KASARGOD: It may sound straight from the plot of a fantasy thriller. Two male members of the Nitonni clan of the Mogera community have opted to be ‘dead’to keep alive a four-century-old ritual. On Friday, 12 close-knit families of the Scheduled Caste community performed the funeral rites of Ananda and Babu. It was done to prepare them for a once-in-12 years ritual of Mahalingeshwara Temple at Nettanige in Bellur panchayat.
After 48 days of prayer and isolation, the duo will be spiritually fit to enter the mysterious and sacred Jambri cave, six kilometres away in Karnataka. They will prepare the cave for the visit of two Brahmin ‘tantris’to extract saffron-coloured soil. It will be distributed to devotees instead of sacred ash on the last day of the temple festival on May 3.
What transpires inside the cave is a well-guarded secret, but preparing the two men for the sacred role is elaborate and borders on the weird.
“Once selected for the revered role, they will be known as Kapadan,”said temple trust chairman N Damodaran Maniyani.
‘Swarna kavadi prashnam’ or golden cowrie divination is done to select them. “The Kapadan has to go through all stages of life before he is presented before the deity,”he said.
When the soothsayer picked Ananda, a bachelor, the temple authorities arranged his marriage to Geetha, a daily wage labourer. He was allowed to live with her for three days. Babu was the Kapadan 12 years ago. “That saved us some money,” Maniyani said.
Rules stipulate a Kapadan should never have carried a load on his head, ploughed the fields or spoken to menstruating women. “Something strange happened at Nettanige this time,” said Maniyani. A day before the cowrie divination last week, the Kapadan who joined Babu 12 years ago collapsed and was left paralysed on one side. “The condition ruled him out from this year’s ritual. He might have flouted the rules. But I am not sure.”
Ananda and Babu will now lead a prayer-centred life in a thatched hut in an inaccessible place for 48 days. “A designated person will provide them food and they will sleep on mats made of green coconut fronds,”he said. In the first week of May, the duo will enter the cave.
“We don’t know what is inside, but they will return with snakeskin and skeletons of the reptiles,” said Maniyani. The community members will bury the remains at a sacred snake grove near the temple.
After two days, the tantris will enter the cave. Maniyani said once a person is anointed Kapadan, the temple takes care of his expenses for life and he will be addressed by that title. “They will have to live by the three cardinal rules. And when they are dead, there will not be another funeral.”