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.
