When the World Becomes Female: Guises of a South Indian Goddess

6. Wandering Goddess, Village Daughter: Avilala Reddys

139 WANDERING GODDESS, VILLAGE DAUGHTER: AVILALA REDDYS Although many Tirupati residents say Gangamma cannot be kept at home because she is too ugra, too much to bear, several families and individuals claim exception to this generalization: “While others can’t bear her, we can and do.” One such family is the Reddy family of Avilala village, only a few kilometers from Tirupati, whose forefathers are said to have found Gangamma as a little baby in the paddy fields outside of the village and who raised her as a daughter. By extension, the village itself considers her to be a daughter of Avilala. In its movement from village to village in Chittoor District throughout the first month of the Tamil new year, the jatara finally completes the migration (with considerable drama) from Avilala to Tirupati. The distance between the boundaries of village and town has shrunk considerably between my first visit to Avilala in 1992 and my last one in 2010; village and town have grown into each other, with only a few fields keeping them apart. In 1992 an auto ride to the village from Tirupati seemed extravagant, but by 2010 there were many autos and jeeps plying the road between. Nevertheless, there is still a distinctly village ethos in the quiet lanes of 6 THOSE WHO BEAR THE GODDESS 140 Avilala—in which buffaloes and goats wander and rest next to stacks of fodder—and their surrounding paddy fields. The jatara as celebrated in Avilala is known by outsiders primarily for the buffalo sacrifice (bali) that is performed for Gangamma in her thousand -eyed clay form. But village residents themselves give equal significance to the exchange of Gangamma’s bride’s gifts (called pasupu-kumkum, shorthand for the entire gifting ritual, which includes a sari, blouse piece, bangles, flower garlands, and pasupu-kumkum) between the families of Avilala Reddys and Tirupati Kaikalas.Together,these two rituals—bali and pasupu-kumkum—identify Gangamma as both as an ugra goddess,who fills the uru with awe and whose expanding form can be satisfied only with bali, and a daughter with whom Avilala residents engage in familial relationship . Gangamma is both a wandering goddess who settles for a short time during the jatara and a village daughter who never entirely settles, as she goes back and forth between her natal home and that of her in-laws. Gangamma as the Thousand-eyed Goddess In villages, Gangamma and her gramadevata sisters traditionally live at the boundaries of the uru in the form of simple stone heads or uncarved stones, traces of kumkum on them indicating their periodic worship, or as iron tridents stood up in a row, sometimes under a thatched roof covering.1 Once a year, for her jatara (or more often if there is drought or particular Gangamma illness in the village), villagers clear the weeds from around, wash, and apply pasupu-kumkum to Gangamma’s images and those of her sisters. And then Gangamma is called into the middle of the village, given the form of the thousand-eyed goddess, and offered buffalo and/or goat sacrifice. She becomes Middle-of-the-Street (nadi vidhi) Gangamma. In Avilala, Gangamma’s ugra, expansive jatara form is built over a simple little stone hidden in the niche of a low cement platform on the main street that passes through the middle of the village.2 During the rest of the year,this middle-of-the-street small form is acknowledged only by a small clay oil lamp that is lit daily.3 However, as the jatara approaches, one can imagine the goddess expanding with the increasingly heated days; she needs a bigger form. On the day before the Avilala jatara begins, a threeto four-foot clay mound is built by men of the washmen (Cakali) caste Wandering Goddess, Village Daughter 141 out at the village tank and then moved to the middle of the uru. Here, the mound becomes the thousand-eyed goddess when tens of metallic eyes are embedded in the clay and she is adorned with jewelry given to her by villagers (and, one year, the anthropologist). A thatch-woven “hut” is built over her, with an opening on one side so that the goddess faces east. Women who have made vows to the goddess—asking for fertility, successful childbirth, or general prosperity for the home—offer cotton-print saris and lay them over the hut. (Note that...