Huddled in the courtyard of the Pathini Amman Temple with at least three hundred Tamils ready to watch members of their community walk, let alone dance across hot coals, I was struggling to get a good frame with my handy dandy iPhone to capture what I had only seen in movies.
As the only white person at this very special, religious event called Thimithi, where participants invoke the goddess Draupadi for her spirit to do the impossible (walk on hot coals only after hanging from hooks, but I will get to that in a bit), I had embraced that I was going to stand out.
I had been in Sri Lanka for three weeks teaching yoga in Galle, when I was invited to go “up country” to experience the lush tea plantations, elephant habitations, and forested region of a country that I was quickly falling for.
While Galle (an old, Dutch Fort that has been gentrified by expat and foreign money to include several spas, organic cafés, and the posh hotel Amangalla, complete with high tea service) had satisfied the New Yorker in me, there was only so much beach lounging and sun exposure I could take before I would need to worry about doing more aggressive age prevention.
So I decided to leave the lounging and tanning to some better-equipped German tourists and try my luck north.
My host, Devinda, kindly invited me to join him on a trip, as he had some friends to visit. As the youngest member and tradition of his Sri Lankan family, Devinda had inherited his family’s colossal mansion and when he noticed that yoga-cationing could be a fruitful venture, he turned his hundred-plus year old estate into a retreat center complete with fresh juices and a yoga shala.
It was a five-hour journey into the mountains where the roads became more narrow and political billboards more abundant. Nature seemed to be encroaching fast as there were signs to look out for peacocks crossing. We finally made it to the Hapugastenne Tea Estate (also known as Finlay’s), one of the largest operating tea estates in Sri Lanka. Devinda’s friend was the superintendant and invited us to stay in his bungalow. Right outside of the backpacker town, Ella, this little enclave of Ceylon tea was the home to the tea pluckers who would be part of the festival. To show good faith to his workers, the superintendant had promised that he would stop by the temple to show his support.
As we hopped in his Land Rover to climb back down the hill to the center of Haputale town, I pulled my silk shawl out of my bag to wrap around my shoulders so that I would be prepared to try and be respectful, if not hopefully more of an attempt to blend in despite it being hopeless that I would somehow be able to go incognito with harem pants, Kohl under my eyes, and mala beads; a failed attempt that many Westerners make when trying to adapt to an eastern landscape.
My eyes widened, as we got closer to the temple and I saw teenage boys hanging from hooks via a cherry picker. They bobbed up and down as the parade procession swarmed all around them. It was like planking on a whole new level. Clapping, chanting, and drumming infused the street.
We got to the temple early with the others to watch the spirited ones walk in. Crammed alongside squirmy children who were just as intrigued about what was about to go down as I was, we watched anxiously as a man and in nothing but flip flops and a lungi (man sarong) raked the pit of hot coals to make the embers glow against the afternoon light.
A small pool of turmeric and water was being created at the end of the pit for participants to dunk their feet into. Slowly more and more noise from the parade began to creep down as members from the procession, the ones who had invoked Lakshmi, began to file forward in a single queue to embrace the final test: walking on hot coals.
My heart was in my throat, as the crowd seemed to multiply, pushing me closer to the dry sauna of fear. Apparently, if the spirit is truly with you, the coals won’t have any effect, or so I had gathered from a few translations.
One of the teenage boys still attached by hooks was the first to go. A man behind him held onto the ropes as he led him across the coals in a rhythmic march. Next a man was handed a random baby to be carried across the fire. People kept handing men babies (one man carried two) as they tried to balance like a tightrope walker with the extra weight.
Suddenly, a young girl who was shaking and screaming with the spirit held a man’s hand as he led her down the heated path. A young boy, no older then 12, danced across the steaming floor like it was no big thing was then followed by a little granny who skipped her way through the heat only to jump, as if skipping over a puddle, into the turmeric pool. The crowd’s energy kept building and building as each person made their journey to the little oasis of water at the end of the seemingly never ending desert.
While I had the only iPhone, I noticed that pretty much everyone else in the crowd was holding their camera phone up and witnessing this amazing and spiritual event through the screen of a Samsung. We were all united under the spell of technology and voyeurs in this sacred ritual of testing one’s true faith to the spirit.
When it was over, everyone dispersed inside the temple to receive a blessing from the boy with hooks in his back. Still stunned and awestruck by what I had just witnessed, Devinda and the superintendant began to push me to the front, where the fervent teenager mumbled into my ear and dashed some sacred ash on my forehead. Blessed to the max, I walked out of the temple very impressed by what the human condition is capable of.
Photos: Jordan Katz
