A Church Festival in Kerala With Elephants In Their Procession

Kottekad is a small village in the Thrissur district of Kerala, India. The church here is one of the oldest in Kerala, known to be built in 1000AD. The church festival holds a special place for the way it is done for ages.

Church festivals dedicated to the patron of the church is very common in Kerala. These are known as “Perunnal” to the general public. What makes Kottekad perunnal different is the presence of elephants. Let me tell you why it is so.

A Normal Perunnal

Normally, for a perunnal, other than religious services, there will be a ceremony where the arrow (that indicate the arrows thrown at St. Sebastian) is taken into every parishioner's house. This happens with the background of a music band, which is normally playing songs with clarinets and other instruments.

Once it reaches to every house, it is then taken to the church with a procession of people and then there will be a final music performance by all the bands that gather from different parts of the parish (the parish territory is divided into different units on the basis of the region).

Kottekad Perunnal

During Kottekad perunnal it happens a bit different. This procession includes elephants that carry “thidambu”, which is an arch-shaped deity inscribed piece of wood. This ends with a “kudamattam” which is a competition where colourful umbrellas made out of decorated fabric is being displayed from two sides of the parish. These two sides are divided again by the direction, east and west part of the church.

What makes this interesting is, all these rituals are followed in the festivals followed by Hindu religion. During Thrissur Pooram, one of the famous temple festivals that attract many around the world to Thrissur, you can see a similar pattern of the events.

No other church has any of the above-mentioned rituals during their perunnal. It is not just an interesting thing but an integration of culture in the old times when Christianity came to Kerala. I love how these customs are still followed today. Not that I am a fan of using elephants, I have seen how good they are treated and loved by people.

These elephants are brought to Kottekad during these days and fed here. It was one of my childhood experience to have them in the backyard of my father's house for a day. They are fed with bananas, palm leaves, and other food. There are people who take care of the elephants. Every elephant has its own caretaker, they are trained and the elephant normally responds to their commands. 

But, after all, they are forced to be in the middle of a huge crowd and most of the times there are firecrackers and noise around, which I don’t think elephants enjoy much. These days there are strict rules around the care and protection of them while bringing for such festivals.

One other program soon after this “kudamattam” is the “laksham padakkam” or “a lakh of fireworks”, where one lakh number of firecrackers are lit in a chain. With the current restrictions, the strength of these firecrackers has been reduced.

What follows is a drama by a selected drama troup and other cultural performances.

Personally,

This happens every year and my grandparents never missed it. They were excited about this every year. Once when we were discussing how they decided to come back to Kerala to settle down instead of Lucknow they said, you don’t get this kind of festivals and lifestyle anywhere else!

Location: [//]:# (!steemitworldmap 10.567590 lat 76.192915 long kottekad church d3scr)

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