Muthuvan Kalyanam Wedding in The Hills
For eons, the Muthuvan marriage custom or Penneduppu in the local dialect, has been a celebration that brings the entire village together in the name of love and blessings for a young couple. According to the tradition, the bride’s friends playfully hide her in the thick forest around the village, and the hapless groom has to solicit help from his friends to find her as quickly as he can.
he bride’s friends deliberately misguide the groom’s troupe, singing ‘aashapattu’, a local wedding song, while drawing the bride further away. Once he finds the bride, the bridesmaids preside over the rituals; ornaments and sarees are gifted to the bride. The marriage is blessed – first by the forest and then, by the couple’s elders, who only see the newly-weds once they return to their village the morning after.
The hurdle in this love story was once posed by the dense forest, populated with tall, lush trees, bushes, rivulets and waterfalls. Back in the day, a groom would overcome dangers posed by the forest and its wildlife, while looking for his bride for days together. Failure would mean that the groom would be mocked at. While the fear of being mocked is still alive, the forests have begun to diminish. Traditions have changed; younger and modern men and women prefer meeting socially in a more ‘habitable’ environment; the forest-wedding is gradually becoming a rare occurrence, even with the tribes of this village.
A muthuvan or a groom would have to prove his worth for the bride by finding her against all odds in a forest. The unique tradition seems to be fading away with modernity making its strides, alongside rituals like dowry and a demand for gold becoming more and more prominent. As the forests quietly make their exit from the culture of the land, so does the idea of giving and following a word of honour.