Sabarimala, swamis and Ayyappa

So much to tell, how to tell it? One of those life-time-remembering stories: a pilgrimage to Sabarimala. Here's some background information I got off the net:

Sabarimala Sri Dharmasastha Temple is the most famous temple in Kerala. It is believed that "Parasurama Maharshi" who retrieved Kerala from the sea by throwing his axe, installed the idol of Ayyappa at Sabarimala to worship Lord Ayyappa. The pilgrimage begins in the month of November and ends in January. The temple attracts pilgrims not only from the southern states of India, but also from other parts of the country and abroad. The shrine gets thronged with devotees during this time.
Certain customs are to be observed if one has to undertake a pilgrimage to Sabarimala. A pilgrim should observe austerities for 41 days. During this period, the pilgrim should abstain himself from non- vegetarian habits and cardinal pleasures. Pilgrims set out in groups under a leader, and each carry a cloth bundle called Irumudi kettu containing traditional offerings. Unlike certain Hindu temples, Sabarimala temple has no restrictions of caste or creed. The temple is open to males of all age groups and to women who have either passed their fertility age and those before reaching the stage of puberty.The easiest route is via Chalakkayam, by which one can reach the banks of the river Pamba by vehicle. Pamba is the main halting point on the way to Sabarimala. From here one has to trek 4 to 5 kms to reach the temple.

Built on a plateau about 40 feet high, the Ayyappan temple commands a lofty view of the mountains and valleys all around. The ancient temple has been rebuilt after a fire in 1950. Within the confines of the sanctum sanctorium with a copper-plated roof and four golden finials at the top, sits a beautiful idol of Ayyappa in panchaloha, an alloy of five metals, about one and a half feet tall.

