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Published: February 27th 2007
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We went to a festival yesterday which was full of elephants and really lovely, but before I talk about that, I just want to say congratulations to Sam & Alex, and Bruce & Steph, who have just had brand new babies within a week of each other (though the two couples dont know each other) and I'm really sad I cant be there to see Adam and Annie in person - I hope I get to see lots of photos soon!
So anyway, the festival- we heard about it the night before when we were trying to find out about something else. Apparently it's the biggest festival in Varkala all year so we were told we really should get going to it.
We bumped into a couple from Sheffield over breakfast and all headed off together in an overpriced and very speedy auto rickshaw. It should be pretty comfortable to get 4 people in one of these 3 wheeled motorbike engine taxi's but somehow we all seemed a bit gangly.
We got out at the point where the rickshaw could go no further - great floats were littering the road with enormous flying monkeys on them and tissue paper extravaganzas
Blue Man
This is the God Kali (I think)minding her own business in the crowds. - without meaning to, we'd got there just in the nick of time it seemed. We wandered over to where most people seemed to be gathering, and among the crowds of made up faces, a drumming team suddenly started up. About 15 men, in white clothes with orange sashes started pounding away with amazing rhythm and energy and everyone was really excited.
It soon became clear that there was an incredibly precise order to everything - there were 2 middle aged men co-ordinating the whole procession between puffs of cigarettes, and one by laid back one, each group of performers edged their way out of the square and into the road.
It was so loud with the 2 or 3 drumming groups that I could barely hear what the very excitable Indian next to me was trying to say - all I could make out was 'festival.....festival.....festival" so my response consisted mainly of laughing, nodding and the odd shoulder shrug.
There were groups of children dressed up and taking part in a way that puts all Community arts led carnivals in England to shame! There was a whole fishing boat full of beautifully made up girls with white wooden oars,
Dead Man's head
One of the float exhibits all moving in perfect unison to similate extravagent rowing which was being towed on enormous wheels by fit young Indian men. There was a team of boys with painted dots around their eyes and cymbals on their hands creating graceful movements as they walked along (though some looked a bit embarrassed it's true) There were men dressed as female gods in incredible makeup, who looked a bit like pantomine dames, and certainly looked happy to be wearing fake breasts. And there were also huge creations on top of floats - 5 lions at the back of one lorry complete with load roars and head movements - various recreations of myths where people are speared or gored by lions, heads taken off and held aloft, Hanuman the monkey god bearing his chest, all of which were enormous and came complete with sound effects.
But last of all came the main attraction - the elephants. Now, over breakfast that morning we had read a huge article on why elephants run amok so regularly during festivals so we were a little nervous to say the least about what may be ahead. But at least one thing made me feel a bit happier -
man with pink flowers
Every time the procession started up again, this man would pick up this enormouse structure, balance it on his head and shoulders and twirl around in it. all the noise and commotion of the carnival which is apparently something that upsets the elephants, was at the front. By the time the regal man in red holding a ceremonial umbrella began to lead the way, the noise was minimal, in fact it was pretty peaceful, and along came the elephants. My god they're huge! at least some of them were anyway - some of the men on top were continually ducking to avoid strings of lights which were decorating the road. It was really interesting to see how different all the elephants and their mahouts (handlers) were. All the animals were sponsored as I understand, so all have different owners and despite the similar attire on them, all 29 elephants seemed to have different temperaments. Some seemed really really happy - and it looked like they were being really well looked after, given regular food, water, kindly mahouts - some seemed quite fed up, and some had horrible callouses on their trunks, feet and bottoms. The last elephant was being made to eat a small rock by his mahout, which seemed very wrong to me, but at the same time, the animal didnt seem to mind too much
- maybe it needed salt or something - I'd like to give it the benefit of the doubt - it was fed palm leaves and other things too. Besides, I remember a report about sheep eating the roads in Yorkshire a couple of years ago because of the salt in the tarmac!
We stayed at the festival for hours - we followed the procession over the railway tracks, down through a long length of road decorated with huge painted polystyrene arches and temporary ceilings of coloured paper. Everyone in Varkala was there it seemed - except for a large amount of tourists - it wasnt advertised there so noone would know unless they ventured out.
Moving between crowds was a complicated affair though - they lined the streets with such determination that to move along, we had to temporarily join the parade, or tag along to a bottle neck of people all doing the same. At one point, Bob moved ahead of me, and a hand reached out across me from the left, trying to grab hold of a friend. Before I knew it, a whole gaggle of women were attached to each other, all around me, and all shorter than me, trying not to lose each other again. I seemed to temporarily become part of their family as we all giggled at the silliness of it.
The friendliness amidst that festival was incredible. People we talked to told us that this was the meaning of the festival, that everyone was deliriously happy because it's the best event of the year, and it certainly seemed like it. We reluctantly left after the sun set as we had quite a long walk back - longer than we realised as we were almost as far as where we had walked to in the blazing heat the other day. But thankfully, the moon was out a little, and we had enough memory from walking the other day to know where the pools of water we should avoid were likely to be.
We were able to take a much more realistic guess at how far we'd gone though while we were'nt overheating - we reckon it was probably about 4 or 5 km which means we were really stupid to walk twice that the other day - we did see some great stuff though!
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