On March 10, 2025, the Kadakkal Devi Temple, Kollam district, glowed with the spirit of the annual Thiruvathira festival. Aloshy Adam, a popular singer, stepped up to perform, and launched into several popular songs, before the crowd demanded popular numbers like ‘Pushpane Ariyamo’, (Do you know Pushpan, our comrade)—a tribute to Pushpan, the CPI(M) activist Left bedridden after the 1994 Koothuparambu police firing, where he took a bullet to the spine during a DYFI protest. Temple festivals had long carried echoes of Kerala’s past. But this time, the notes lingered long. Hindu groups called it an affront to the temple’s sanctity.