Heroine’s Best Friend: Nature, Metaphor, and Animism in Viralimalai Kuravanji
Portraying a heroine with a parrot as her friend and confidant has been a prominent visual tradition in the myths of the Hindu pantheon. This imagination has also trickled down to popular comic representations for children in publications like the Amar Chitra Katha. A lonely princess who is denied friends due to her status, befriends a caged parrot. The parrot is not just her companion but helps the princess navigate the deceptive world of marriage. When released out of its cage, the parrot elegantly perches on her shoulder and guides her to make the wisest decisions. This act of befriending a beautiful bird not only makes the princess wise but adds a feminine grace to her persona by making her delicate and enigmatic. Apart from parrots, she is also accompanied and helped by other birds including cuckoos and swans, as well as inanimate entities such as the sea and the moon. While some of these are depicted in visual culture, they commonly take form in performance practices such as Bharatanatyam.
No human friends can parallel this friendship as these beings are far more intuitive and responsive to the needs of the heroine. Perhaps this is because a heroine is preferred to be pictured as close to nature as possible where she can be compared to such beings. Usually, these representations also give her innermost desires a form of articulation drawing from the metaphor of nature.
Reading the Tamil poem Viralimalai Kuravanji written by Chevvur Vadumu Vaithyalinga Kavirayar sometime in late 17th century or early 18th century, it becomes clear that a lovestruck heroine’s lamentations to beings from nature are a secret message meant to be decoded, seeing as she will never reveal the truth about her erotic yearnings to another person. To give a brief overview of this poem, the heroine Valamohini falls in love with Lord Murugan when he is on his ceremonial procession around the city of Viralimalai. She pines for him and does not know whether he reciprocates her feelings. After a rich description of her pangs of love, she finally confesses her feelings to her friend Pangi. Pangi calls upon the services of a soothsayer – a kurati – to foretell the heroine’s future. Once the kurati arrives, Valamohini asks her about her lineage, practices, and the places she has travelled, in response to which the heroine receives detailed answers concerning the kurati’s food habits, the rivers that flow in her land, the mountains the kurati has visited, and much more. Towards the end, the kurati foretells that all signs point towards the hero’s arrival, and advises Valamohini to accept his garland of cadamba flowers to establish their union.
Through the length of the poem, tropes of nature signify intimate feminine desire and Valamohini’s thirst for union with her lover. For instance, the heroine falls in love with Lord Murugan when she sees his cadamba flower garland during his evening procession. And this thread continues till the very end when the heroine is advised to accept his offer of the garland, in a gesture that can be read as her inviting him into her quarters. Similarly, there are many other metaphors and similes used to voice her erotic desires – the moon, the breeze, a cuckoo, a sea with raging waves, and a swan – before she speaks to her friend Pangi who eventually calls for the kurati. Through animism, these tropes take a new form: the heroine speaks to these beings as her equals who also reciprocate her calls by helping her.
When two entities with different exteriorities are understood to share a similar interiority, an instance of animism arises. This can be read as a continuity of souls but discontinuity of bodies which fosters a relationship between a human and a non-human being. Inhabiting the same society, and therefore navigating similar social codes, the heroine confides in non-human beings first about
her love, because she feels they would understand her pining better than any human friend. In a feudal patriarchal society where women’s desires are left unheard or prohibited, she takes recourse to connecting with beings from nature whose interiority is similar to hers. In the poem in question, Valamohini speaks to the moon, even though she imagines it as a man simply because she finds him capable of understanding her longing:
Oh Moon, you were born with a woman when the milk ocean was churned
Yet, you choose to arouse this burning desire in me
Although you accompany my lord,
You pass me by without helping me…
Your waning is as much as a curse to me as it is to you,
For I can’t conjoin with Velmurugan,
Your aid for my union will not decrease your masculinity,
And yet, you choose to torment me without your help
(Chandrika 2007: 14; Translation mine).
