As the city sees it
The Arattu of the Painkuni and Alpassi festivals · 3 min read
Twice a year, Padmanabhaswamy goes down to the sea.
His great festivals each last ten days. One is Painkuni, in March or April, and the other Alpassi, in October or November. On the last day of each comes the Arattu, the god's bath. Not the great reclining image, which never leaves its stone room, but smaller images of three of Vishnu's forms are brought out for the journey: Padmanabha himself, Narasimha the man-lion, and Krishna.
In the late afternoon they are carried out through the western gate of the old fort, each on a mount shaped like Garuda, Vishnu's eagle. At the head of the procession walks a man in white with a green silk cap and an emerald necklace, carrying a sword. He is the head of the old royal family of Travancore, the family whose kings gave their kingdom to this god and ruled as his servants. He walks on foot. Behind him come the priests and the images, elephants dressed in gold, drummers and pipers, police on horseback, and the people of the city.
The road to the sea runs west to the beach at Shanghumugham, about six kilometres away. And in the middle of it lies the airport.
The god's road was there first. The procession is centuries old, and when the kings of Travancore built an airfield on their land in 1932, they built it across his road. According to historians, King Sree Chithira Thirunal made the condition clear: the airfield was the public's for three hundred and sixty three days a year, and for the other two it belonged to Padmanabha.
The airfield grew into an international airport, with one runway. It was taken over by the government, and then by a private company, and the condition stayed.
So, weeks before each Arattu, the airport sends out a notice to airmen, a NOTAM, to every airline in the world. The flights are moved. On the day, in the late afternoon, the terminals go quiet.
Every year some traveller who has not read the notice turns up at the counter and finds no flight.
"Why is everything cancelled?" they ask.
"The god is going to the sea," they are told. "His road crosses the runway."
"And the planes?"
"The planes wait."
The gates of the airport open, and the procession comes in. It stops at a pavilion built for it near the runway, the Arattu mandapam, and the images rest there for a time. Then it walks out onto the tarmac. For about two kilometres the god goes down the runway, with his elephants and his drums, under the eyes of the security guards and the cameras, past parked aircraft, towards the sea.
At Shanghumugham the priests carry the images into the waves, and bathe them in the Arabian Sea.
By then it is dark. The procession turns and comes back the same way, across the same runway, and now it is lit by flaming torches. It goes on to the temple, and the gates close behind it.
Then the airport staff walk the runway, sweep it, and check it inch by inch, and declare it fit. At about nine at night the notice is withdrawn.
"Runway open," the tower says. And the first flight takes off.