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73 ChAPTER 3 Possession and the Bride Emotions, the Elusive Phantom of Social Theory Vijaya of Katalkarai Ūr, Kanyakumari I met Vijaya in 1983.1 She was then a young bride. She and her husband, James, lived in a somewhat makeshift fashion with her married sister and the sister’s household in the coastal village of Katalkarai ūr in Kanyakumari District , Tamil Nadu. Villagers who knew of my interest in possession referred me to Vijaya since she was known to have been suffering spirit attacks. The following account was pieced together by me on the basis of what I heard from Vijaya, her husband, and James’s sister. Episode One of Spirit Possession: The Death of the Father Vijaya’s first spirit attack had come one year after the death of her father. The family consisted of five girls, two of whom had married, one of them into Katalkarai ūr. Vijaya’s family were Mukkuvar by caste—as were the people of the fishing villages of Kanyakumari—but belonged to a community of Mukkuvars who live and work away from the coast. Such “inland Mukkuvars ” form a part of a community of fish traders living in the old market townships of Kanyakumari. A growing number of Mukkuvar men in these townships have turned to jobs as salesmen, car mechanics, drivers, and employees in footwear manufacturing. Vijaya, like her married sister before her, worked for a cashew company. The death of the father threw the family into poverty. Ahousehold of mother and three unmarried daughters faces a particularly vulnerable future. Each of the unmarried girls must be equipped with large sums in dowry if they are to successfully contract marriages; and marriage is os- 74 CHAPTER 3 tensibly the precondition for any kind of future security for women. Vijaya’s mother went back to work as a fish trader at this point, while Vijaya tried to earn some money for the household by selling cooked foods from the home. She still worked at the cashew company, but the extra money she earned was barely enough to cover a few small expenses. One year after her father’s death, when Vijaya was eighteen, she was struck mute. Family and neighbors tried to revive her, burning braziers of scented coal (cāmpirāṇi) in her presence. Her eyes did not open for two days. Finally, a Catholic priest was called in to pray over her. Her eyes opened, but she remained mute. Her family then took her to a hospital. The doctor there diagnosed Vijaya’s problem as a nervous complaint. He asked her to stay on the premises, and after nine days she began to speak. The doctor was paid 500 rupees—a high expense for a poor widow. But the symptoms recurred in a fortnight. The family now began to suspect sorcery and turned to a Hindu cāmiyar, or “mendicant,” who prayed over a tāyittu (a talismanic protective thread), which was then worn around Vijaya’s waist. At a Hindu temple, near the site of a major regional weekly market, a healer, in a state of trance, revealed to the family that Vijaya was being troubled by Icakki Ammaṉ, the regional goddess. For five weeks in a row the family returned to the temple. By this time Vijaya had been mute for forty-five days. At this point, one of Vijaya’s married sisters, who lived on the east coast of Tamil Nadu, wrote of the miracles in her district since a cūrucaṭi (cross) had been set up in honor of Sahāya Mātā. Just as Hindu deities are worshipped as particular to a place and sacred territory and are credited with attributes suited to specific human purposes, so also are the Christian deities. These shared features help explain the much-noted fluidity with which people are able to cross formal religious boundaries when seeking cures. The Virgin Mary, who is worshipped as Mātā, or the Mother (see Ram 1991b for details), can be worshipped in many places. She has a shrine dedicated to her in Kanyakumari itself. But Vijaya’s sister was reporting the particular power attributed to Mary at the shrine of Sahāya Mātā (the Mother Who Helps), in the east-coast town of Tirucentūr. Despite the distance, Vijaya and her mother journeyed to Tirucentūr, where Vijaya’s mother made a vow to feed many people if her daughter was cured. At the shrine, a japa mālai (prayer...

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