Nochur!

Nochur Bhagavathy procession to the Theru

19/Jan/24: As we turn onto a sub-road at Kuzhalmannam on the speeding NH544 from Thrissur to Palakkad, the surroundings suddenly seem to settle down, relax and breathe easy. After another 10 km drive, covering the modest village of Koduvayur and its angady, a narrow road takes us to the humble surroundings of Nochur, which houses a relatively small agraharam of the Tamil Brahmin community who had migrated to Kerala centuries ago.

We, as an ad hoc plan, are here for the annual chariot festival (Ratholsavam/Theru) at Nochur Bhagavathy (Shanthi Durga Parameswari) temple, which falls on the first Friday of the Tamil Thai month (Jan/Feb). It is along this Bhagavathy temple and an adjacent Krishna temple that the Nochur agraharam is lined up.

It is only on these festive days that this otherwise silent gramam springs up with its effervescent energy. Being present on this auspicious day attending the rituals followed by the annadanam, which serves the divine payasam (commonly known as chathu-shatham), turned into a blissful experience for all of us. 

However, it would have been incomplete without a walk through the agraharam. That wish of ours also got fulfilled by visiting the ancestral agraharam home of our friend Sobha. A walk around the house which has rooms older than two centuries, an old kitchen which once served the entire gramam, the thick wooden doors with unique locks all took us back to a completely different world which thrived once upon a time! 

Of all, the short time we got listening to the anecdotes from Sobha’s in-laws turned out to be precious. 

“Nochur had more than 75 traditional agraharam homes a few decades back which has now depleted to around 30, and even among them, a very few families stay here. The rest come down only during the festive season.” 

We noticed this at Sobha’s home. Relatives who came from Palakkad, Mumbai, and even the US, just for this festival, all taking their festive nap in various rooms!

As we stepped out and walked around the Nochur gramam, we saw the scars of pain this once-pristine village is facing in the form of crumbled structures and deserted homes. A heritage tag like that of Kalpathy would have probably saved some of these, but now this agraharam needs more hands (than brain or money) to pull it up and preserve its identity.

A 'Rope' of Hope!

“Nochur, with the divine blessings of Vedanta Sampradaya Acharya Pujya Sri Ramanacharana Tirtha Swamiji, has got its spirituality tag. And then there is the divine ‘rope’ of hope always there, ready to be picked up. We wish the Nochur diaspora, who always keep their agraharam and its culture close to their hearts, realise it and come back again to pick and pull it ahead. That is the way, in fact, that is the only way this authentic culture and traditions of Nochur could be preserved for posterity!”