Alleppey Mullackal Chirup

Come December, people think of Christmas!

Alleppeans remember with nostalgia Mullackal Chirup , the annual Temple festival at the Rajarajeswari temple, held every year in December!

More than the spiritual part of the festival, it is the gaiety of the market that appears from nowhere, along the main roads of Alleppey that attracts the thousands, babies to grannies! I am not forgetting the carnival, with the dare-devil drivers of the hell-well! I am yet to fulfill my ambition to become one!

As a little kid it was pure joy tagging along older women, crying for balloons of different colors and shapes, especially the magic variety that floated up above you! The hydrogen balloons made way for the balloon rabbits, which always landed on its feet, however much the brat in me wanted it flat on the ground! A year later the attraction was the cotton candy, affectionately called saliva candy!! In later years of my childhood I was amazed by the little boats that went zipping around in water buckets charged with just a drop of coconut oil and a wick light, producing the typical put-put of a real P8! I learned a great lesson in life when I stole one Anna, the equivalent of about 25 ps now, to possess one of these - a dream boy’s luxury cruiser! But alas, back home in hiding, it was a gallon of coconut oil and several match boxes, my cruiser never moved but for the waves created by my frustrated hands! Stolen Annas don’t get you anywhere!

A little older I would tag along with the ladies who went to look at the glittering glass bangles and other feminine things. But soon the interest in the bangles moved to the hands that wore them. Adolescence was a great time to spend during the Chirup festival. It is colorful and busy with young people thronging in from all over and all through the day. The procession with the caparisoned elephants and the percussion instruments is fantastic.

As the years go by and I get older I think of only the noise that come attached to festivals and wonder why as a nation we are so loud, my own church included. Don’t we all talk about pollution? But forget that noise can be as polluting as plastic and poisonous gases!

Gone are the days of enjoying the hands with beautiful bangles and the half saris.