Chettikulangara Kettukazhcha: the hundred-foot chariots of Kumbha Bharani

The Chettikulangara Devi temple, near Mavelikkara in Alappuzha, is thought to be some twelve centuries old and is dedicated to Sree Bhadrakali. For most of the year it is a busy but ordinary temple. Once a year, at Kumbha Bharani, it stages one of the most astonishing sights in Kerala.

The Kettukazhcha

Kettukazhcha means, roughly, “the tied-up spectacle.” For the Kumbha Bharani festival, in February or March, the villages around the temple build thirteen colossal edifices — six huge decorated temple-cars called kuthira (horses), five chariots called theru, and towering effigies of Bhima, Hanuman and Panchali. Some rise as high as a hundred feet. In the evening the image of the goddess is carried out to where they stand in the paddy fields, and under lights and festival sound the sheer scale of them is meant to awe.

An insult answered

Legend traces the temple, and the rivalry of spectacle, to a slight. Local chieftains, it is said, went to the festival at the older Koypallikarazhma Bhagavathy temple nearby and were humiliated and mocked there. Stung, they resolved to build their own Bhagavathy temple at Chettikulangara — and the grandeur of its festival can be read as a lasting answer to that old insult.

Kuthiyottam

The festival’s other great ritual is Kuthiyottam, understood as a symbolic offering to the goddess. Young boys, trained for it over days in the community, are decked with silver wire and, holding an arecanut-tipped rod aloft, carried in procession to the temple. The whole Kumbha Bharani complex of rituals is being considered for UNESCO’s intangible-cultural-heritage recognition.

Visiting Chettikulangara

The temple is near Mavelikkara in eastern Alappuzha, easily reached from Kayamkulam or Haripad. Details are on the Chettikulangara place page; the district is on the Alappuzha hub.