Tamil Cavadee Ceremony
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Tue 28 Jun 2011 15:08
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Tuesday 28th June 1201 Local Time
1001UTC
Durban
Well after the intense sailing stuff of the last
few blogs I can take you back to Mauritius with a few incredible
images.
I did not have the means to upload these images to
the blog while Trish was away but now I can show you one of the most bizarre
things we have seen on our travels.
First a lilttle bit more about Mauritius. Mauritius
allegedly was not inhabited when the Dutch and Portugese first went there in the
early 16th century when they were competing to establish trade routes by sea to
the east indian spice islands.
Later the French colonised Mauritius until the end
of the Napoleonic wars when in 1815 a deal was done to cede Mauritius,
Seychelles and Chagos islands to the British. The early French settlers
decendents are still in Mauritius today and they are known as Francos. They
don't consider themselves French but Mauritian. Today about between a dozen
and a score of Franco families own most of the capital on the island and
almost all of the sugar plantations except one, whose owner is Indian and we
met.
The Indians appear to have migrated to Mauritius
during the British time and are mostly Hindus. There are also Tamils and
Sri Lankans. Then there are Africans and creole people which are
mixed.
Though the Francos are few in number they are the
"old money" and carry a lot of power there. The Indian population apparently
numbers around 500,000 and are the commercial and political class. The Tamils
number about 200,000. the other 400,000 or so people are made up of the
rest.
So, the Tamils. They are very proud people and very
religious too. They say they drink fire (whisky) eat fire, (spicy curries) and
walk on fire. Yes walk on fire. Although at this particular festival we did not
see that - probably because it was raining.............................just
joking!
However the festival called Cavadee involved
families in that particular community building the most fantastic floral
shrines. These were beautiful - works of art. However what was truly
breathtaking was the men women and children who submitted their bodies to their
trust in their god. Claiming that they would feel no pain and that the blood
would not dare leave the body as it "had no right" - the whole body belonged to
their god Murugah - they pierced their bodies with hooks, spikes and skures of
all kinds and sizes. I saw people push spikes through their cheeks, tongues,
arms, legs and backs.
Where you see an image which has fruit in it, that
fruit is suspended on a hook which is hooked into the body. The leaf shaped
steel decorations are attached to skures which are pushed through arms, legs and
backs. The guy with the peacock like arrangement has all of these spikes and the
whole supporting structure punctured through his back. In other images you will
see people with spikes through their cheeks and also tongues were very popular
that day..........
Though I found it gruesome it was an incredible
testament to their strength of faith and courage. I'm not sure the photos do it
justice but if I told you that I saw one man having a spike pushed into and
pulled through his back by more than one man using pliers and a great deal of
hauling and pulling..... well you get the
picture.
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