them all away.
“That old witch urinated in our spot,
How can we sit there, in that smell?
We cannot do that to her.
It is public road” They said.

Mondi never replied to their allegations or cursed them back.
“I have to feed three stomachs” , She said quietly.

But it was true that Mondi was ,often seen, urinating on the road side by standing up, like men do, in broad daylight. Nobody ever bothered her when she did that, except for Pottan, who howled at her. Mondi cursed him with filthy words, dipped in her urine to make it acrid enough to penetrate his deaf ears. That also caused his sound to die in his throat before it came out, when he tried to howl in response and made him deaf and dumb, for a brief period.

I knew Pottan was no match for Mondi. And Surendarn knew that too.

He brought a one rupee coin next day, stolen from his father’s pocket. Unlike mondi, his father never knew how much he had in his pocket or how much he paid for hooch previous night. He threw the coin into mondi’s lap as if his is taking a revenge at her. Mondi in return did not say a word and give him four candies for ten paisa, which he paid the previous day. Mondi never told the incident to anybody else, as I afraid.

Why would she? She cared only about the three stomachs that she had to fill every day.

Mazha(rain) saint is story written about a man who used to visit our village during my childhood. We was not a real saint(sanyasi) , he was not a beggar either, but with some twist of karma he was caught in between the two. This is my humble effort to remember him.




Mazha swamy (Rain Saint)
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I don’t know whether I liked him or not but we, all the children in the village, were curious about Mazha swamy. He had a long flowing white beard and he covered his thin fragile body with saffron colored robes which gave him the look of a good sanyasi from the cartoon stories. The stick he carried was mostly used to chase away the barking dogs than to aid his walking. On some occasions he used to bark back at the dogs instead of wagging his stick that made some people believe that he knew how to talk to the animals. He also carried a conch which he occasionally blew. For us he was a character from the story book and that, I believe, was the main reason for our curiosity towards him. It was augmented by the fact that we never knew where he lived, where he came from or when exactly he would mysteriously appear next time. He offered us sweet smelling holy ashes (bhasmum) every time he came by.

He used to come at an interval of at least two weeks with his prediction of when we would have our next rain as a prelude to his appearance. He would say “it would rain after the “Vavu” or “after the kollamkodu thookkam” and some times with a stern face “there won’t be any rain soon, people are becoming more arrogant and rude. They shall be tested ( iththavana avere kanakkinu pareekshikkum) , but don’t worry the good ones would be spared “ . Many a times the rain did not respect his holy predictions and it came down whenever it liked. Many people did not believe in his rain predictions, and for that matter, they did not believe in what Aakashavani said on rain either. But on rare occasions when his prediction came true, my grandmother was the first one to point out that ‘mazha swamy said so’.

Some people said he has a house and a family somewhere. But for some he was just a reprobate used to sleep on the verandas of street side shops. Some even said that he used to sleep in graveyards, and that was where he got his ashes from. Some told their children that mazha swamy carried human bones in his bags and would give away their misbehaving kids to mazha samy as a trick to discipline them. But stories like this did not prevent us from looking at him as good samnyasi or taking bhasmaum from him.

It was not only the kids, but many grownups also did not know much about him as they did not answer our many doubts about mazha swamy. But unlike the children the grownups didn’t pay much attention to him. I even thought that in the complex world of grownups mazha swamy did not even exist. They gave him a glass of rice, which he usually takes as bhiksha, every time he visited with out even looking at his face long enough to see how the wrinkles appeared on his sun burned face to form the outer contours of a conch when he said ‘shanbhu mahadeva” with a smile after receiving the offering. Then he blared his conch in full sound, gave out bhasmum to everyone and took leave. I always thought they could easily peep into one of his many bags when they get closer to give him rice at least to confirm that it did not have any bones, but no one ever did, and so, what he actually had in his bags (bags are made out of old cloths folded and stitched) remained as a mystery for the rest of our lives.

Later mazha swamy came less frequently, like once in a month or even less often. We, kids, failed to realize that his visits were less frequent as we were not counting his appearances. Elders said he is getting too old, that is why. Mysteriously, the rain was also became less frequent about the same time. Some said it was nothing to do with the Mazha swamy’s less frequent visits, but the after effect of cutting down trees and global warming, because for them that was only logical. I did not understand that logic, why should I loose my rain for some one else cutting down trees. Wouldn’t the good ones be spared while the bad ones were tested as mazha swami always said?


As kids, we did not recognize that mazha swamy was getting old as he looked the same with his white flowing beard, fragile body and saffron cloths on it. But we noticed that he started walking slowly and used the stick for walking rather than scaring the dogs away. He adopted a new technique of standing still when an unfriendly dog approached until the dog went away or lost its curiosity. He said it always worked, but I knew that he mastered the language of silence and was silently conversing with the dogs to make them pacify.

After one unusually heavy rainy season, Mazha swamy stopped coming. My mother said he asked her to give him some cooked food (which he never did before) in one of his last visits. Now, years later I cannot clearly remember his face as every time I try, it is only a conch that comes to my mind in the place of his face. But the flagrance of his Bhasmum, which was his only offering, is still fresh in my memory. May be that is the only thing he had to offer to the world.


Asokakumar Nair.