Monsters seem real in childhood.
They exist in the dark and in nightmares. What if they come alive in front of
our eyes? What if we can really hear their menacing hullabaloo?
Well, there was one such live
monster in my childhood who made me shiver and close my eyes even when I didn’t
want to for when it was past nine at night and I was still awake, my mother
would say, “Sleep quickly! I can hear the shriek of the Hanuman Pandaram!” I
would close my eyes tightly and pretend to be asleep.
Hanuman Pandaram used to visit our
house at least once in a month, with a big sack on his back. I was told
that it contained many children whom he had captured and was taking home to
eat. He made a deafening sound beating the thick copper plate he held up in his
hand. I can still feel a tremble in my heart, when I try to recollect his
bright and ferocious face. I learnt afterwards that he put that mask on just
before stepping into the courtyard of each house.
In his loud voice he would deliver
his regular cry beating the copper plate with a hammer kind of thing after each
line. It went like this:
Is there any child who does not brush teeth…?
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding
Is there any child who does not obey….??
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding
Is there any child who wets the bed...????
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding
Is there any child who does not go to school…?????
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding
The
masquerade along with the cry and the sound of the copper plate was appalling to
a naive child like me.
After this performance, he would
remove his mask; quietly accept a measure of rice or some money from my mother
or grandmother and leave. I would then emerge from my hiding place with shaking
legs.
When I knew he was there in the
courtyard, I would run and hide under the cot. For this reason, I have never
properly seen his face, which I regret now. All I remember is a riot of red,
white, black and green and two bulging eyes. Hanuman is the monkey god, a very
loyal disciple of the lord. Hanuman is to be revered and not to be terrified of
but ‘pandaram’ in our childhood lexicon was synonymous with fiend. So, the
Hanuman pandaram, to all children, was a beast who comes to eat them.
One day when I was three or four years old, my father forced me to go out to meet him. I saw a lean man with a sack on his back. He was wearing a loose shirt and a lungi. When he saw me coming, he took out his huge mask from the sack. Before he wore it I was inside the house, hiding.
Slowly with age, I understood that
my Pandaram was a poor gentleman who made a living wearing the huge mask,
helping kind parents to keep their wayward little children under their control.
I remember hearing that his father was also a Pandaram. He must have inherited
the mask from his father. He stopped coming after sometime and later someone
told that he died.
There are no pandarams now.
Even if there was one now, will
parents have time to listen to a Pandaram’s cry? Will he be able to scare the
new generation kids who see more fiendish beings in the cyber world?
Now when I go home, I see my mother
run behind my two year old nephew when his parents are away at work. Perhaps, a
Hanuman Pandaram’s visit can fetch her some respite from the toddler’s mischievous
activities. If not scared, the child would at least be amused.
Children now are spared the fear and
trepidation of a Pandaram’s visit but I feel they are also deprived of such
wonderful specimens of fictional and factual lore.
