[www.keralites.net] Malaysia's spectacular Thaipusam festival

 

Malaysia's spectacular Thaipusam festival
 

Australian football fan and Hindu Carl Vadivella Belle receiving a tongue and cheek piercing during the Hindu Thaipusam festival in Malaysia

Carl fasted for 48 days before the festival, and abstained from alcohol, meat, TV and sex. He even slept on a bare floor

Carl is popular with locals, as he is the only white man who gets involved in the traditional kavadi dancing that comes as part of the ceremony
 

 

 

 

 

 

Carl joins the priests to pray before the ceremony, which will get him into a trance-like state before the piercing session

Everyone involved in the ceremony makes a special donation to the god Muruga, of inscensem fruits, coconuts and incense
 

As he waits his turn to be pierced, Carl watches and holds onto the needle that priest will use to pierce his tongue and cheek
 

Carl and other onlookers watch another man involved in the ceremony, in a state of trance, with a huge metal bar going through his cheeks
 

 

The moment Carl receives his piercing. He says he is not afraid of the pain that he will endure as part of the religious ceremony

It is believed that after fasting, people getting pierced during the Thaipusam ceremony will not feel any pain.
 

 

 

 

 

Carl changed his name to Vadivella Belle in the 1980s, after his third kavadi procession, which he believes saved his mother-in-law from cancer

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Posted by: SKumar <sreekumar949@yahoo.in>

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