Today we watched a morning special puja that a local temple was holding at the beach. It was a very memorable experience. In fact, I just sort of stumbled upon in, walking back from my morning run and was so intrigued by what was going on, that I had to go get Kaia. By the time that I got there, there were about 55 stainless steel jars, each filled with water and topped by a coconut and what, I think was a neem leaf, lined up on a small platform that someone had shaped out of sand. The priests were chanting the names of the people who had paid to participate in this special event and a crowd of about 100 people had gathered around the vessels. I certainly stood out in my running garb among the saffron dhotis and colorful saris, so a woman handed me a paper (in Tamil) that, presumably, explained what was going on. Of course, it would not be until after I got home and I could ask questions of Joyce, that the full picture became clear about the event.
Shortly after I arrived on the scene, the head priest began a sort of liturgy where people responded by repeating certain things he was saying. Of course, I was no less lost than I would be in a Catholic mass, but when people started to kneel and bow in the sand, I definitely needed to (literally) take a step back and get a less intimate view. It was soon after the liturgy was finished that one of the other priests (there were about 15 in all) started to wail and sway violently from side to side. It looked like he was having some sort of seizure, and when it escalated to rolling down shoreline into the surf with arms flailing, I was sure that he was possessed. As it turns out, this is a sign that the god they are doing this puja for has “arrived”. That is, the liturgy is to invite the god to join them and unless it manifests itself in a human being, the ceremony cannot begin. Makes we wonder if the god ever does NOT show up, but who am I to nitpick. It was funny because the first thing is my mind when I was watching this unfurl was how some of the other priests has this look like, “He’s so lucky that he got to be the one possessed by God.”
After the rites and rituals were completed, a group of drummers and two horn players seemingly materialized from thin air and started really jamming. This was when I knew I had to get Kaia. I ran up to our place, to find that he was already watching and listening from the window. We quickly changed clothes and then ran back to follow the, now moving procession back to the temple from where they came. We walked with them for about a mile before we were too tired and needed to head back. As we were walking together, I realized yet again how much I will miss living here and this time together. You are not going to find this kind of thing coming home from a morning run in
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