Torture Garden eat your heart out...

Last Thursday was the festival of Thaipusam in Singapore, held in honour of the Hindu God Subramaniam (Lord Murugan). It is observed as a day of prayers, thanksgiving for wishes granted, fulfilment of vows and for good health. You can bone up on the legend here, but this is basically the deal. You carry a pot of milk from one temple to another to offer to Lord Murugan. The thing is that the harder you make it for yourself, the more auspicious the offering becomes and the more benefits Lord Murugan will bestow on the carrier.

Now getting from one side of Singapore city to the other is usually fraught with its own inherent difficulties. Slow moving, 4 wide groups of Singaporean aunties causing great log jams of humanity in their wake on Orchard, louche black clad teenagers lounging around on any and every available staircase and the global phenomenon of the number of available taxis being inversely proportional to the amount of rain.

So you'd have to try quite hard to make the journey more difficult. So you do is you don what is basically a giant pyramid shaped mobile milk altar called a kavadi.


This weighs about 30kg. And then you fix it to yourself with some very sharp spokes that pierce your flesh.



Get some assorted friends and relatives to fasten some limes to your back in ordered rows. Not with double sided sticky tape Blue Peter fans. With needle sharp hooks. And then, just to make sure that you are really focussed on what you're doing, get your mouth pierced from side to side with a small spear, then from top to bottom via your tongue with another one.



These are the basics. Kavadis are limited to 2m in height in order to prevent one upmanship, but you can then pimp your kavadi out with as much bling as you can afford or carry, peacock feathers are very in vogue, as are gold chains connecting your hooks to the kavadi and assorted facial fruit kebabs.



The staging area in the temple for the kavadi bearers is an amazing riot of chanting, drums and music, as well as a heady mix of smells. The bearers periodically practise spinning ever faster, creating the image of a spinning top, although not one that you'd want to get too close to. I did see a 'First Aid Post' sign, but seriously, what kind of injury would you have to take there to get any attention? 'I'm sorry sir, but your papercut will have to wait until I've seen these 200 other gentlemen with citrus fruits impaled in their backs.'

Click to see VIDEO 1



Every so often a crowd will congregate around a kavadi and owner, jamming video cameras and cameraphones into the supplicants face in order to catch the moment of the skewering. Usually a male (though I did see one woman with a skewer), his friends all pack in around him, chanting 'Vel, Vel' (spear, spear), enhancing the trance that the devotee has put himself into. He shows no pain and amazingly not one drop of blood is drawn from any of the piercings, no matter how large the implement used.

Click to see VIDEO 2



The kavadis then proceed out of the temple, followed by their supporters and into Singaporean airspace, under the watchful eye of the authorities. Here, drums and musical instruments are prohibited and the kavadis are herded into a fenced off area down the side of Serangoon Road. Cheekily from time to time, the supporters will break into some chanting and singing to gee up their bearer, who more often than not has been forced to stop his already arduous journey by the traffic lights changing to red, well this is Singapore and the car reigns supreme. Some scaling back of the mortification means that in Singapore at least devotees are not allowed to pull the spike/ chariot kavadis by themselves, instead their supporters pull them but also pull back on the hooks to offer some resistance for them.

Following up from my 'cellphone in the gym' story, I think I've managed to top it already. How about this? Now, my question is who was calling and what was said? Maybe Lord Murugan has kept pace with the times and is just checking up:

Lord Murugan: 'Hi, I'm just calling to check that you're in sufficient pain and the milk is on the way, it's just that I have Vishnu coming round for tea at 7pm and I'm a bit low on milk at the moment what with Ganesh drinking it all'

Devotee: 'Mmmm mmmm mmmm'

You can take a look at the rest of the pictures here on Fotki and VIDEO 3 (procession) and VIDEO 4 (getting ready). Another day in Singapore, highlighting what the city does best, never failing to amaze and surprise.