ODIYAN

our valluvanad was one of the final frontiers of western civilization.a land of immense beauty lived upon by mysterious people with strange  traditions and practices . where kalari was a way of life for the menfolk and their women the most liberated of their contemporaries . that world which existed till forty years ago now lives in the stories that grand mothers tell kids , many of them renegated as fables.

odiyans were the assassins of the time. they were hired by the nairs of rival families , mainly hailing from panar,pulayar and choklear communities, were feared for their extreme physical stamina and powers which could be matched only by mantrikans(powerful magicians).

the powers

the odiyans used to apply an oil obtained from the a killed human fetus  on their ear and assume shapes that they desired. they never changed into that object but the person seeing them had such a perception. they would assume shapes of bulls , cats , even rocks and when their victim approaches he would be killed instantly. but here there was a problem, if they took the shape of an animal like a bull ,the bull  appeared three-legged or tailless so that a person who is careful could understand what he was seeing and act accordingly. there is a story about a mantrikan who once returning home at night saw two bulls,he soon realized the trap and tied the two together and took them to a riverine and washed their ears  . the next second he saw two naked men standing in front of him.

the oil

the oil the odiyans used was made from unborn fetuses. their targets were women in their first pregnancy.during the day they would give some signs while working in the houses of their victims and in the night these women would walk unconscious in their sleep to the odiyans , who would split them open with sharpened knifes made of bamboo and took the fetus out. the women walked back home as  nothing happened only to die in their bed. in the morning everyone would assume the cause of death to be natural as the wounds in the belly would have gone by then. the fetus was hung from a pole so that a special fluid would be drained from it.the amount was so small that it would last only for a handfull of odi tricks.

what happened to them

with the modern education, the western lifestyle and more importantly the emancipation of panars and pulayars there were no takers for this tradition.so it died out without revealing many of its secrets like many other Indian traditions.