Subramanya Festival: Kerala

It was a picture in yellow and orange, everything bright and flaming. The fluorescent tube lights cast their ghostly glow on us all. The drums announced the arrival of the trucks, which were large and rigged up with metal poles from which chains hung. At the end of the chains, hooks, and attached to the hooks were the backs of young men. The skin that had been pierced was stretched, like a lobe adorned with too large an earring.

In front of the first truck was a very small man with a long spear pierced through both cheeks. The spear must have been at least three feet long, and on one end was a small yellow lime. The man was dancing as though drunk, his eyes glazed over and wild. The drums were getting more powerful, and the man was infused with their beats. He moved faster and faster, he moved as though weighted from behind; his center was off, his keel was askew. Another man, enormous in comparison, stepped forward when the dancer threatened to fall. The smaller man leaned back, relieved, into the ample belly of the helper. He was like a boxer in the ring, having been socked in the jaw a few times, leaning against the ropes.

There were six men suspended side by side from the front of each truck. I watched, aghast, as they hung there, but everyone else seemed unfazed. Amid chanting and drumming, arms reaching up to the men, and the men’s arms reaching down to the crowd, a baby appeared. The mother was smiling wide as she passed her young infant up to the arms of one of the hanging men. The dazed look was common to the men and the baby—nobody looked entirely sure of what was happening. The man holding on to the baby danced him around a bit, while the crowd got louder. Then, just when the baby had reached the end of his tether, Mom reached up and took him back. He was whisked away.

The air grew thick with smoke and the smells of too many people in a small place. We were crowded together, and there was too much happening to take in. We were next to the dam, but none of the freshness of water permeated the festival. Every molecule was pungent and heady.

A crude wooden stretcher was brought in, carried over the heads of the crowd. Several men worked together to get the hanging men down from their suspension. One was positioned atop the truck, and was in charge of unhooking. Another two or three dealt with the wooden stretcher, and carrying the weight of the unhooked man. The skin of their backs stayed stretched skyward.

A few feet away stood a priest. Out of seemingly nowhere came a long line of men with spears through their mouths. The spears were of different lengths, but all had a lime at one end. Many men held on to either side of their spears, pulling the sides down toward their bodies. No one met my eye. The priest stood, pot-bellied and matter of fact, pulling out the spears. Ash flew around. Powder was applied to the holes. I moved out of the way as the men recently suspended from the truck walked by me, unscathed and nonchalant, eyes still glassy and impermeable.

The smells and sounds became overwhelming. People were everywhere, pushing and moving. I felt like, and of course was, a complete outsider. I moved to join a group of familiars near a cordoned off area, and by the time I made it twenty feet to the right the energy around me had completely changed. Here I was Other. Men and women were divided here, long spans of rope separating the groups. The women were on the far side of the area, beyond the hot coals. I was on the men’s side, and I clearly did not belong there. I felt uncomfortable even before I knew why; I felt disrespectful and disrespected. I left to get air, to find a space of my own, before the coal-walking even began. The relief I felt after leaving the festival was immense. It was like I had been underwater too long and finally came up to breathe.

Subramanya (otherwise known as Murugan, or Kartikeya, among other names) is an important Hindu deity, particularly in South India. He is the brother of Ganesha, another son of Shiva and Parvati. It was for Subramanya that this festival was held, for him that these many men were pierced and suspended in the air. It was for him that they walked on coals.

For me, for this Other, it is difficult to fathom, this devotion, this form of worship. Now that I’m home and feel quite far away from the intensity of the festival, I see it through a slightly different filter, one not so clouded with incense and white ash. Devotees, I have since read, “pierce their tongues and cheeks to impede speech and thereby attain full concentration on the Lord.” (http://hinduism.about.com/od/pongal/a/thaipusam) The spear, or ‘vel’, itself is a symbol of Subramanya. The vel is his weapon, given to him by his mother, Parvati. As I look back on my experience there, I see that everyone there who was not a devotee of Subramanya was Other, was outside. Those of us focusing on the smells, the drumming, the initial gut reaction to the piercing, we were not concentrating on what the festival was supposed to be about. The glassy eyes, the trance state the men were in, the dancing and hanging by hooks, it was all for something more than a human experience.


In our town, I have seen processions with men suspended from hooks in their backs. Here they often swing like great human pendulums while being paraded up the main road of our town. My amazement, and yes, shock, when I first saw this will never fade completely, I’m sure. I will never be like one of the women at the festival in Kerala, nonchalantly regarding the coal walking, or passing my baby to a man hung from hooks. Intellectually, because of a small amount of internet research and talking to people with more of an understanding of Hindu customs and rituals, I can understand perhaps a fragment of what this festival meant, why all these young men would chose this as a form of devotion. Really, though, I’ll never really get it.

But I shouldn’t wax romantic. I can’t be let off the hook (so to speak) with an easy “oh, now I get it, now I’m more connected to Hinduism, to India…” I have to admit it: this festival was an uncomfortable experience. I found it kind of barbaric. Did all the young men performing the ritual do it for the “right” reasons? Were they all focused on God or did they feel forced into the piercing by peer pressure? Does it matter? Who am I to judge?



When I try to get my head around what I saw there I see that it is still foreign, still exotic, still somewhat horrifying to my Upstate New York eyes. Yes, I feel more at home in India every day, but there are things that happen here that will always mystify me, always shock me, always leave me upset or filled up to my ears amazed and overjoyed. As someone who is always an outsider to this culture, always a stranger to custom, I get to be someone who is always learning. I can seek to understand through my experiences, my intellect, my gut, without the pressure of knowing anything absolute. I am given the liberty to be the one asking the questions, staring agog with eyes wide open, searching for meaning.