GEORGE TOWN, MALAYSIA, January 17, 2014 (The Malay Mail): Malaysian Hindu devotee Karthi Gan grimaces while tapping his feet to the beat of ritual drums as two men plunge dozens of sharp hooks into his chest and back. The painful ritual is Karthi’s way of giving thanks to the Hindu Deity Muruga as part of the country’s colorful annual Thaipusam festival, one of the world’s most extreme displays of religious devotion.
Celebrated also in India and other areas with significant Tamil communities, the three-day festival that kicked off yesterday is marked with particular zest among Malaysian Indians. Hordes of Hindus flock to temples across the country with offerings, many showing their fervor via extensive piercing or by bearing the elaborately decorated burdens called kavadi that are carried to religious sites.
“I got what I asked from Lord Muruga,” said Karthi, a 31-year-old engineer, who prayed during last year’s festival for “a good life”. “I got a new-born baby. I got a new home,” he said late Thursday night, when he and thousands of others began the slow and painful process of affixing their kavadi in the northern state of Penang.
In Penang, devotees then paraded barefoot for hours Friday through the streets of the state capital Georgetown, carrying kavadi that can weigh as much as 100 kilogrammes (220 pounds). Participants swayed trance-like to drumbeats that had throbbed since Thursday.
View lots of colorful pictures in the ‘In The Gallery” section at source above.