SO - the VKV pilgrims: myself, Yossi (from Israel), Dan (from UK) , Francois (from Belgium) and VKV staff members Matthew, Rajish, Girish, Hari, Khanan and his 4 and half year old son (please remember as you read all of what we did that there was a 4 and half year old doing all of this - in fact many many children)
It started on Wednesday night with a trip to the main temple here in Aranmula, where we bought the chains to wear around our necks for the pilgrimage, and had them blessed by a priest. From then on we were "swamis" for the duration. It also happened to be the end of a festival of Lord Krishna, and since the temple is a Krishna temple, there was a huge event with 3 elephants and drumming and fire (but this is all too much to go into and off the topic of the pilgrimage. Suffice to say it was a thrilling ritual in itself)
On Friday night there were ceremonies with a priest here at VKV. Those of us going on the pilgrimage had to be dressed in a black lungi and black or orange shirt for the duration of the pilgrimage. We had to do a range of ritual things, most importantly preparing the cloth bundle mentioned in the info above. Each of us was given a cloth tube in which we had to put various things including 2 small coconuts. One of the coconuts was emptied of its milk and we had to fill it with ghee and reseal it. Both were put in the cloth tube, along with packets of different coloured powders and sweets , a small banana and other things, all of which were to be used as offerings at Sabarimala. The cloth tube is sealed and tied up into a bundle so that one coconut is dangling at one end and the other coconut at the other end. This bundle is to be carried during the pilgrimage on the head (so that one end is dangling on the forehead and the other at the back of the head) or slung over one shoulder. During these rituals there was lots of singing and drumming and clapping hands, and then after this we sang and danced - getting close to trance states.
At maybe 11pm it was time to leave, and those of us who were the swamis were sent off, bare footed, into the 4 wheel drive which would take us to the Pampa river (see the info above) We stopped at the Krishna temple in Aranmula to light a fire on the steps of the temple and leave an offering (Dan joked that we were setting fire to the temple and then running away) and similar at the small Ganesh temple in Aranmula. Then it was maybe 2 hours of driving, during which time there was lots of chanting and singing to Lord Ayyappa. Both chanting and singing is in the form of call and response:
Chant: one voice calls "Swami-ay-ee" (the "ee" part in falsetto voice) everyone responds: "Saranam Ayyappa"
Also there was a CD in the car of devotional songs to Ayyappa. Lots of excitement and energy. We drive through forested area which is a wildlife reserve and has tigers and elephants - some devoted pilgrims walk all the way here through the forest and take maybe 40 days to get here. All the way there is bus after bus after bus after bus of pilgrims, pilgrims on the side of the road at chai stalls.
At about 1am we arrived at the base of the hill at the River Pampa. There are thousands of pilgrims here. Alwaysin Hinduism devotees must wash beforegoing into a temple, and here the pilgrims must wash in the river. It is freezing cold water (we are up high in the hills now) but Girish and Rajish submerge themsleves in the water. The rest of us from our group paddle knee deep and splash some water on our faces.
It is a bit like WOMAD or a music festival - there are stalls everywhere selling chai or coffee or other food, trinkets, the pilgrim chains, pilgrimage souvenirs etc. It's a very festive mood, with lots of black lungis. Everyone has their cloth bundle on their head or on their shoulder. Dan and Yossi want to go to the toilet, and when they come back Yossi says "The toilet is an experiment - you don't want to know" (I'm not sure if he meant to say experiment or experience, but I think it is most appropriate.)
So now it is time to start the climb (as the info says, 4 - 5 kms) It is a very steep incline, a paved path (but the type with lots of rough stones sticking up) Remember, we are bare footed! The chanting starts again "Swami-ay-ee" "Saranam Ayyappa" and singing, again to near trance as we all struggle as best we can up the steep path. There are groups from all over Kerala, Tamil Nadu and much further away. Quite a few women (of course, they have to be past menstruating age) and lots of children. And many many many men of all ages and shapes and physical conditions. Suddenly we hear a whistle blowing and cries of "Dolly Dolly Dolly" and 4 men carrying a stretcher almost run past, with an old woman being carried up the hillside (these are used for people with physical disabilities and older people, there will be many of them going past us) All the way up on either side are chai stalls. We see a sign saying "Free oxygen" and also "Free medicated drinking water" The path is full of pilgrims - if you pause you are bumped into by the flowing stream of climbers. The path is lit by flurescent lights. Either side is forest but there is no chance to see it because at each step you have to look to carefully place your foot so that you wan't step on something sharp (but of course this happens many times) Chanting and singing is everywhere, each group with a leader doing the calling. Much excitement and ferver, even though we are all tired.
