सनातन पुस्तकालय Sanatan Cultural Library

Chettikulangara Bhagavathy is the guardian goddess of the Onattukara region, and tradition holds that her presence was brought to Chettikulangara from the great Kodungallur shrine, whose Bharani festival the local people longed to attend each year. Thirteen karas — the villages surrounding the temple — share hereditary rights and duties in her worship, and the Kumbha Bharani is above all their collective offering. In the days before the festival, selected boys undergo Kuthiyottam in village homes: days of devotional song, dance, and disciplined austerity offered to the Devi, ending with a procession to the temple. The concluding element of Kuthiyottam, called chooral muriyal, involves passing a fine thread through a pinch of skin at the boy's side as a token body-offering; child-rights bodies have questioned the practice in recent years, and it remains a subject of public debate in Kerala, though families who offer it regard it as a solemn vow.

On Bharani day the karas bring their kettukazhcha to the goddess — enormous temporary edifices built of wood, bamboo, and brilliantly coloured cloth. The most imposing are the kuthiras, tower-like 'horses' rising several storeys high, alongside therus (tiered chariots) and effigies of Bhima, Hanuman, and Panchali from the Mahabharata. Each structure is assembled by village craftsmen over days of voluntary labour and hauled by hundreds of hands along the roads to the temple, accompanied by percussion ensembles. By nightfall the effigies stand in a great arc before the shrine, lit up against the sky — one of the most photographed sights of central Travancore. The structures remain overnight as a kazhcha, a spectacle offered for the Devi's own viewing, and are dismantled afterwards. The festival day also draws vast crowds for darshan, votive offerings, and the special poojas of Bharani.

Kettukazhcha cannot be transplanted — it lives in the fields and roads of Chettikulangara and in the shared labour of its thirteen villages. Malayali families in Canada typically follow the festival through live streams and news coverage from Kerala, and those with roots in Onattukara often contribute to their kara's kettukazhcha fund from abroad, a well-established diaspora custom. At home in Ottawa, the day can be kept simply: light a lamp for the Devi, offer red flowers and a sweet, and recite a Devi stotra or the Lalitha Sahasranama. Explaining the kuthira-building tradition to children — engineering, artistry, and devotion combined — is a lovely way to pass it on. Families planning February–March travel to Kerala can build the Bharani day into their trip; check your local temple for Devi poojas in the same season.