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Undertaking a study on the ritual-healing performances, namely Kodungallur Bharani and Chottanikkara Verpadu, of Keralam, this paper contextualizes blood as a ‘form’ and ‘content’ of the performances. Bleeding bodies of both these practices expose the complex spectacle of real blood and real body mutilation. In both these practices, the mutilated body in a deranged state of trance and possession indicates a strong visual representation of pain and bloodiness – while one is a way to divinity, the other to healing. It examines the visual representation of pain and bloodiness in the mutilated bodies of both practices and considers how blood can become a mask for healing or achieving divinity. Through analysing these practices, this paper tries to understand the explicit nature of blood in Keralam’s ritual practices and how these traditions engage with identities, mutilation, divinity, madness and healing in a ritual context. Kodungallur Bharani and Chottanikkara Verpad offer multi-layered subjectivity that possesses various caste, gender and ethnical identities. While drawing down these expositions, this paper will also create a dialogue between inner narratives on the representation of blood in these practices and address the broader question of mutilation, gender and identity. Therefore, the paper will also explore how these practices challenge the ‘moral’ and ‘aestheticized’ imagination of the region and its ‘refined’ transformation. The use of blood and other forms of bodily expressions in these rituals challenges dominant cultural narratives as to what is acceptable and appropriate and provides a space for the expression of alternative forms of cultural identity. Overall, this paper offers a critical perspective on the use of blood in these ritual performances and its broader cultural and social implications.

Bleeding Foreheads Divine and healing bodies in the rituals and performances of Keralam