Quik Thinking

Thaipusam began on Friday night at the Batu Caves just outside KL. Since it's such a big deal around here, I'd been wanting to check it out so. Various sources had informed me that there would be a huge procession across the city from Chinatown to the caves on Friday night so a couple of other tourists and I tried looking for the parade on Friday night but we were completely unable to find it. Eventually we gave up and caught a bus to the caves.

When we arrived at the caves, there were already an enormous number of people gathered there. I hadn't seen this many brown people in one place since I left Karachi in 1996! Amidst the pounding of drums there was a stream of people proceeding towards the caves. Each party consisted of a variation upon this theme: a guy with hooks embedded in the flesh of his back surrounded by a few friends cheering him on as he either trudged along under the weight of oranges hanging off the hooks or pulled against ropes (attached to the hooks) being held by a friend walking behind him; behind him would be another guy bearing the weight of a gigantic float, often with a long barb sticking sideways through his lips and his tongue lolling out in a frenzy; these two spectacles would be followed by several people dressed in yellow, often with shaved heads smeared with a yellow paste, bearing jars of milk on their heads.

We merged with the throngs and slowly made our way past the massive golden statue, up the insanely steep stairs, and into the cavern with the stone altars. We encountered thousands of abandoned slippers strewn across the stairs as we climbed them. I almost lost my own at one point. When we finally arrived at the caves, there were people offering up their jars of milk to various altars, removing the hooks from their flesh and een having little picnics. The strangest thing I noticed was a crowd of people handing little bags in at a booth in exchange for other little bags, whose contents they would thereafter burn.

We were amongst the first of over 2 million people who will attend the event over the course of this week. I came away somewhat bewildered by what I'd seen but mostly impressed that so many people were able to be in one place with barely any crowd control infrastructure and no untoward incidents taking place.