Martial Arts, Indian-Style

Anil Kumar studies the two crouching fighters as they circle each other in the small mud arena, the oil and sweat on their taut bodies darkening the waistbands of their bunched shorts. From his corner, Kumar barks a command and one of the men leaps at the other with his spear, its tip tracing the arc of his lunge through the air. The other man, squatting low, raises a pole above his head and crack! parries the blow. Kumar calls out a second time. Again the first fighter attacks, and the second man nimbly checks him. Then suddenly it’s over: the men lay their weapons before Kumar and bow to him, touching the feet of their master.

Kalarippayat is said to be the world’s original martial art. More than 2,000 years old, it was developed by warriors of the Cheras kingdom in Kerala. Training followed strict rituals and guidelines. The entrance to the 14 m-by-7 m arena, or kalari, faced east and had a bare earth floor. Fighters took Shiva and Shakti, the god and goddess of power, as their deities. From unarmed kicks and punches, kalarippayat warriors would graduate to sticks, swords, spears and daggers and study the marmas — the 107 vital spots on the human body where a blow can kill. Training was conducted in secret, the lethal warriors unleashed as a surprise weapon against the enemies of Cheras. Still, Chinese traders learned some of the mysterious body movements and took them home to provide the basis of their own martial arts.

Now, the box-office success of Chinese kung-fu movies has in turn revived kalarippayat. Indian filmmakers, hoping to mimic the high-kicking fights and gravity-defying leaps in Jet Li’s Romeo Must Die and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, are hiring kalarippayat fighters and teachers like Kumar as stuntmen. They’re even making sure Bollywood stars have basic training. “Even five years ago, Kerala martial arts had nearly died out,” says Kumar, who with his two brothers runs C.V.N. Kalari Sangham in Calicut, among the best known schools in the country. “Now suddenly it is popular again and it’s all because of these films.” This time around, there are no plans to keep kalarippayat under wraps.