People travel miles from surrounding villages in bullock carts, camping in the city and sleeping in the streets. The first part of the festival is the celestial wedding of Meenakshi and Shiva, which happens in the temple. Thousands attend. The priests officiate this wedding and two male priests also exchange garlands, standing in for Meenakshi and Shiva. During the ceremony, when the tali is tied around Meenakshi's neck signifying marriage, all the married women in the audience retie a new string around their own necks.
Next day is the chariot procession, which is a spectacle to behold. These chariots are several storeys high and are pulled on huge wooden wheels. People by the hundreds drag the chariots with huge ropes. The chariot wobbles back and forth as it is heaved forwards, giving the impression that it could crash and fall down any moment. Some people do die in these chariot processions. This is where we get the word "juggernaut" in English: it's actually a name for Krishna. And a long time ago devotees in Orissa supposedly flung themselves underneath the chariot as it passed by. This doesn't really happen anymore, as far as I know, but individuals do sometimes accidentally get crushed by the wheels when placing coconuts underneath as offerings, for example, and misjudging the speed and strength of the chariot.
A few days after the chariot procession downtown, Alagar comes down from his temple about 15 KM away to Madurai to take a dip in the Vaigai river (which is bone dry). He is supposedly coming for Meenakshi's wedding but misses it by 3 days. He realizes this at the river's edge and then turns back on his golden horse and goes back to his town. He takes several days to get here, and people follow him down to Madurai in bullock carts and on foot. Along the way, devotees squirt water on the statue and on the devotees, keeping them cool. Alagar's festival was most likely a completely separate festival at one time but it has become conflated with the Meenakshi part of Chittrai.
Alagar stops at a number of different places along the way to the Madurai, resting for the night and allowing folks to get darshan. In another interesting twist, he is said to have a Muslim mistress and one night he stops at a Muslim area to "sleep" with her. Basically this festival brings together lots of folks, worshippers of Shiva, Vishnu, and also Muslims. The whole city is simply buzzing with energy with everyone waiting to receive Alagar as pretty much the biggest VIP in existence. A carnival atmosphere prevails, and the fair goes on all night long in Tallakulam, while Alagar is holed up in the Perumal temple there. For the very select few among the thousands, it may even be possible to grope the foreign girl's ass while waiting to get darshan of the Lord. Killing two birds with one stone, I suppose: the carnal needs as well as the spiritual ones.
You'll never see faith in human beings like you see at this Chittrai festival. When Alagar arrives on the golden horse, making his way to the Vaigai, you can feel the rush and the surge of faith among the thousands in attendance. You simply cannot imagine a religious tradition more different from the Judeo-Christian or even Islamic traditions. Here God is not imagined to be up in the sky and out of physical reach. He or she is very much in the presence of people here, manifesting all the time. Just a few days ago the city Collector and other important high-level VIPs were photographed at the venue where Alagar would be entering the Vaigai, assessing the preparations. The headline above the photo read: "Getting ready for the Lord." Imagine a culture in which God actually shows up in front of your face on a regular basis. This is the religious tradition here. This is not a statue riding on top of a golden horse, it's God. And it is for this reason and many more that I think Westerners completely miss what is going on in Hinduism. There is too much apology, too much trying to cram Hinduism into a monotheistic box, making it more palatable to a Judeo-Christian audience. To much tiptoeing around "idol" worship. We need to stop trying to understand Hinduism in Western terms and start trying to understand this tradition on its own terms. Westererns spend too much time on texts and not enough time trying to understand practice. There is a huge difference. I could go further, but there are plenty of apologists who would get very angry at what I have to say. Don't believe me? It's happening right now. Books are being burned and careers are being destroyed as we speak.
Meenakshi's chariot
Huge ropes for pulling the chariot
This gentleman from a surrounding village was kind enough to let me take a picture of his boom boom maadu. There were quite a few of these at the festival, and folks took darshan of them. This gentleman and his family were camped out on the side of the road outside someone's house.
View from the kitchen window.Cess pool not pictured.
No comments:
Post a Comment