Tamil Nadu: Bride performing ‘Surul Vaal Veechu’ goes viral

TUTICORIN: Minutes after her marriage on Monday morning, 22-year-old P Nisha in her silk sari took out her sharp flexible blade to perform ‘Surul Vaal Veechu’, ‘Rettai Kambu’ (using two silambam sticks) and ‘Adimarai’ on the cement road in front of the wedding hall in Thirukolur village.
Her 30-minute performance following her wedding was to create awareness among girls to learn self defence. Video of her performing shot by villagers went viral on social media. “It was not easy to perform in a saree and with heavy make up and accessories as a bride. I used to practice martial arts in a t-shirt and track pants,” the bride told TOI. She also fought with her fellow student as a part of the performance.
“My husband Rajkumar Moses, 29 who is also my maternal uncle and aasan (coach) Mariappan asked me to focus on my skill and nothing else,” she said. Nisha who aspires to become a police officer is a B.Com graduate. Her fellow students performed martial arts for an hour, thereby keeping the wedding guests and villagers entertained for around 90 minutes.
She started learning traditional martial arts such as silambam, surul vaal, adimarai, kalaripayattu and theepantham (fire ball) three years ago as a final year college student. It was on the motivation of her mother Mani, 45, that she continued pursuing the self-defense art forms.
Nisha is one of 50-year-old Mariappan’s 80 students who are coached free of cost. After winning many local silambam competitions, Nisha won the first prize in the district in silambam last year and came third in the State level competition in Tirupur.
Rajkumar, a diploma holder and farmer, was supportive of her martial arts and wanted her to use their wedding as a platform to showcase his wife’s martial art skills.
“We wanted to replace cultural events with the martial arts performance to create awareness among girls, so that incidents such as the Pollachi sexual harassment scandal and suicides would not take place,” he said.
Watch This Tamil Nadu bride is breaking the internet for her wedding-day stunts