Thaipūsam

When it falls

The day the Moon stands in Pūṣya nakṣatra while the Sun is in Makara — the Tamil month Thai — which puts it on the full moon of late January or early February.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

The day is Murugan's. One telling makes it his birth, another the day Pārvatī gave him the spear with which he ended Sūrapadma, and the second is the one the processions act out.

Thai is the month of new beginnings in the Tamil reckoning — Thai piṛandāl vaḻi piṛakkum, when Thai is born a way is born — and Pūṣya is the star of nourishment. The festival sits where the two meet.

What the day is actually known for is the kāvaḍi: an arched wooden or metal frame carried on the shoulders up the hill to the temple, decorated with peacock feathers, sometimes with pots of milk hung from it, sometimes attached to the carrier with hooks and skewers. It is carried in fulfilment of a vow, and the carrier walks in a trance to drumming, usually after a month of fasting and celibacy.

How the day is kept

• A month of preparation before the day: one vegetarian meal a day, sleeping on the floor, and abstinence.
• Milk is carried in pots (pāl kāvaḍi) up the hill and poured over the deity; at Palani in Tamil Nadu the climb is nearly seven hundred steps.
• Body piercing with small spears through the cheeks and tongue, and hooks in the back, is undertaken by some carriers; the silence it enforces is part of the vow.
• Batu Caves outside Kuala Lumpur draws over a million people and is the largest gathering anywhere; Singapore, Penang, Jaffna, Mauritius and South Africa keep it at scale too.
• Heads are shaved and the scalp covered in sandalwood paste before the climb.

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