THE GREAT SPECTACLES OF INDIA: RITUAL PERFORMANCE AND SPORT

India has always blurred the lines between ritual, performance and sport. Each is an offering, a form of worship — to gods, to nature, to community.

- SUB EDITOR MALLIKA SARABHAI PORTRAIT BY SUNHIL SIPPY PHOTOGRAPHS BY PANKAJ SHAH AND ARUN SAHA

Across its many regions, moments arise when hundreds, even thousands, move together in colour, rhythm, devotion and competition. Beyond performances to be watched; they embody collective memories, beliefs and beauty.

In the lush greens of North Kerala, as dawn seeps into the coconut groves, drums begin to thunder. The Theyyam performers — men transformed into gods — emerge from the sacred groves painted in red, black and white. Their faces are no longer their own; they are divine. The body becomes a canvas of intricate design, the headgear towers like a temple spire and as the chenda beats grow urgent, the man beneath disappears entirely. Theyyam collapses the distance between ritual and reality, where the performer ceases to perform and becomes the invoked presence itself. Each movement carries the weight of centuries, of caste hierarchies momentarily upturned, of villages gathered to receive prophecy and blessings. In those moments, performer and deity merge and performance becomes prayer.

Far away, in the extreme east of India, in the valley of Manipur, another kind of ritual unfolds — Lai Haraoba, the merrymaking of the gods. Hundreds of couples, dressed in traditional white and brilliant silk, move together in precise, slow choreography.