January 27, 2005
Thaipusam
All the pictures in this post are Monika's courtesy. She actually spent some 4-5 hours hanging out in Little India on Tuesday and was brave enough to come up close and take the pics. A good photographer needs that kind of courage and unfortunately, neither me, nor Kaj has it, so that's why we're so good with panoramic landscape pictures (hehe.. just afraid to come up close and snap portraits..) I'm amazed with Monika's talent!
As I was going to work on Tuesday, I saw some kind of procession in Little India through my bus window. People were carrying some strange net-like structures on themselves and I realized that they were actually pierced all over their bodies!!!
The guy on the right actually has this fork-like skewer pierced through his cheeks.. Wah.. Hindu people really know how to show there devotion, don't they?!? Some of them also had their tongues taken out and pierced.. I came to the temple too late, so there was very little to see. But Monika really spent quite some time looking at all that!!! waaahhh... :)
I guess you get quite a bit of adrenalin when you get yourself pierced all over.. I saw people also spinning around or shaking with this Kavadi fixed on them.. Not exactly a painless experience..
This is a back of somebody. I don't have any idea why they have limes all over their backs (maybe acid iritates the wounds and makes it more painful? maybe it is like an antiseptic? I don't know.. There must be some religious explanation, I'm sure..)
Later on I read in the paper that Thaipusam is a festival for a god who grants people what they wish for. So if you're walking all the way from one temple to another (some 4km), all pierced or wearing nail shoes, you can be quite sure that your wishes will come true. Believe me, it has to, otherwise nobody would be walking this distance (patiently waiting at crossroad lights, spending some 3hours with your tongue taken out and pierced).
Yeah, this is nail shoes!! All the things that you read in childhood comics about yogis, they were all doing that!
When I told my colleagues that I'm going to Little India to see Thaipusam, they said that "don't go there alone! Take your husband with you!" I was very suprised, why should I, why can't I go there alone? Then they explained that "they're all men and they're all in trance, you never know what may happen". But it is so not true!! There were women and families.. However extreme their devotion seems to us, Monika said that it was perfectly all right for her to take pictures and hang out there the whole day. Alone.. Female.. I also notice that there was not extensive coverage of this festival in the local media. I think the Leijonakaupunki want's to discourage this practice, because it is so extreme. But seeing the amount of people involved in this, I think it will be very difficult to get rid of this celebration.. Here's an account of this festival by someone who actually figured out the background of it and whats it all about..
Posted by gkligyte at January 27, 2005 06:42 PM