FaithWorld

In the “one picture worth 1,000 words” category, check out Sulastri Osman’s feature on a Singapore festival of body-piercing in honour of the Hindu god Shiva’s youngest son, Lord Murugan. “They believe the piercings will leave no scars and they will feel no pain, .protected from bodily harm by the strict regime of abstinence, piety and vegetarianism they follow for a month before the festival,” she writes.

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Melvin Ho (right), a first-time participant in the Thaipusam festival, said the motivation for the piercing is simple. “I believe in gods,” the 49-year-old man of Chinese origin said, minutes before a friend inserted a meter-long metal skewer through his cheeks.

The man who pierced Ho appeared to feel more pain than he did, grimacing as he pushed the skewer through his friend’s flesh.

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The women with pierced cheeks and men sporting hooks and skewers all over their bare chests and backs carry wooden kavadis, or portable altars, for 4-1/2 kilometers (three miles) to Sri Thendayuthapani Temple where the procession ends.

Marching alongside Ho, his friend carried a ceremonial milk pot, while an estimated crowd of 50,000 families, friends and onlookers prayed and chanted.

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The procession ends with devotees making offerings and pouring pots of milk over a statue of the merciful Murugan, one of hundreds of gods who populate the colorful Hindu pantheon.

Body-piercing is not restricted to Hindus. Chinese Buddhists practice it too.

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Not too far north of the Singapore festival, on the Thai resort island of Phuket, the annual vegetarian festival has the same kind of procession with skewers. This must be the result of a mix of traditions. One of the devotees at last year’s festival is shown at left. Note the dazed look in his eyes.

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Covering the Phuket festival in 1987, I couldn’t believe how they could do it. “The skewers drew little or no blood and the dazed men and women appeared to be in no pain,” my feature said. “At the end of the procession, after friends gingerly removed the skewers, the devotees fell into convulsions and then fainted. When ‘the gods’ left their bodies, they got up and walked away.”