A bizarre form of worship
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Periyar used to say: if you become a devotee
of god, you will lose reason (Bakthi Vandaal
Puthi Poekum). A report in the Chennai edition of the Deccan Chronicle dated 22 March 2008 proves his point. It describes how Holi, a Hindu festival celebrated on a grand scale by north Indians by smearing each other with colours, was celebrated by a section of people from the State of Rajasthan settled at Sowcarpet in Chennai on 21st March.
They worship a representation of the male genital organ as a part of the celebration. The phallus worship takes some bizarre forms/ In the year 2007, the banana fruit, painted over with black polish, was all the rage.
The street became the temple
This year it was the bitter gourd (paavakkai). Painted in gold colours with a condom covering the top, the vegetable was placed in the centre of Mint street in Parry’s, and it was referred to as the bride’s house. It was given the status of a temple for the day where a wedding would take place. And the bridegroom, an elderly man, who was mounted on a horse, soon made his way to the temple. It was a grand procession made up of at least 150 worshippers dancing to the tunes of a band, which led the chariot.
Filthy language
What gave the celebration its holy status was the money strewn around, with Rs. 500 notes virtually littering the bride’s house ( i.e. the street temple of the day.)
As a part of the tradition, while the bridegroom was on his way, people belonging to the bride’s house drained out all the anger that may have been pent up for a year. Passerby were the butt of the scolding, subject to filthy abuse that may not be found in any formal Hindi lexicon, and totally unintelligible to the Tamil people among whom they live.
What was surprising was that the people of the neighbourhood took all this sportingly. Some women even obliged by paying respect to the paavakkai (phallus-shaped bitter goud) at the request of the males of the bride’s house (the street temple.) “We consider the male reproduction organ as the life giver, and that means God metaphorically,” explains Dinesh Sonbi, the keeper of the bride’s house. “We live and we earn just for the one single intention, which is to reproduce. Hence we thought that something which of such importance should be given its due respect.”
When the bridegroom reached the rendezvous, it was time to unleash the frivolous child hidden inside man, spirit that had waited for a whole year to be let free. All the inhibition had vanished, with people dancing and carousing in the midst of the busy street. “It is a time when we forget all our worries and enmities. We as shop owners have tussles, sometimes even big ones, but at this time of the year, we forget our past and join together as one community . . . and then we fight again,” he says. When asked about the relevance of Holi to this form of worship, Dinesh said, “this has been our tradition for a long time. We used to celebrate it in a grander manner in Rajasthan.”
Even children were asked to do their pooja (ritual of prayer) to the representation of the male reproductive organ. It is believed that that when one offers his prayers to the figure, they will face no problems.
Now do you object to Periyar’s saying: He who worships God is a barbarian?
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