Firewalking in Singapore
You always learn the most while in taxis. We were riding around in one the other day when the driver received a message (they have screens that display traffic conditions, fares, alerts and other news): a couple of streets downtown would be closed from midnight to noon for firewalkers! Well, that’s unusual (at least to an American) so I did a little asking around, and here’s what I found out:
Firewalking happens annually as part of the big Thimidi festival, a south-Indian hindu event that involves fasting, knocking off conjugal relations and other sacrifices to purify yourself. (My husband told our child the same effect could be had by doing one’s homework and keeping one’s room clean.) Thus cleansed, you can walk barefoot and unharmed across a bed of coals at the Sri Mariamman Temple (a hindu temple located in the heart of Chinatown) and then stroll up the street to another temple in Little India with a crowd of your fellow firewalkers.
Apparently only men do the firewalking; women do some other devotional activities that aren’t quite as arresting. The men walk across the coals one at a time, and there are thousands of firewalkers, so they start the festivities, if that’s the word, at about 1 a.m., to allow everyone to finish and get to Little India before the peak heat of the day.
The festival honors Draupadi, the wife of the five Pandavas in the Mahabaratha, who in the course of her many travails proved her purity by walking across a bed of coals.
October 30th, 2008 at 7:38 am
A friend of mine familiar with firewalking in India says that the guys are well-lubricated with alcohol before they trudge across the coals. I don’t know how that squares with the abstinence that’s supposed to precede this event.