STUTTGART, GERMANY, June 4, 2012: From the outside, the old factory building on Bad Cannstatt’s Lehmfeldstrasse is quite unimpressive. Once inside, however, it offers a different picture: the dilapidated concrete building holds within itself a magnificent temple. Hundreds of Tamils from Sri Lanka in colorful clothing crowd into the room decorated with garlands of flowers. The air is warm and filled with incense. It is very noisy. Bare chested men in white robes beat on large drums and play oriental melodies on long oboe-like instruments.
Some 1,000 Hindus from a radius of 62 miles have come this Sunday at the height of the temple festival in Bad Cannstatt, and also some Germans, for whom the spectacle is not to be missed. After the ceremony in the temple, the men have come out carrying the statues of the Deities on their shoulders. In Sri Lanka the procession outside the temple could take place every day, “in Stuttgart, it is allowed only once during the ten days,” says 24-year-old Thadchajini Sothinathan.
While the convoy passes through the streets, the music continues to play. The Hindu priests, the Brahmins, throw coconuts to the ground, so that they burst. The hard shell represents the outer ego shell of man. When the shell is crushed, the soft core, the good qualities are exposed.