The world has become a “small village” these days due to modern scientific advances and globalization that is happening all over the world. Everywhere we are seeing rapid changes in almost all areas of life. But certain things like customs and manners are not changing as fast as other external things! It is generally seen that we have a tendency to cling to the ‘old’, what we call ‘traditional’, when it comes to the socio-cultural aspects of the society in which we live. Here let me tell you about a ‘cremation ceremony’ within the ‘Valluvanad Nair Community’, to which I belong. The essence of this article is taken from my own personal experiences. When I finished the writing, it got a bit long and I finally decided to divide it into six parts. I hope you get a basic idea of ​​the ‘cremation process’ within the ‘Valluvanad Nair Community’ by reading these 6 parts and I sincerely hope someone within this community will read this so if there are any corrections or additions you can add them! !

These articles will describe to you the ‘cremation ceremony’ of a typical ‘Valuvanad Nair community member’. What he wanted to convey is the general way of cremating a ‘corpse’ of a member of the ‘Valuvanadan Nair community’, without going into minute detail. The ‘Kerala Nair community’ is a subdivision of the ‘Hindu religion’. (It is actually incorrect to say ‘Hindu religion’. There is no such thing as a ‘Hindu religion’; it is just a ‘philosophy’ and not a structured ‘religion’. You can say ‘Hindu philosophy’ instead of ‘Hindu religion’ ). The ‘Nair community’ is one of the various divisions and subdivisions of the ‘Hindu’ cult. What I am trying to narrate to the readers is just a summary and the general ways of the cremation of a ‘member of the Valuvanadan Nair community’.

Here, before I go into the details of the cremation process, I have to explain something about words like ‘Kerala’, ‘Valluvanad’ and ‘Nair’. You know, India is a huge country; in fact, it is like a continent in itself, not just a country with its diversified customs, manners and ways of behaving! ‘Kerala’ is one among its different ‘States’ and ‘Valluvanad Area’ is a small part of ‘Kerala’ and is located in the southeastern part of Kerala and the word ‘Nair’ is already explained above. You can see that even within this small state of ‘Kerala’, we have many different ways of looking at life and different ways of living, and each one is different from the other! We, the Nair people of the ‘Valluvanad’ area, take life very seriously and for each and every occurrence of ‘life’, we strictly adhere to the good old traditions! About other things I will explain later, if time and my mind agree! Now let’s move on to the details of the cremation of a dead man or woman and see how it is carried out within the community.

An important point to note regarding ‘cremation’ within this community is that the ‘burning’ process is done only if the deceased is an adult. If the deceased turns out to be a child, then instead of cremation, the method will become ‘burial’. One of the main things regarding cremation is that ‘women’ are not allowed to participate in the procedures. They are left free to ‘cry’ and ‘cry’! Later they can join the proceedings of the 14th and 15th day rituals which are colloquially called ‘Kriyas’. The whole family is said to have a ‘death contamination in the family’ which is described as ‘Pula’ in the vernacular and this ‘Pula’ is considered to be there until the 15th day the ‘Kriyas’ end. During these 15 days, interested persons shall not enter the temples or attend any auspicious functions. These are all ancient customs and during these modern times, due to the total changes all over the world, these customs are not followed very strictly.