on feb 28th, 2.5 million+ women will gather in trivandrum to cook rice offerings to the devi of attukal. this women-only event stretches through most of the town, as you find women cooking rice/jaggery/coconut payasam in pots on open fires (fueled with regenerating and environmentally-friendly coconut-tree inflorescences). yes, there will be a lot of smoke in the air, but also a huge amount of bhakti. the women take over the city as men are basically not allowed in the festival.
may all the women readers of this blog have a great attukal ponkala!
the devi at attukal is believed to be kannaki, of the tamil epic poem silappathikaram.
this festival has soared in popularity in recent years. see http://attukalpongala.blogspot.com/
(it's written 'ponkala' in malayalam, but the word must be etymologically related to the tamil word 'pongal').
2 comments:
Organised by a private Temple, the event is totally commercial. There is no Tantrik or Puranic significance to the ritual.
Taking after this Temple, and trying to make own use of the induced popularity of Ponkala', other temples in Kerala have also begun holding Ponkalas.
In these times, it might only help to remind Kerala women, who are all now into non-domestic activities, that cooking rice is or used to be , part of their role.
yes, private temples -- these are the only ones that are surviving in kerala. the 'public' temples have been taken over by the govt and are squeezed dry. their lands have been encroached and their money is expropriated by the govt, which then turns around and gives it to mohammedans and christists. there were 11,200 temples in travancore a century ago. now there are only 2,000. the others have been alienated, destroyed. btw, at least 1,000 mosques have come up in kerala in the last 10 years not to speak of 5,000 churches.
regarding govt support, there have been special trains for attukal for years. this year, now that fundamentalist bigot e ahamed is MoS for railways, the trains were abruptly cancelled, making it really hard for pilgrims. of course, this did not lead to riots, so there is no news. and of course, a lot of mohammedans in kerala get haj subsidies. and of course a lot of state land is 'donated' to christists every year.
as for rituals, they are created over time and are dynamic. for instance, i understand that almost all the 'hoary' traditions used by the british royalty date back to roughly 1850! but the impression has gained ground that these were all age-old rituals with some deep meaning.
why, you comrades also have your own little rituals, eg. of garlanding portraits with red paper garlands. did marx or mao personally bless these? or did you make them up as you went along? how about the little roadside hundis set up by comrades, marked in red and with hammer/sickle etc?
the bane of kerala is comrades like this fellow sajan. from his name, i suspect he is an ezhava who has been deracinated and converted to communism. shame on you! the ezhavas are still the servants in the communist party, while the top jobs always go to forward caste nairs, brahmin nambudiris, and increasingly to clever christists who have infiltrated it. wake up and smell the coffee -- you are being oppressed by the comrades.
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