QUEBEC, CANADA, July 30, 2014 (Laurentides Express): Every year the celebration of Kavadi in Val-Morin attracts hundreds of onlookers who watch, with cameras in hand, the procession of devotees of the Tamil community in the streets of the municipality.
Several Hindu devotees are suspended horizontally by iron hooks piercing the skin of their back, triceps and hamstrings. “They fast for several days before the event”, explained a young Tamil woman who makes her home near Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts. “They practice total abstinence – including their sex lives – to purify the soul. On Kavadi day, they go into a trance, possessed by the Deity to the point where they do not feel the hooks or needles that pass through their skin.”
This celebration is a Hindu festival usually celebrated in January or February in the tropical climate of the southwest Indian Ocean. However, the Tamil diaspora in North America has chosen to celebrate this colorful festival during the hot season, in July, in Val-Morin, rather than in the sub-zero weather of January.
Colorful photos at ‘source.’