At about 2.30 am we come to a stop - the temple will not open until 4 am and already the "queue" is about 1 km long. We join this "queue" The reason I put the word queue in inverted commas is because it is not really a queue, it is a crush. Pilgrims cannot wait in an orderly line - they have to push up hard against each other, straining to get a few cms closer to the goal of the temple. This means we are hemmed in, and we stay like this for the next 6 hours, inching our way forewards. Of course we all have our cloth bundles on our shoulders or heads. Little kids lean forward and fall asleep standing up. I think it's a good idea myself. I don't understand how it happens, but every nowe and then there is a movement forward about 10 paces and everyone crushes ahead, deperate not to lose their place in the line and at the same time trying to use the opportunity to try to push in front of someone else. There are police lined all along the path - very necessary because there could easily be a riot or a stampede - I've read of pilgrimages in the past where the crowd has stampeded and someone has been crushed to death. I am entertained by the inevitable cheats - the line snakes around a bend and down the hill. Every now and again a few pilgrims decide they will jump the queue and run down the side of the hill to push in further ahead. Suddenly it is a river with burst banks and there are a hundred others following them, all trying to push in ahead, until a policeman comes armed with a stick. During the event we will pass through 3 metal detecters: if a terrorist decided to target Sabarimala it would be a very significant disaster. During the day's events one of our number guessed that there night be 100,000 people there. I have no possible way of guessing, but there were definitely MANY MANY MANY thousands. And during Dec/Jan it will get much busier. I don't expect to be a part of a crowd that size ever again in my life.
As we inch closer we start to see a huge expanse of lights in the valley below us. I ask Khanan what it is (a city?) and he says "It's the temple" Later I find that it has many restaurants, medical centres, sleeping areas etc etc. It is huge. Finally at 4am there is suddenly very loud recorded music amplified - the temple has opened! The pilgrims around us, though tired, have a rush of excitement and start their chanting again. So the crush inches on. At last we go down steps into what looks like a massive massive warehouse, and we can see that the line snakes around this 3 times before it goes up the steps into the actual temple comlex area. So there are more hours of standing waiting. The 4 of us are the only foreigners and therfore source of great interest (lots of staring and comments) and a few brave souls ask what country we are from. During the day we will be photographed many times, stared at, asked about where we are from, Francois will be interviwed for radio, the 4 of us filmed for TV and I am interviewed for TV. Apparently a person from the media phoned VKV to confirm our details.
We saw the sunrise and we are still waiting. At about 8.30am the ploiceman lets our goup through and we go through security check and about to climbe the steps into the main temple compound, when ... Francois is stopped by a policeman and made to empty his back pack. He is starting out as a freelance photojournalist and has very professional photographic equipment. He has been taking photos but he knows that once we get into the temple it is forbidden to take photos. However, this security policeman is full of self importance and sees the chance to pick on a foreigner. He makes Francois unpack all of his equipment and open up cameras and lenses to prove there is no bomb inside. Finally he is told he cannot take it into the temple and he has to go out to a police office to leave his equipment, so all of our group leave the line and are led away from the temple. Fortunately this is only a fairly short diversion and we are then taken on a shortcut back into the temple grounds.
It is all chaos and noise and confusion! There is nothing serene and calm about the worship happening here. In the west we have this idea of Hinduism as meditation and calm, but there is pandemonium here. Over the amplification system is a never ending stream of people yelling/screaming devotional chants. There are explosions (I don't know from what, maybe some kind of cannon) that are set off constantly. People are chanting at different times in different ways and places. There is drumming. There are policemen everywhere trying to keep some kind of order. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people. Of course we join a line/throng. We are headed toward the 18 golden steps. It is a very symbolic and important set of stairs plated in gold, which takes us up to another level in the complex. Everyone has their cloth bundle on their heads, there is nothing to hold onto to pull yourself up the steps and they are very narrow and very very steep and slippery. There are thousands of people pushing to get up. On either side of the steps is a line of policemen, and their job is to grab each pilgrim and haul/shove them up a step so that the next policeman can grab them and shove them up the next step etc Remarkable! Crazy! What other religion would do this!!!
We have to undo the cloth bundle and take out one of the coconuts - not the one full of ghee. There is a wall where all pigrims throw thier coconut so that it smashes and there are thousands of smashed coconuts lying on the ground. So we smash our coconuts - I have some idea that this is representative of releasing bad things from us but I don't really know, I need to find a book about Sabarimala to find out the meaning of all the ritual things we did.

