Foreigners arrive for Kalpathy fete

The ‘Devarathams’ (temple chariots) will roll through the streets of Kalpathy ‘Agraharams’ (Brahmin villages) from Wednesday to mark the beginning of the famous Kalpathy Car Festival.

The 10-day Carnatic music festival organised as part of the Car Festival ended here on Tuesday. A number of well known carnatic vocalists and instrumentalists enthralled the music lovers during the last 10 days. The festival is getting popular within the country and outside. Large number of foreign tourists are visiting Kalpathy.

On Tuesday a team of 13 presspersons from the U.S. arrived at Kalpathy and they will be here for a couple of days to cover the festival. The ‘rathas’ will set out on Grama Pradikshinam around 10 a.m. on Wednesday. After going round all the four villages of Kalpathy, they would return to the base around sunset.


‘Pradakshinam’

On the first day of the festival, the deities from the Viswanathaswamy temple would be taken out and installed in the three cars, one for the main deity, Sree Viswanathaswami, and consort, Goddess Parvathi; the second for Vigneswara and the third for Subramaniaswamy.

On the second day, the deities of Manthakara Mahaganapathy of New Kalpathy will start at 9 a.m. On the final day, deities of Mahaganapathy and Lakshmynarayana Perumal will be taken around. In the evening, the ‘rathas’ will move from Chathapuram and Old Kalpathy and move through the streets and return to Chathapuram village and Old Kalpathy at 8 p.m. to mark the end of the festival.


Social significance

The special features of the festival are the rights of the Scheduled Castes to take the deities from the ‘rathas’ at the Viswanathaswami temple on arrival at the base and taking them to the portals of the temple where an ‘Abhishekam’ is performed strictly according to Vedic rites and the deities are once again adorned and decorated for procession on the night of the concluding day.


While the rituals inside the temple and the mode of worship are strictly according to Tamil Brahmin culture, the celebrations outside like drum-beating, decoration of the ‘rathas’ etc., are based in Kerala style.