Kulasekarapattinam Mutharamman Temple

Follow the coast road from Tiruchendur towards Kanyakumari for 13 km and you reach Kulasekarapattinam, which everyone calls Kulasai. The temple sits close to the beach, and inside it is an unusual sight: the goddess and the god share a single pedestal, side by side, facing north. Mutharamman wears her jewels and mangalsutra, with her right leg folded; Gnanamoortheeswarar holds a sceptre in one hand and sacred ash in the other, his left leg folded. Look below their feet and you will find a swayambu form, never shaped by a chisel. Petchiamman, Karuppasamy and Bhairavar stand in the hall. As in Madurai, where Meenakshi rules, the goddess is sovereign here, and the temple follows Madurai's pattern of worship.

The temple's own story runs like this. The goddess appeared to Kulasekara, a Pandya king, and under her grace a small settlement grew into a port town that took his name. For a long time only the swayambu form was worshipped. Then the goddess came in a dream to a sculptor of Mylaudy and told him to carve her image and give it to a priest who would arrive from Kulasai. That same night she told the priest, in his dream, to set the sculptor's image beside the swayambu. Both obeyed, and so the goddess chose her own image.

Everyday Tamil calls the blisters of pox "pearls" (muthu). The goddess who cools (aatru) those pearls is Muthu-aatru-amman: Mutharamman. Kulasai has shrines to eight Kalis: Veerakali, Bhadrakali, Karunkali, Muppidari, Mutharamman, Uchinimakali, the three-faced Amman and Vandi Maritha Amman, and Mutharamman is first among them. The temple's sacred water is the sea itself, and its tree is the neem. Two temples belong to it: Chidambareswarar with Sivakami on the shore, and Vinnavaram Perumal with Sridevi and Bhudevi at the town's northern edge.

The Dasara has a purana of its own. A sage named Varamuni insulted Agastya, who cursed him to take a buffalo's head on a man's body and to die at the goddess's hand. As Mahishasura he went on to rule all three worlds by force. The sages lit a sacrificial fire to the goddess, and from it rose a baby girl, Lalithambikai. Within nine days the child was fully grown; on the tenth she stood as Parasakthi and put Mahishasura to death. The nine nights are Navarathri; the tenth day is Dasara.

The present temple is about 300 years old, and the town's name recalls the Pandya king Kulasekara. Its Dasara has grown into the largest in Tamil Nadu and, after Mysuru, the best known in the country. The HR&CE Department runs the temple.

People with pox come to pour water around the goddess's pedestal and pray. Others pray to Mutharamman for a child, or for a way out of lost property, lawsuits and business losses, and some keep a 41-day vow for illnesses of body and mind. Vows are paid with maavilakku (lamps of rice flour), rolling around the temple, carrying fire pots, piercing with the vel, and feeding the poor. These are matters of faith and not a substitute for medical treatment.