Poorotsavam: A Unique Festival in North Kerala

Summer months in North Kerala is the time of festivals. If you are ready to brave the hot and humid conditions, ready to burn midnight oil, you will be rewarded with the best of experiences …

Poorotsavam is yet another unique festival celebrated in Northern Kerala to invoke the blessings of lord Kamadeva (Cupid) by young girls.

It’s a nine day festival and on the last day, a flower carpet is created with locally collected flowers. Velichappad or Pothi, a possessed one, visits houses and blesses devotees.

There are many other rituals and dance forms associated with Pooram (Poorotsavam) during all these days and the ambience is filled with sounds, lights and the fragrance of flowers…

Have a look at some of the images from this festival and thank you for your time 🙂

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The Story Behind: Vishnumurthy Thottam

I have countless posts on Theyyams here, but none on the ‘Thottam Pattu’…

Each Theyyam performance is preceded by it’s Thottam, where the theyyam artist, with minimal make up, recites the story of theyyam.

Vishnumurthy theyyam is one of the most important and common theyyam performed as it’s based on lord Vishnu’s fourth avatar (incarnation), Narasimha.

The performance is so intense that, we get the true intensity of violence as the story unfolds.

The story is enacted on the following day without any recitation but with the rhythmic drum beats manipulating each step of the theyyam …

Let you be, your inspiration…

Play of light and shadows: Bekal Fort

It was quite an unplanned trip to the ‘Bekal fort‘ last day, and as always, I was late to reach 🙂

But, nature was so kind to me that, we were in for a great treat… treat of light and shadows…

Here it is, a few images I managed to capture at sunset 🙂

Have a beautiful week ahead 🙂

Football Fever in Kerala: WC 2018 Russia

It’s world cup time again and only a day away from the D day. Over last one month Keralites celebrated it breaking all barriers of religion and politics. There was only one religion, that’s football but many gods 🙂

As we had a roller coaster world cup with more twists and turns than any edition as far as I could remember, we had to find new favorites to follow after almost every stage.

With the fall of Argentina, Portugal, Germany, Spain and Brazil most of the crazy football fans are in total disappointment. But that really didn’t stop them from watching the late night showdowns as they easily switched sides.

Their passion for football could be easily be noticed if you happened to travel in Kerala over last one month. Posters, cutouts, flex boards, painted walls with colors of different national flags and graffiti filled up each and every possible public space.

One thing I have to admit regretfully is the number of flex boards that were used and it’s environmental impact.

When I published a post four years back during Fifa WC 2014 Brazil the number of flex boards were much lesser.

But, there is a positive side as well. Many fan clubs and friend circles opted to do away with flex boards and used cloth banners and other creative means to show off their loyalty.

Hope to have fitting battle tomorrow and let’s see what Croatia could achieve on this grand stage.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Unlikely, Laksham Deepam Samarppanam

It truly was a Herculean attempt, ‘try to lit one hundred thousand lamps at the same time’.

Quite Unlikely to achieve the objective in open air, but, they almost did it through an incredible collective effort driven by faith…

I was lucky to get an off day and spent enough time to capture the whole action.

Unlikely

 

Wordless Wednesday: The Sacred Tree

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Have a Beautiful Weekend…