Meet Madurai’s women jallikattu bull rearers

Meet women bull rearers in the male-dominated sport of jallikattu.

R Dhivya Dharsini stood at the entrance of the vaadivasal (arena), face to face with over a hundred bull tamers. A bull owner, she had just untied Manickam, her bull, and had to cross the tamers to move to safety. “I just had a few seconds before the bull would charge outside,” she says. “I elbowed past the men with an energy I didn’t know existed in me,” she laughs, recalling her first jallikattu as a bull owner at Alanganallur. This was in 2022, and the 18-year-old is among just a handful of women to have stepped into the vaadivasal, a male-dominated zone in a sport traditionally seen as a chance for men to prove their masculinity.

Women jallikattu bull rearers, while few in number, do make their presence felt in the sport every year. Dhivya is from a family that has been rearing jallikattu bulls for generations. As the only child to her parents, she is taking forward her great grandfather’s love for raising sturdy bulls that make heads turn. She is helping raise Manickam and Military, bulls that have sent many tamers flying in the air at the arena.

With just a few days left for Pongal, Military is getting restless. Dhivya, her slender form in a salwar-kameez, leads the bull towards a mud pit at Anuppanadi, a locality in Madurai in the evening, as he grunts and thrusts his horns ahead. “Military…” she chides him gently, as he butts his horns into the mud and flings it in the air. She later wipes his horns and face clean with a handkerchief. Military stays still enjoying the attention.

“I would talk to them every time I passed by as I walked to school and back,” says Dhivya, adding that the bulls at her family’s cattle shed took a liking to her. She gradually started assisting in their upkeep, and has now turned a bull rearer herself, balancing her work with NEET classes. Dhivya’s mother and grandmother too tend to the bulls, but it is she who takes them to jallikattu tournaments, along with her father and uncle.

“Bulls rarely attack women and children since they associate them with nurturing,” she says, adding that she was surprised to see her bull turning protective of her at the vaadivasal. “He shielded me from other bulls that were lined up,” she says.

At Alanganallur, set to host the event on January 17, the star bull of the village, Muthu, who belongs to the Muniyandi temple is in the care of L Pandiselvi. As the temple bull, Muthu kickstarts the year’s tournament, and there is an understanding among tamers to not touch him out of respect for the deity. “He is in his prime now,” says the 37-year-old holding one of his ropes as he drinks out of an aluminium trough.

Pandiselvi has been assisting in the upkeep of jallikattu bulls from the time she was eight. “My father owned several bulls, and would involve me in raising them,” she says. Her day begins at 5.30am when she feeds Muthu straw. “I then take him out to graze.” Bathing the bull requires several hands for which boys from the village assist her.