TALES FROM THE CAPITAL CITY - VI

HANUMAN PANDARAM

Hanuman Pandaram - Sketch by the author.

“If you don’t get inside the house, the Pandaram will catch you”- you must have heard this warning a hundred times. I too have heard this as a small boy, and once thought that I was fortunate to be born in a generation when this Pandaram no more exist.

‘Pandaram’- commonly known as ‘Hanuman Pandaram’ used to visit the houses of Trivandrum until late 1950’s.

My relative T.K. Hari still remembers a lean middle-aged man wearing a black coat, with two large cloth bags on his both shoulders walking through the streets of Pettah. He used to wear a large copper plate around his neck, which he used to make sound by striking with a stick. The very sound of the copper plate was enough to scare the wits out of small children; they will be hiding behind their mother’s back at that time.

Pandaram wears a wooden mask- painted red or green, with large protruding eyes and sharp tooth. The lower jaw of the mask was movable, sufficient to scare children. Sometimes he will be invited to the houses to scare naughty children. He scares them and warns them that if they do not do their duties properly, he will take them with him in his large bags. After all this drama, with the poor child crying in their mother’s arms, the Pandaram receives some money from the father of the child.

Photograph: from the private collection of K. Hari. Photographer P. Nadaeshan Achari of Pinarammoodu Veedu, Pettah, took this photograph of Hanuman Pandaram in 1950’s.