Karkkadakam bathing rituals of Kerala, in a new package

Kerala’s seasonal bath includes specially prepared oils, potions, herbs and flowers. It now comes packaged as convenient bathing essentials

Come mid-July, the skies in Kerala turn grey, the temperature drops and the rain falls without respite. It is the start of Karkkadakam, the last month of the Malayalam calendar. With farming coming to a halt and people forced indoors, the time is traditionally used to rejuvenate the body and mind.

Many traditional customs are associated with this period, like reading the Ramayana daily and following a strict diet. But the one ritual that Asha Devi Varma, a former agriculture officer and a member of the Poonjar Royal family recalls with much nostalgia is the Karkkadaka kuli or the ceremonial bath. “It was a big affair in the olden days,” says Asha, discussing how women soaked themselves in herbal oils and scrubbed it off with a homemade paste of wild turmeric at the pond at her maternal grandmother’s home in Tiruvalla.

Asha has been making and retailing these traditional oils and scrubs for the past six years from her home in Tripunithura, lest the recipes and customs be lost forever. “Our grandmothers bore many children and aged healthy, because of the pampering they gave their bodies during this month. It rejuvenates the bones, skin, and hair,” she says, explaining why she has introduced a Karkkadakam Bathing Hamper (₹600) in contemporary packaging this year, which includes hair and body oils, shampoo and scrub.

The hamper is a natural progression of what Asha has been doing small scale at home and for her friends and family. She has loyal clients, she says and retails them in ladies groups on social media. “As it is a Karkkdakam kit it is bought by women of all age groups,” she says adding that though she does not have a sales target yet, she has sold around 100 hampers this year. Asha home delivers the hampers with plans to market them professionally in the future.

In Wayanad’s Mullankolly panchayat, Bindu Sathyajith set up a women empowerment unit, Femlogix Enterprises, and launched the Karkidakka Ayur Arogya Soundaraya this year primarily, “to pass on the traditional wellness knowledge to the next generation.”

The kit, ’Karkidakka Ayur Arogya Soundaraya’ costs ₹1399 and includes oils, scrub, herbal soap, herbal tea and coffee and medicinal gruel to be had an hour after the bath. 

Bindu, whose great-grandfather was a well-known Ayurveda expert, says she is the fifth generation to carry on the tradition. She cultivates about 14 plants and herbs required as ingredients for the oils and set up the unit during the pandemic when the farmers in the area were struggling to eke a livelihood. Some of the plants she grows are cheroola (mountain knotgrass), uzhinja (balloon plant), aruka (bermucla grass), nilampana (goldeneye grass), vishnu granthi (evolvulus), thiruthali (morning glory) and purvankurunthal (little iron weed)