Chants of “Om Linga, Om Linga” resonated as barefoot Hindu pilgrims, many balancing offering-filled baskets and clay pitchers on their heads, climbed more than 100 steps to a hilltop shrine in southern India.
One family led a goat wearing a marigold garland around its neck. A burly man carrying two young children in his arms gripped a live chicken in his free hand, while another man carried a goat across his shoulders.
The animals were offered as sacrifices to Lingamanthula Swamy, believed to be a form of Lord Shiva, and his sister, Choudamma, in return for prosperity and protection.
Photo: AP
A box in which idols of Lingamanthula, his sister and other deities are stored was taken to the Lingamanthula Swamy temple during the pilgrimage and opened ceremoniously in front of the devotees.
Their pilgrimage, known as the Peddagattu Jatara, takes place every two years. During the five-day festival that ended on Thursday, tens of thousands visit the temple in Suryapet, in the southern state of Telangana.
Women wore bright clothes and flowers in their braided hair. Tumeric, an Indian cooking staple, but also essential in Hindu rituals, was made into a paste and smeared on the temple steps and walls, as well as the foreheads of the goats before they were sacrificed.
The pilgrimage is believed to have originated in the 16th century — before the temple was built on the huge rock that gave the pilgrimage its name, Peddagattu, or “large rock” in the local Telugu language.
At the central shrine, clay pitchers filled with bonam — rice cooked with the coarse sugar known as jaggery — were offered.
Devotees walked clockwise around the shrine, under the dappled light filtering from bamboo canopies shielding them from the blazing sun. Some played drums, danced and enacted scenes from Hindu epics.
Others chanted prayers and walked reverently with folded palms.
A woman wearing a holy mark on her forehead went into a trance shouting and swaying violently.
The words out of her mouth were guttural and slurred, but the pious surrounded her and asked for blessings.
Devotees, who arrived from faraway places, cooked their sacrificed animals on open fires outside their tents on the grounds surrounding the temple. The food was then shared among family and friends with much merriment and cheer.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS