Malaysia Bests Festival : Thaipusam Day
THAIPUSAM is an annual Hindu festival which draws the largest gathering in multi-racial Malaysia - nearly a million people in 2000.
Several hundred devotees spear their cheeks with long, shiny steel rods - often a metre long - and pierce their chests and backs with small, hook-like needles in penance.
Thaipusam falls on a full moon day in the auspicious 10th Tamil month of Thai when the constellation of Pusam, the star of well-being, rises over the eastern horizon.
In Kuala Lumpur, the festival is celebrated on a mammoth scale at the Batu Caves temple on the outskirts of the city. It began in 1892, started by early Tamils who migrated to colonial Malaya.
On the eve of Thaipusam, a five-ton silver-chariot bearing Lord Murugan's image and followed by a procession of several thousand people leaves the Sri Mahamariaman temple in downtown Kuala Lumpur, on a 15-kilometre trek to Batu Caves.To many Thaipusam is the day of thanksgiving or atonement for wrongs.Spectacular edifices or kavadis are often carried or pulled by the devotees with chains and ropes anchored in the skin of their backs or chests.After ritual cleansing at a stream at the foothills, they walk up the 272 steps accompanied by family and friends.
But kavadi carrying need not be so arduous. Just carrying a small pot of milk up the steps to be poured on the vel is enough. Most devotees do this.Some parents carry newborn babies slung in a cloth-cradle hung on a pole shouldered at both ends by the mother and the father as thanks for a safe birth.
Some also carry kavadis made of wood or metal adorned with pictures or statues of Hindu deities, flowers and peacock plumes.Others shave their heads bald as a symbol of humility and atonement.Many observe a strict vegetarian diet for about 40 days and renounce all forms of comfort and pleasure-giving activities. The 40 days are spent in meditation and prayer.
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