Thaipusam

Thaipusam is a Hindu festival celebrated by the Tamil community on the full moon in the Tamil month of Thai (January/February). The word Thaipusam is derived from the month name Thai and Pusam, which refers to a star that is at its highest point during the festival.

The festival commemorates the occasion when Parvati gave Murugan, son of Shiva and Parvati, got a vel (spear) so he could vanquish the evil demon Soorapadman.

We heard a lot about the Thaipusam festival and a lot of locals, friends and others recommended us to visit Batu Caves during Thaipusam. The day of the Thaipusam were closer and we were very excited and nervous about what we would actually encounter based on what we heard from everyone around us.

 We arrived at the festival in the morning and all of our suggestions were exceed in a way nobody of us could expect. We walked through an enormous crowd of Indian people which all participate at the festival. We saw children running around, babies on the shoulders of their parents, old people with a weary walk through the crowd and all wear traditional clothes and decorative origin jewelry.

We were marveled at the amount of people and didn’t realize that we are standing in one of the festive procession. There were more than one million visitors every year and we were part of this festival and we couldn’t believe the bizarre things that happened in front of us.  We were almost speechless the whole time and just watched all the human proceedings which happened within our reach.

The purpose the pilgrims visited the Batu Caves was because of the holy shrine located inside the cave. All the pilgrims were in a kind of Trans and it seemed to us that they were not able to recognize what happened around them. Their only goal was to climb up the stairs to the Caves while conducting their rituals, accompanied with chants.

All of the events that happened in front of us were foreign and strange to us but at the same time interesting and very impressive and emotional. We stood among the crowd and try to comprehend what people can do due to faith. People had hooks in their back, spears through their mouth and many more strange doings…..

At each point of time during our visit to the festival, everyone had a happy and friendly impression despite all the painful rituals. We had never witnessed such faith and custom where people wore bright colored costumes with flowers and offerings pierced on their bodies. Sometimes, pictures say more than a thousand words….

This eventful day with all the impressions was such an amazing experience for us and we were deeply impressed by all the things we saw the whole day. This spectacular event is something we will talk about our whole life. It was one of the days we felt that we were so close yet far from understanding another culture, religion and world.

At the end of the day, we had trouble returning home to our apartment because of the overloaded local transportation due to the crowd.