One of the delights of living in a multicultural environment, such as Malaysia, is that one can observe the rituals of daily life of Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs without ever leaving your home town. They say that when you emigrate, you take with you the culture of that time and you maintain that culture more strongly than the folks you left behind. So the festival I am going to try and describe to you belongs to the Tamil Hindu community from southern India.
My good friend Lekha Nandey worships at the Sri Subramanian Temple on Jalan Kolam Ayer, Johor Bahru. Last year I wrote about this temple and the feeding of the 5,000 during Thaipusam. This year, Lekha asked if I would be interested in observing the journey of Lord Murugan to the sea on Friday 23rd April? I have learnt to say yes to all Lekha’s suggestions as these experiences are unique. Then on the evening of Thursday 22nd April, she called to suggest I might want to see the chariot procession that night? I’d seen the 32nd Aadipoora Thiruvizha and the Golden Chariot procession from the Arulmigu Rajamariamman Devasthanam temple, Johor Bahru, back in 2018, so definitely happy to see another.
This procession is the culmination of the Brahmothsavan Festival (or Flag Hoisting Festival) which takes place during the first ten days of the Tamil Hindu New Year (14 - 23 April 2021). On this evening, Lord Murugan (AKA Lord Sri Subramanian) is taken from the temple and travels with his consorts in a golden carriage. This year, his journey was curtailed due to COVID-19 restrictions, so he just travelled up and down Jalan Kolam Ayer. Ordinarily, he would have had a five-hour journey around Johor Bahru, bringing blessings to those he visited.
Now if you have experienced the Chinese Chingay Festival in Johor Bahru, you may notice some similarities here? During Chingay, the gods of the Johor Old Chinese Temple are also taken out in ‘chariots’ and paraded around the streets of Johor Bahru to bring good fortune.
And both the festivities are accompanied by fireworks and much banging of drums. Except for this year where the police outnumbered the worshippers of Lord Murugan and where firecrackers were strickly forbidden as a requirement to allow this procession to proceed.
During these ten days of the New Year, worshippers will attend the temple in the morning and evening, and there are many practises to observe. Before Lord Murugan goes to the sea, there are many rituals within the temple. When I arrived at 7:30 am, there were processions going around the inside of the temple accompanied by music, singing (by the priests), the breaking of coconuts, the lighting of flames, the dousing of flames, the buring of rice balls…. There was so much going on in a highly choreographed manner but it was not the time or place to be asking too many questions as people were there to worship. It looked like the musical instruments and the people who would be handling Lord Murugan all received special blessings. I have tried to learn more from internet sources but so far have failed. So I will just present here some photos from the temple in the period before Lord Murugan was placed inside Lekha’s vehicle at 8:30 am for his journey to the sea. Of course my photos cannot convey the actions and sounds of the day, and hopefully these were caught on my video camera. Processing all that material will take a while so I am starting here with the photographs.
Next a convoy of cars followed Lord Murugan to the banks of the Johor Strait, i.e., the jetty at Stulang Laut, with the industrial face of Singapore clearly visible on this fine morning.
Lord Murugan watched from inside the vehicle as the priests continued with their prayers. Rather than take the god into the sea, they took a silver icon which I presume is his representation. My apologies if I have misnamed this object, but I have to call it something here.
Then, the priests and the chosen men walked into the sea with the icon There was more music and more prayers as various liquids (e.g., juice from a freshly cracked-open coconut) were ceremonially poured over the icon and over the gentleman holding the icon. Finally, everything and everyone submerged themselves for a few seconds.
If you had been walking passed this scene on Friday morning, I wonder what you would have made of it?
The now rather wet worshippers returned to land, continued with their prayers, and then took Lord Murugan back home to his temple and I returned home to ponder on the nature of what I had just observed.
I sincerely hope I have not misrepresented anything here and I would like to thank the members of the Sri Subramanian Temple for allowing me the privilege of observing their activities associated with the Brahmothsavan Festival. Let’s hope that the situation will improve by next year and this festival can be enjoyed by many more participants.
In the meantime, please watch our video…
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