Thaipusam

I once watched a National Geographic documentary about a ceremony in which men put themselves into a religious trance and then were pierced with hundreds of hooks and poles through various parts of their body without feeling any pain or bleeding.

Today I saw it with my own eyes.

We happened to be in Malaysia at the same time as this famous and fascinating religion ceremony and we excitedly charged our cameras and set our alarm to take it all in. I nervously wondered whether the TV special I had seen had dramatised the events but it turned out to be more real and vivid than anything that a camera could capture.

"THAIPUSAM is an annual Hindu festival which draws the largest gathering in multi-racial Malaysia - nearly a million people in 2000.

Several hundred devotees spear their cheeks with long, shiny steel rods - often a metre long - and pierce their chests and backs with small, hook-like needles in penance.

Tourists watch in awe as metal pierces the skin with hardly any bleeding and, apparently, no pain as the devotee stands in a trance in the dawn light after weeks of rigorous abstinence.

Over the years, curious British, American and Australian medical experts have come to observe and speculate. Some think the white ash smeared on the body, the juice squeezed from the yellow lime fruit or the milk poured on the pierced areas may help to numb the skin. But most admit they have no answer.

The devotees say it is faith."

We watched ten, maybe twenty or thirty different men walk, dance or run past us with metal rods sticking out from their mouths, hundreds of small cans or limes hanging from their chests and backs and sometimes numerous hooks in their backs attached to ropes that another man pulls. The experience was frightening, awe inspiring, uplifting and hypnotic. It's hard to describe what it's like watching a 60 year old man with hundreds of piercings dance to Hindi music before rushing off with hooks pulling his flesh. This was by far the most exciting religious event I have ever seen. It really was like being pulled into the strangest, most interesting documentary you have ever seen and watching it firsthand.

Crowds gathered for the festival



You can hardly see the man himself



Back hooks drawing no blood



Dancing