If one of the measures of faith is endurance, the multitude of women who put up hearths along the length and breadth of the capital city, cooked their offerings amid tear-inducing smoke and waited patiently through the day for the Attukal Devi to accept the contents of their humble pots, would certainly be counted among the unbreakably faithful. For it would take more than just passive belief to keep one in high spirits while doing it all on an extremely hot summer day.
Yet another factor could be the sense of unity, which one naturally gets while standing amid thousands of others from one’s own tribe, all gathered with the same purpose. The combined energy of this multitude, which was certainly more than the sum of its parts, ebbed only for a bit in the afternoon, in that period of lull after the Pongala is cooked and the blessing is done.
“Belief is of course one factor, but for me equally important is this annual pilgrimage that I take with a few others from my neighbourhood. They are all here with me. It is something I look forward to all year,” C. Bhavani from Kottarakara says.
But for the outsiders, the whole affair borders on the unfathomable, something that they really cannot put their fingers on or something that they can never define within a box.
“This is pretty overwhelming. Something like this would never happen in my country. The cops there would not allow so much of fire on the streets. They tend to get paranoid,” says Chris, a businessman from California, who was seen walking on the streets in front of the University College.
Then there were the others who are strangers to this tradition, but have a bend of mind to blend in wherever they end up. A group of six girls from West Bengal, who recently started working in a saloon in the city, offered their first Pongala on Thursday.
“We came to the city a few months ago and when we heard about this festival from our native colleagues, we decided to join in. It is an entirely new experience for us,” says Chunku, one of the girls.
Clogged roads
However, the patience of the crowd wore surprisingly thin just after the sprinkling of the holy water, with everyone scrambling for home.
Clogged roads and by-lanes led to incidents of mild road rage. Speeding cars were stopped in their tracks by voluntary organisations offering refreshments at every junction.
