Thunderous Run Bountiful Harvest documents jallikattu through interviews with farmers and bull baiters

Thunderous Run Bountiful Harvest is a documentation of jallikattu in English

A lady in a pink sari holds a fierce-looking bull by the rope, flashing a genial smile. A mother, with a toddler on her hip, poses next to another bull. A gang of giggly children stands unassumingly next to yet another bull. These bulls are jallikattu champions that charge menacingly out of the vaadivaasal when they are in their element. But when they are not, they are gentle creatures that spend most of their time in the company of the women in the household, their caretakers. The coffee-table book Thunderous Run Bountiful Harvest has a separate section on these ‘unsung protagonists‘, “without whom cattle cannot survive,” according to Karthikeya Sivasenapathy, one of the authors.

The book, that was released by Chief Minister MK Stalin in Chennai last month, is the combined effort of Karthikeya, who is the founder and managing trustee of the Senaapathy Kangayam Cattle Research Foundation, Sundar Ganesan who heads the Roja Muthiah Research Library in Chennai, and Karthik Prema Rajakumar, an architect and entrepreneur. It has been brought out by the Senaapathy Kangayam Cattle Research Foundation, Tiruppur, and is a documentation of jallikattu, starting with its roots, with a focus on cultural aspects surrounding the sport and the people associated with it.

The book, according to Karthikeya, is an effort to document the sport in English so that people who are not aware of the Tamil landscape and culture understand it. Karthikeya says that he wanted to present a counter-view backed by research to those who dismissed it as “barbaric” and a “blood-sport” when conversation around jallikattu made headlines in 2017 during State-wide protests against the Supreme Court’s order to ban jallikattu.

“However, there is not much hue and cry surrounding horse racing,” he feels, adding that a “clear documentation in English” will present jallikattu in the right context.

“Jallikattu finds mention in Sangam literature, such as in texts of Tholkappiam,” says Karthikeya, adding that seals from the Indus Valley civilisation bear depictions of livestock. The authors spent four years on the research, starting from 2015, travelling across South Tamil Nadu where jallikattu is popular, namely Madurai, Theni, Sivaganga, and Ramanathapuram. They covered three jallikattu events in places such as Alanganallur, Palamedu, Avaniyapuram, and Sakkudi between 2015 and 2019, interviewing farmers, livestock rearers, environmentalists and bull baiters. The book’s title harks back to a Tamil proverb in usage among livestock keepers in Madurai. “We spent a lot of time and effort to bring out its essence in the title,” points out Karthikeya.

The book has photos with detailed descriptions, explaining the event to the minutest detail. For instance, there is a section on scaffolding construction and stage assembly, complete with step-by-step photos of the temporary pavilions constructed for the event, with attention to the architecture and material used.

They talk about cattle breeds used in the sport, list out steps that go into preparing for the event, including the registration process for the bulls and vaulters, rules at the arena and collection point, and touch upon bull memorials constructed in memory of bulls that have passed on, festivities such as therukoothu performances put up in villages before jallikattu, and local markets and street vendors selling murukku, kamarkat, and buttermilk in villages all through the big day. A separate chapter is dedicated to cattle in the Kongu region, namely Kangayam, with some stunning photos of the famed cattle shandy at Kannapuram in Kangayam.