Its festival time!

Its Chendamelam and Bhagvata parayanam time in Kerala, yes its the temple festival. Since I have shifted to Kerala, which was 9 years ago, I have always been so excited to witness the procession and the annual 7-10 day temple festivals (utsavam).

It is all about big and majestic looking elephants, chendamelam, rituals, procession, devotion, devotees and bangles, ribbons, cutex and popcorn.... :)
Being surrounded by close to 5 temples from various sides you will never miss a single announcement made over the speaker hanging from the tallest coconut tree in the vicinity.

So It all started during the end of January, the first temple was celebrating its annual festival and the next one close by had just raised the flag for its annual festival.

So I had two sets of speakers directed towards ME blaring chart busters of the first order, one was Tamil and the next Malayalam. During the weeny gap one gets between the songs one has to make sense of what you were doing just before the music started.

8 AM to 11.45 - Bhagvata parayanam
12.00 pm - 2PM - Cinema paatu
2Pm - 5PM - Bhagvatam again
5Pm-7Pm - Devotional songs
7Pm to late in to the night it was cinematic dance, dance ballet, drama, Dance drama, ganamela and the sorts.

At bedtime one has the luxury of listening to Tamil songs mixed with mythological drama where the asuras laughed very loud really loud.

Yesterday was a similar night, I could hear Kuchela in conversation with Krishna. Asuras intimidating meek junta and another of those swapna sounds speakers blared out some in comprehensible song.

The poovalans had a field day with great beauties arriving at temple, the samskarika paripadikal made sure they had lot of entertainment and passing comments and having a good look at the beauties was a good pastime. The booze and card made sure they were'nt bored.

At the end of the day it was fun, devotion and festival time.

Rama rama rama mukunda rama pahimam....