'Vaayill(y)aakkunnilappan'

That is the name of the presiding deity of a small hilltop shrine in north-interior Kerala. The name means 'The Mouth-less Lord of the Hill(-shrine)'; the 'y' in the spelling is optional and is an artefact of Malayalam phonetics; any similarity, vague or otherwise with allegedly tongue-twisting names like 'Nahasapeemapetilon' is purely accidental; there is nothing troublesome to the tongue in this 'Mallu' name, if one knows the lingo that is (As an aside, I am reminded of a (very decent) Western travel guide to India which refers to 'Gangaikondacholapuram' as a terrible challenge to pronounce!)!

Just like any other temple-site, there is a legend associated with this place; indeed this story is but a small fragment from a vast cycle of legends, myths and folklore called 'Parayipettu Panthirukulam' (well, there we go again!). Once in the distant past, a certain couple, a scholarly brahmin husband and his even more gifted 'low-born' wife, chose a life of continuous travel (probably it was the husband's unilateral choice!). Whenever a baby was born to them, the husband would ask: "does the child have a mouth?"; the wife would answer "yes" and the husband would immediately abandon the child saying "the One who gave it the mouth will give something to fill it as well!". Finally, eleven children having been thus abandoned, the hapless mother lied, to save her twelfth born from an unknown future: "he has no mouth" and then, the new-born's mouth sealed up on its own! The father 'seated' (buried?) the child on top of a hill nearby; and the couple resumed their journey...

The place came to be known as the abode of the "mouth-less Lord" (each of his elder siblings were found and brought up by various people and all of them came to be known to posterity for their brilliance, piety, wit and great works - they include 'Perunthachan', the legendary master-craftsman, 'Pakkanar', a Dalit of legendary wisdom, 'Thiruppan Azhwar', a mystic-poet of Srirangam in Tamil Nadu,...). One could add here, the (mysteriously ruthless) father of them all, was a half-brother to King Vikramaditya of the 'Vetala' story cycle - and that is yet another trip!

I paid a visit to the Mouth-less Lord's abode last week. One could see two temples there - dedicated to Siva, who the Lord seems to have got identified with (the how of it is not obvious) and to his consort, Shakti. It was occasionally drizzly and very gloomy - a monsoon late afternoon; there were very few people about. Neither temple seems to have any 'marker' of the original site where the Lord was 'seated'.

Beyond the temples, the hill slopes down; I found a narrow trail threading tree-filled, darkly green compounds - it eventually opened out, past a pond, into a stretch of freshly planted rice paddies... It would have been nice to have gone walkabout into those realms; but the impending night-fall - and more deep purple clouds were piling up above - and the prospect getting stranded there made me retreat.

On the bus back home, with the steady monsoon rain hammering away on the shuttered windows, I reflected: a couple of hours previously, when I had asked another passenger where to get down from the bus to reach the temple, he had asked back: "Are you going to the temple?". "er, ..to meet someone near there" - I had answered, rather clumsily.