Kula Deivam and the Act of Returning
When I was growing up, I spent most summers with my grandparents and extended family. My maternal side was based in Pudukkottai, my paternal side in Gobichettipalayam—Gobi, for short—in Tamil Nadu. Like most families, ours has since scattered, pulled toward larger cities and better livelihoods.
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| The structure is new. The pull is old. |
Back then, our visits were unremarkable in the best way. We stayed home. Visitors came and went through the day. When we were in Gobi, there was one outing we never missed: a visit to our kula deivam at Kunnathur, about twenty-five kilometers away. We would pile into a van or a bus, pack food, and set out like an informal family pilgrimage—grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, all together.
My paati would make sweet pongal and offer it to Goddess Angala Parameswari, an avatar of Parvati. There were no restaurants nearby, and little infrastructure—at the temple or in the town. After the rituals, we would sit wherever space allowed, eat, talk, and leave by evening. It was simple, cramped, and entirely sufficient.
My brother and I looked forward to these trips—not for the deity, not consciously—but for the company. Elders telling stories. Cousins running around. For schoolboys, that was reason enough.
Only much later did I understand what those trips were really doing.
My grandparents are gone now. The roads are better. The town is almost unrecognizable. The temple itself has been rebuilt from the ground up after years of construction. And yet, standing there today, I become eight years old again—surrounded by voices that no longer exist.
It took me years to understand why.
The temple I remember from childhood.
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Kunnathur, years ago — with my chithappa(uncle).
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The kula deivam is not just another deity in a crowded pantheon. It is the first point of return. The place where your father, grandfather, and generations before them once stood—prayed, waited, and left their imprint, often without realizing it. In our tradition, visits are expected before milestones: a child’s tonsure, a wedding, an Upanayanam, the start of something new. These visits are not optional. They are assumed.
Before Akhil’s Upanayanam in Kalady, my father went to Kunnathur to seek the Goddess’s blessings. There was no discussion about it. Some things are simply non-negotiable.
In a world where families now live across continents, the kula deivam acts as an anchor. It binds people—however loosely—to a shared point of origin. It is often the only reason distant relatives return to an ancestral village at all, ensuring that the next generation knows where its story began. Even that is imperfect; we arrive at different times, on different schedules. Still, the pull remains.
When a woman marries, she traditionally adopts her husband’s kula deivam, though many continue to honor the deity of their birth family as well. My mother’s family deity is Murugan of Kumaramalai. I don’t visit Kumaramalai as often as I should, though my brother tells me how transformed it has become.
What remains unchanged is not the town, or the temple, or even the people—but the act of returning.
Long after roads improve, buildings rise, and voices fade, that act continues.
It is how memory outlives people.
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