Similarly, she pleads with the cuckoo to call out for her when her Lord comes and with the swan to help her in the way it once helped Damayanti as her messenger. She angrily calls out to the breeze who is evoking desire in her. She talks to the sea whose waves resemble her raging yearning, spelling out all that they have in common:
You and I have conch and pearls,
Waves comes crashing into you like they are thrashing in me
Shapely peaks and lightning form your contours just like mine..
(Ibid: 17-18; translation mine).
Valamohini also implores the sea to tell her what she needs to do when she meets her Lord. She is intertwined with every current of nature – from a gust of wind to the call of a cuckoo – that pricks her heart and makes her attuned to her sensuality.
Since her desires are taboo, it is only under the garb of nature metaphors that her libidinal wants are voiced. The allegory extends to the figure of the kurati as well, as she is a seer who closely interacts with nature, an unconventional and prophetic figure whose magical prowess empowers her to understand nature’s language. In the poem, when the kurati describes her practices, she mentions that their community drives animals out of people’s land (Ibid: 32) and has the power to control tigers and tuck them under their armpits. She can transfigure a cat into a tiger and vice versa. She can make lions dance like monkeys, turn bitter fruits into sweetest mangoes, and make wooden dolls laugh (Ibid: 43). Additionally, the most unlikely things take place in her land – tigers and cows drink water together and cats do not hunt mice (Ibid: 36). Preparing to read the heroine’s palm, the kurati describes a spirit manifesting in front of her:
Mohini (woman spirit) appears to read your palm,
As her anklet bells jingle, her bosom glistens like a fresh bouquet with evening dew
She nears me, the bee-like Kuravanji (kurati)…
(Ibid: 51: translation mine).
While the heroine yearns for union with her Lord by speaking to and comparing herself with nature, the kurati is likened to a bee beckoning to the Mohini, who is like a flower, offering answers to the heroine. Phillipe Descola elaborates on the need for metamorphosis to enable interaction between two entities separated by different exteriorities. Animals and plants communicate with humans through dreams and visions. Inversely, humans transform into animals, like shamans, to converse with non-human beings. Metamorphosis allows for change in perception as the position of observation is modified. Although the transformation is performative, the notion of changing forms is believed to allow communication between the two entities. Perhaps the kurati is in a state of trance, not unlike the shamans, to interpret the message relayed by the mohini. But, this metaphorical transformation is crucial in order for the message to be successfully received. The poem dwells upon this very transformation which allows communication between the kurati and the nature spirit. Finally, the kurati prophesies that the hero’s arrival is assured since the breeze and the cawing of a crow signify as much. Before leaving, she tells Valamohini to accept the cadamba garland and cement her union with Murugan.
The poem, while displaying the magical ways of the kurati, showcases the societal limits that are imposed upon a woman’s desires and yearnings. She becomes the heroine only to pine for her masculine lover, but her expressions are constrained and veiled by metaphor to retain the ascribed value of purity. Although it is the kurati who is usually considered mysterious, it is the heroine whose actions and intentions are never clearly spelled out. Her acceptance of the hero continues to be a mystery, and her attributes are enmeshed within nature metaphors to align with the patriarchal imagination of a woman’s morality. Although the heroine’s latent sexuality is hinted upon, she patiently waits for her hero to unlock it. Her agency to express herself is constricted to an allegorical space strictly guided by patriarchal values, curbing the possibility of sharing any power with her beloved. She is locked away in our imagination, never capable of realising her actuality.
While this poem encapsulates the various means through which a woman’s desires can be addressed through animism, it also censors her erotic impulses, even when she is presented as the protagonist. A seemingly pleasant nature metaphor, therefore, must be dealt with caution as it is prone to negating the heroine’s agency.
References- Chandrika, J. Viralimalai Kuravanji, University of Madras, 2007
- Descola, Phillippe. “Beyond Nature and Culture,” in The Handbook of Contemporary Animism, Graham Harvey (ed.). New York: Routledge, 2014. 77-91.
