Maariyappan by Praveenlal Kuttichira

Maari was not an unfamiliar name for Dr. P. The word always reminded him about rain. Malayalam word for torrential rain is pemaari. It brought destruction and death along with it always. No monsoon ever passed off in Kerala without Pemaari. Being a doctor, it reminded him the killer epidemics too. He always knew that all these originated from the name of Goddess Devi. Maari; as he understood was Devi in her furious form.

In Dr.P’s neighbouring village there was a Mariamman Kovil; temple dedicated to Goddess Mariamma. The festival days of that small temple were full of excitement to him as a child. There would be fire walking, dancing with burning coal in the palm, Komaram repeatedly whipping own body etc, etc. But the brutal slaughter of Goat and sipping the blood from the neck of Caracas kept him away from the scene when he grew up.

The name Maari was very familiar to him, but the name Maariyappan was new. Still Dr. P could recognise it as the name of Lord Siva, the husband of Goddess Parvathy. From the childhood days his understanding was Lord Siva is ‘Samhara murthy’, the guardian of destruction. Anyone with that name could be a dangerous brute; he convincingly presumed. But when the patient Maariyappan was brought before him for the first time during the ward rounds, everything astonishingly appeared in the opposite. The old man Maariyappan was short, frail and docile.

Those were Dr. P’s early days of job in the lunatic asylum. That was his second posting and he was not out of his freshness of studies. On those days decades back, everything was different in lunatic asylums. It was positioned exactly below the buttocks of the sprawling fortress, squatted on a hillock. The place received its name literally from the rocks and jackals living there. The vast campus was encircled with a tall compound wall. The only gate available looked like a mammoth grey screen. Once closed from inside, the whole construction had a menacing appearance of an old haunted fort. Even during day time nobody other than inmates and staff were allowed to go beyond the front office building. That relatively new building provided outpatient wing, doctors’ room and administration office. The doctors stayed in that front building only. A rare visitor of an inmate lunatic has to seek permission from the chief doctor. If the chief is pleased to issue the chit ‘show’, the concerned patient will be brought to the visitor by the staff. No one can go inside to meet anyone in the wards.