Gangamma's Visit to Tirupati, and the Continuum of Gender1

CHAPTER THREE THE GUISES OF THE GODDESS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE MALE: GANGamma’s VISIT TO TIRUPATI, AND THE CONTINUUM OF GENDER1 Don Handelman Telugu Tuesdays are uncertain times. On the fourth Tuesday after the Tamil New Year the Goddess Gangamma visits Tirupati, a small city in the Cittoor District of Andhra Pradesh. Tirupati spreads beneath the ridge on which Venkatesvara (Visnu as the Lord of Venkatam Mountain) has his ancient and wealthy temple. Gangamma is spoken of as his sister (e.g. Cox 1881: 323). The most prominent temple in Tirupati itself is that of Govinda Raja (also Visnu, e.g. Champakalakshmi 1981: 264), the elder brother of Venkatesvara, to whom he has lent money for his dowry. The founding of the Govinda Raja Temple in the twelfth century is often attributed to the sage Ramanuja; the town of Tirupati grew around the Temple pre- cincts (Reddy and Reddy 1990: 145). This area of the modern city, with its narrow gullies and caste-named streets, is sometimes referred to as ‘Old Tirupati’. Gangamma’s presence swells in Tirupati during the month of Vaisakha (May–June), a period of dry, searing heat, wind and dust, in the past of rag- ing epidemics, yet also the moment when transplanted rice shoots in the paddy fields are about to sprout in anticipation of the monsoon rains. Her visit is explicitly related to human fertility, the fertility of the soil, bringing rain, protection against disease and general well-being. Gangamma moves in with a family of weavers (Kaikala) whom she has enjoined to enact the story of her sojourn in Tirupati. Her myth is outlined in this essay. During the next week these weavers, with the aid of other castes, embody the story of the Goddess’s chase, destruction and transformation of the male. Just as the Goddess concealed herself in a sequence of guises 1 My thanks to the Tirupati collective—A. Anand, Joyce Flueckiger, V. Narayana Rao and David Shulman—for their encouragement, warmth and spirit; and to David Shulman for his sustenance and for a close reading of this essay. Living with Lea Shamgar-Handel- man has awakened me over the years to the manifold weaves and textures of gender. 64 don handelman to seek out the lusting lord who sexually despoiled all virgins, all ‘flower- ing blossoms’ (pushpavatis), so too the weavers take on these guises of the Goddess in her search for vengeance. Embodied in her guises the Goddess comes into increasingly close contact with human beings. Gangamma’s quest for the lascivious lord brings her into direct, unmediated contact with numerous households in Old Tirupati, and especially with their women. The entire cycle of guises is primarily a form of domestic ritual that brings the Goddess and families increasingly closer to each other. In terms that are not native to Tirupati, the progression of guises con- stitutes a causal sequence of ritual action (Handelman 1990: 22–62) that makes Gangamma increasingly present and active. Moreover, the God- dess’s relentless pursuit of the male corresponds with her emergence into full self-awareness in the world of human beings. As the male is destroyed the cosmos of the Jatra is feminized, and this female cosmos is one of bounty for all.2 The guises of the Goddess generate the transformation of the male. The Gangamma Jatra raises contradictions and ambiguities between the metaphysics and social norms of south Indian gender— between gender conceived as a continuum and its abrupt rupture into sharp difference in accordance with cultural roles. I will address these issues in the concluding section in which I argue that the vision of gender in the Gangamma Jatra contests those usually offered for south Indian women, goddesses and others, but that such alternatives (in this instance imagined through ritual) are not available in social life. I contend further that processes of gender and cosmos in this Jatra may have particular rel- evance for castes of the left-hand. In the concluding section my interpre- tation depends on taking the Goddess’s point of view, with all the hubris this entails. In this regard, Margaret Egnor’s (1984: 24) comment is to the point: ‘Hindu deities are not only symbols or tools which are manipulated by human beings to express certain ideas—such deities are actors, with a will of their own.’ Despite the supposed florescence in anthropology of the native’s point of view, south Indian goddesses in particular have had a poor, overly selective representation from their interlocutors. Gangamma’s visit to Tirupati ignites other domains of ritual activity at temples, within homes, and through the practice of personal vows to the Goddess. At the close of the Jatra the sequence of guises intersects 2 The commonest English translation of Jatra is ‘festival’. This translation is misguided and misleading. The signal connotation of Jatra is ‘movement’, and this is crucial to the rites of Gangamma. Therefore I use the term Jatra throughout this work..

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