We join the next long line which goes in a huge snaking circle and after who knows how long we are pushed and shoved by both policeman and also by the pilgrims in the line behind us through the golden Ayyappa temple and we see the famous Ayyappa idol (see the info above) But there is no chance of stopping to look - you get a glimpse as you are shoved past it.

We come out into another building where we unpack the second coconut - the one filled with ghee. We take it to a place where there is a sign saying "Ghee tanks" and we have to smash this coconut by hitting it on a sacred rock, and then empty the ghee into the huge vat. Someone said that the gods bathe in the ghee, but I don't know more than this.

Off we go to another whole series of small temple structures and idols, and again we unpack from our cloth bundles all the packets of coloured powders and sweets etc and there is a whole series of rituals of emptying the powders and sweets at differrent idols. It is quite particular about which coloured powders at which idols and Girish and Rajish show me which ones to use when. Girish uses the powder, once it has been poured onto the idols, to make coloured smudges on my forehead. What does all this mean? I have no idea. Meanwhile the chaos continues. Noise noise noise. The VKV staff take great care of us and are quite protective - to get lost in this crowd would be a disaster. It feels to me like the worshippers have absolutley no sense of community in what they are doing, it is a very private individual thing, so get the hell out of my way so that I can get to the idol and if you take too long I'll push you out the way.

In this area of the temple complex there are a number of men sitting on the ground, singing and playing small double-headed drums with sticks. One sees me and is obviously callingme over to him. We ask Rajish what this is about and he tells us that they sing a kind of prayer for anyone who has something bad inside them that they want to remove. Immediately I head for one of the singer/drummers and Yossi heads for another. (Yossi and I have spent a lot of time comparing notes about the bad things inside of us that we want to remove) For 10 rupees the singer/drummer/prayer asks your name, and then sings and drums a personal prayer for you as you sit on the ground in front of him, and he includes your name in the song. When he is finished he blesses you with a coloured powder smudge on the forehead.

Finally it seems we have done everything neceassary and we go to find some food for breakfast. We are exhausted but also I am a bit high from the intensity of it all. There are food stalls everywhere so we buy some vegetable biryani and sit down to eat. The food is packed in cardboard take away containers and Yossi is very amused to find Hebrew writing on the lid - left over containers from an Israeli Icecream chain. Some Israeli company is making money dumping left over takeaway containers in India.

Much of the rest of the time the 4 of us foreigners were left sitting waiting while the others were doing whatever they were doing. As I said, we were stared at, one man said to me "are you a god person?" which I think meant are you religious, and we were photographed and interviewed.

Very eventually it was time for the climb back down - much much harder than going up. The sun was hot, it was quite slippery in many parts going down. You had to lean your body backwards because of the decline. Thousands of people all going down at the same time, and more of the "Dolly Dolly Dolly" stretchers running past. More sellers on the side of the road selling toys and trinkets. Barefooted, each step is a careful decision, so eyes are cast downward. I was doing some running steps at some points because of the movement of the crowd and the decline. It was quite a challenge. There were also many more pilgr4ims on the dame path, going up, just beginning the whole adventure, and they were full of the fervent chanting, whereas we on the downward journey tended to be in an exhausted silence. Beautiful forested hills as scenery but very little chance to look around and appreciate it.

Down at the bottom at the Pampa river, it was time to wash in the river again, and this time we really appreciated the cooling water on the bottoms of our feet and face. Now it was time to take off the chain around our neck - so at this point we were no longer swamis. A final chai, and then the trip in the 4 wheel drive back to Aranmula, each of us having that uncomfortable nodding off and jolting awake again in the car (and the dangerous risky driving of our driver was enough to keep us awake) A stop on the hillside road at a local eatery for lunch allowed a chance to look at the beautiful scernery, as well as a roadside piss over the hill whilst pilgrim busses drove past and pilgrims walked past. The sight of a man pissing on the side of the road is nothing at all out of the ordinary in India, but I'm not sure if the sight of a white man pissing on the side of the road is something to stare at - I didn't bother to check. As on the way, bus after bus after bus of pilgrims was going in both directions - either returning home or about to begin. Pilgrims walking on the side of the road. Everywhere. This is the norm for the next month and half.

At maybe 4pm we got back to VKV and I went to bed. Sleep is a gorgeous yummy thing.

So, it was a most amazing experience and I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity. It was challenging and hard work, but compared to the real authentic pilgrims who do the 40 day event, it was and "excursion" (as Santosh, the singing teacher here said) The TV interviewer asked me if I would come to Sabarimala again. I gave hime what he wanted and saidI I come back to India again I'm sure I would do it again. But I'm not so sure. Maybe.