Pappanji rises from the ashes

It is not just our sins Pappanji has to grapple with – and eventually burn for, of course – but also how his looks are taken. If he was perceived to be too cheerful in 2017, the year when Cyclone Ockhi ravaged Kerala, this year it was alleged that he bore a close semblance to Prime Minister Modi. The organisers had a tough time mollifying belligerent bampots who decried it as a malicious attempt to malign in a region that was already seething with public resentment against the newly introduced citizenship amendment act. That everyone these days – and Pappanji historically – sported a beard and moustache didn’t cut much ice. Adding fuel to the fire was the sheeny green gown which the effigy wore that gave the hullabaloo a communal tinge.

A task for the boat builders

“It was not just fantoosh but also the cheapest cloth available at Rs 21 per metre,” said Bony Thomas who has been entrusted with the task of designing and decking up Pappanji. “And this being the biggest we ever built you could say our requirement was somewhat sizeable.” Bony, who is also one of the founders of the Kochi Biennale, has been a member of the organising committee ever since the art fair joined hands with the promoters of the Cochin Carnival which first put up Pappanji on the Fort Kochi beach. The event which began in 1984 from cues picked up from the raucous festivals of Goa of that time was shifted to the historic Parade Grounds as the beach eventually disappeared. The newly chosen venue couldn’t have been better. And not just for size.

“Burning the Pappanji is a Portuguese tradition (‘Pappanji’ means ‘grandfather’ in Portuguese) which thrived during the reign of the Dutch and the English who came afterwards,” Bony told me. “Now, when you gather for the celebration at Parade Ground, look around. What do you see? The St Francis Church built by the Portuguese, the VOC Gate of the Dutch East India Company and the snooty English Cochin Club.” It was indeed an eye-opener – I never knew that the ground, venue of everyday sporting and stage events, had so much heritage lying around. The four acre size of the ground is also handy considering the attendance has been bounding up with footfall this year pegged at over 100,000!

Bony – the man behind the show

As the stature of Pappanji went up over the years the attendance has also considerably swollen. Then it is not just about building a bigger effigy but a safer one as well. After the design was finalised, it was decided to hand over the construction to a team of competent boat builders due to the magnitude and intricacy involved. With the structure soaring 50 feet above ground and crowds milling close to the base there would be little room for error. Renowned local boat maker Shebal D’Souza and his team were entrusted with the task.

Work was on in clearly organised, compartmentalised full swing when I visited the site on New Year’s Eve: one team was engrossed in welding together the skeleton and the platform structure, another in charge of the form including the pot belly and the combustibles that went inside and a third was giving finishing touches to the now controversial face. As Kerala is governed by stringent green norms the makers had decided to use as much biodegradable materials as possible. Hence the pogonotrophy was largely coir-based. Large, dark, muscular men stood around the serene mask braiding matted hair tenderly, with great care. I was reminded of my growing up years in Nigeria where I had to do it for my younger sisters. But here I detected a quality that I was surely missing then – feeling and compassion.

Pappanji gets an eco-friendly braid

The Pappanji this year was going to be a literal head-turner. Before he was set alight, Pappanji would keep turning his head – somewhat like relishing the crowd whose sins and forgettable pasts he would be carrying into the other world. A mechanic from Fort Kochi had volunteered the idea and the rotating mechanism which he set up – for free! The machine would be destroyed completely once Pappanji went up in flames. But it was going to be something new for the thronging thousands; the effort and attention to detail explained the outgrowing of a tradition from myth to mythic.

Later that evening pursuing the founders of an ice cream soda with its own devout fan following, I met Madhavadas. An air condition mechanic, he was one of the stakeholders in the Pops brand of ice cream soda which a co-reveller discovered that evening mixed with rum like Anita O’Day and Roy Eldridge. To reach the ancient house where he lived with his extended family, with its peeling base for the holy basil plant in the courtyard, I wound through bylanes that were lit with rows of stars that shimmered from perimeter walls. Groups of youngsters, many of them shirtless, danced on the streets as music thrummed from rented speakers mounted on scooter backs. Madhavadas was a Konkani whose family had fled Goa to escape religious persecution in the 16^th century. As his daughter Roshni kept plying me gracefully with one bottle of the sweet soda after another, Madhavadas told me about Bodhan.

Pappanji goes up

Held during Holi in March, the burning of Bodhan is a temple ritual. A human form of average weight and height, the Bodhan, through pujas and chants, is made to embody all that has to be ridden of from one’s personal and social life. Even if he is made out to be a Svengali, unlike Pappanji, Bodhan is one lucky guy – he gets to marry the night before he is burnt.

“A symbolic marriage where the female is represented by the bough of an arecanut tree,” Madhavadas told me. The procedures and mechanics of eventual consummation I did not bother to ask considering he was the father-in-law of an old friend. Whether the ritual had religious overtones – after all it is eminently possible that the Konkanis would have met with some continued inquisition as Portugal held sway over Kochi as well – he wasn’t sure. But Madhavadas was almost sure about Bodhan coming before Pappanji as he was about Pappanji’s popularity soaring over that of Bodhan.

“It was the Western tradition of hugging along with wishing New Year,” Madhavadas said. “And in a land of untouchability you can imagine how the people would have embraced it.”

Madhavadas and the secret of ice cream soda

But when Pappanji went up marking the arrival of 2020, there wasn’t much hugging going around. This baffled Sonu Batra who had come from Pune to celebrate the New Year. I laid the blame squarely on the muggy climate than on the innate reticence of the Keralite who is not inebriated. Stringent police checks and patrolling had curbed drunken revelry to a great extent much to the relief of women and tourists. Earlier that evening Sonu had clambered up a fire engine; wearing luminescent red horns she posed for photographs from the top as a crowd watched nonplussed. After she came down the men in uniform happily hugged her and posed for selfies.

“It was sheer bliss, a novel experience,” she said. “I have been to a lot of festivals all over the world but nowhere have I seen a crowd so well-behaved.”

The next day talking to Christopher Walton, the sanguine owner of Walton’s homestay on Princess Street, I mentioned Sonu’s assessment of the crowd.

Novel experiences – Sonu Batra

“Except for a small incident on Lily Street, this year’s burning was largely peaceful,” Walton said. Then, like most locals, he stays indoors and watches the event on live television. He told me that for old timers like him Pappanji stood for a past they miss terribly. A bygone era which included impromptu gathering of friends in sitooteries, guitars brought out, ad lib singing and serenading.

The stinger scene 

As I stood talking to Walton about the information I collated about Pappanji from different sources, his wife Ambica leaned out from the window of the top floor community dining hall and asked whether I had heard about the burning of Mooshatta. While my blank look gave away the aphantasia I was grappling with she laughed and told me it was nothing but the burning of waste – an everyday affair.

But not a risible matter either.

“Every evening or morning, the waste we sweep off the ground will be accrued in a corner,” she explained as Walton returned to watering the hanging orchids. “We call this heap ‘mooshatta’ which means ‘someone obstinate or unreasonable.’” Setting fire to this, she informed, is nothing short of cathartic.

This, I am sure, also explained Pappanji’s rising popularity. 

Christopher and Ambica Walton