Joyful crowds pelted each other with fistfuls of cow manure on Saturday as part of one village’s local ritual to mark the end of Diwali, India’s most important Hindu festival.
Similar to Spain’s “La Tomatina” — the eccentric tomato-hurling celebration of the local fruit — residents of Gumatapura instead fling snowball-sized wads of a more earthy variety.
The Gorehabba Festival begins with the afternoon collection of “ammunition” from cow-owning homes in the village, which lies on the border of the southern states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Photo: AFP
The manure is brought to the local temple on tractor trolleys, before a priest performs a blessing ritual. The dung is then dumped in an open area, with men and boys wading in to prepare their weapons for the battle ahead.
People flock to Gumatapura from far-flung cities each year, and for those in attendance, the messy battle is as much about fun as it is about the perceived health benefits.
“If they have a disease, it will get cured,” said Mahesh, a farmer at Saturday’s festival.
Some Hindus believe cows and everything they produce is sacred and purifying. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pushed for greater protection of the animals, and many states have banned their slaughter for meat.
Members of his party have touted the use of cow urine to prevent and cure COVID-19 and other ailments. His government is also looking to encourage the production of toothpaste, shampoos and mosquito repellents from bovine waste.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot