The men have just returned from battle and are preparing to celebrate victory. Let us, for the purpose of charting the possible path these new gods took towards popularity, imagine one such tribal settlement. This dweller of cremation grounds-he is often imagined covered in ash from funeral pyres-today can be found even on the grounds of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) campus in Switzerland, where he symbolises the high-energy collisions of particle physics in his Nataraja form. Over centuries, the matted-haired, animal-skin wearing, hash-smoker has evolved into many things, including a hermaphrodite, for many people. This priest, a trained engineer, told me the dance tradition is symbolic of Shiva’s primordial performance-the dead are believed to be finally joining Koothu Perumal, lord of the dance in the Tamil language, and another of Shiva’s epithets. I am still a novice when it comes to the porul (crux) of koothu,” Rajkumar told me, directing me instead to Ragothaman, a priest at a local temple. “My grandpa could have given you more details. For the 38-year-old, who uses only his first name, playing the drums for this street dance has been a family tradition, yet one he was too modest to hold forth on.

There I met the wiry Rajkumar, head of a group of percussion artistes who lead Saavukoothu.

My curiosity kindled, I began visiting the city’s crematoria, hoping to bump into its dancers or even witness it. One of the experts I spoke to hinted that apart from mainstream dance forms, even something as raw as Saavukoothu could be linked to Shiva. My search took me to Chennai, capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and home to perhaps one of the greatest collection of ancient Nataraja statues under one roof at the Government Museum in Egmore.

Tamil god shiva