Wimbledon Chariot Festival
Wimbledon, London. 18 August 2010
All hands to the rope to pull the chariot
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Several thousand people took part in annual procession around the local streets from the Shree Ganapathy Hindu Temple in Wimbledon. The temple was opened in 1981 in what had for some years been the Churchill Halls in Effra Road, but were built as the Anglican St Cuthbert's District Church in the 1890s. As well as housing the Shree Ghanapathy Temple, the former church hall became the Sai Mandir prayer hall.
As well as traditional temple activities for its Tamil community, the temple has a "more holistic approach to providing for the spiritual, moral and emotional needs of our devotees" with various talks, classes and health seminars. Together with the Sai Mandir it also takes part in a wide range of community projects in the London Borough of Merton and more widely, including meals on wheels, food for the homeless, and conservation work as well as welcoming local children, students, teachers and others to come and learn about Hinduism. In recent years it has also worked to support Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka.
The annual procession goes around the block of streets from the temple, with a chariot carrying one of the temple's statues of Lord Ganesha, and two other deities also being carried, I think Sri Durga (Parvati) in a smaller chariot and Sri Gayatri an a palanquin on the shoulders of eight men. Musicians played at the front of the procession and there was one adult dancer as well as a group of children.
At the start and near to the end of the procession coconuts were flung onto rocks in large woooden boxes. Many shattered but others bounced out and a few made painful contact with those standing around, and we were all covered with the coconut milk.
The large groups of men and women took hold of the ropes on the chariot and the procession began. Women carried bowls with flaming camphor, and others walked with jars on their heads. At the rear of the procession were around 15 men stripped to the waist, rolling over on the ground holding a coconut in front of them. Boys poured water on the road in front of them, and others used cloths to keep them clean and dusted them with holy ash.
Progress was slow as people came to present their baskets of fruit and coconut to the temple priests on the chariot for a blessing. The priest distributed flower petals and other gifts to them, and it took a couple of hours to cover what would have been a five or ten minute walk.
The celebrations were to continue inside the temple, and my colleague and
I who were photographing the event were invited to go in and have a meal,
but unfortunately were unable to stay.
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Finsbury to Holborn
London. Thursday 12 August 2010
The
side of the threatened Finsbury Health Centre, one of London's key modernist
buildings
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I was due to meet up with some other photographers in the Princess Louise in Holborn and could have jumped on a bus, but I was early so I thought I'd walk, just aiming roughly in the right direction but not in a very straight line, taking turnings that were more interesting.
Around a hundred and thirty years ago, a young girl from mid-Wales came up to London to work at her uncle's dairy in the centre of London, either on Mount Pleasant or close to it. At that time I think they had a yard with cows, though later the milk came in by train to Paddington. My grandfather, a tradesman born in Essex, was perhaps one of her customers, or perhaps they went to the same Baptist church, but somehow they met and the rest is a part of my family's history.
But I don't think either of them would have been customers of the Princess
Louise in Holborn, a finely restored Victorian pub where I met with a few
friends, nor of Penderel's Oak a little further east where I had a remarkably
good and cheap beef madras which reminded me of my student days long past,
when Saturday night seemed to almost invariably end (sometimes on Sunday morning)
always in a curry house with a madras.
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Let Charles Stay!
Taylor House, Roseberry Ave, London. Thursday 12 August 2010
NUJ members support journalist Charles Atangana who
faces death if sent back to Cameroon
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NUJ members picketed outside the bail hearing for exiled Cameroonian journalist Charles Atangana facing deportation from the UK back to torture and probable death in his home country. Later came the good news that he had been granted six weeks bail, London, UK.12/08/2010
When investigative journalist Charles Atangana began to expose fraud and corruption in government and large corporations in Cameroon he was attacked by the government secuirty forces, beaten up and locked in jail, where he was kept under appalling conditions and subjected to torture day after day to try to get him to reveal his sources.
Finally, suffering from food poisoning and malnutrition he managed to get himself taken from jail to hospital. Unknown to his captors, he had some money sewn into his underwear which he used to bribe his way out, and then managed to flee the country and come to the UK.
In the Cameroons he had been attacked by the state-run media and faced death threats and he came to the UK believing in this country's reputation for supporting freedom of speech. For the last six years he has lived in Glasgow, where he became an active member of the NUJ branch, and although he has not been allowed to work in this country he has become a volunteer for the Citizen's Advice Bureau.
But now the death threat comes from our own government who are trying to deport him back to Cameroon, where he faces certain imprisonment and torture and probable death at the hands of the authorities. The trade union movement and the NUJ have mounted a campaign to stop his removal, and has resulted in him twice being given a temporary reprieve.
Around 30 trade unionists picked outside the Roseberry Avenue offices where a bail hearing for Atangana was being held. Atangana himself was not at the hearing but gave his evidence by a video link from the Dover immigration detention centre in which he was held, but NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear read out a message from him thanking them for their support and expressing his wish to return to Glasgow where he has now made his home. There were also various messages of support from other trade unionists, including Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary, who has been among those urging home secretary Teresa May to release Charles and end the threat to his life.
Later the NUJ was able to announce that Atangana has been granted six weeks bail to enable him to prepare an application for Judicial Review. On the NUJ web site NUJ General Secretary, Jeremy Dear said:
"Though this is just one step in the campaign to prevent Charles' deportation back into the hands of the regime that has already imprisoned and tortured him for his brave reporting of corruption at the heart of the Cameroonian regime, it is nonetheless a tremendous victory for all the trade unionists, campaign groups, politicians and individuals who have lent their support to the campaign so far. Our thanks go out to them.
"The campaign to stop his detention will now intensify - but now with
Charles himself at the forefront of the campaign."
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Brentford
Brentford, London. 8 August 2010
Overflow from the canal/Brent to the Thames
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Brentford used to be an important canal port at the junction of the Grand Union Canal (which is also the River Brent) with the River Thames. Commercial traffic stopped many years ago and now almost all of the British Waterways sheds have gone, replaced by blocks of flats, and the Brentford Docks is an private housing estate. But the canal and its locks are still there, along with the other small docks although rather less boat repair goes on than before.
When I grew up not far away, this was still a thriving commercial area, and public access to much of it was still fairly restricted. I photographed a little around here before much redevelopment took place, and more extensively in the 1990s. On line you can see some pictures from 2003 when some of the more recent development was starting.
Much of the walk that I took is now a part of the Thames Path, though it
isn't always well signposted, and some of the more interesting parts are a
short detour away.
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Tamil Chariot Festival in Ealing
West Ealing, London. 8 August 2010
Men wait with coconuts outside the temple, ready to
roll along the road
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Several thousands attended the annual Chariot Festival from the Tamil Hindu Temple in West Ealing this morning, a colourful event in the streets around the temple. London, UK. The celebration at the Shri Kanagathurkkai Amman (Hindu) Temple in a former chapel in West Ealing comes close to the end of their Mahotsavam festival which lasts for around four weeks each year.
A representation of the temple's main goddess (Amman is Tamil for Mother) is placed on a chariot with temple priests and dragged around the streets by men and women pulling on large ropes.
Behind the chariot come around 50 men, naked from the waist up and each holding a coconut in front of them with both hands. They roll their bodies along the street for the half mile or so of the route, and behind them are a group of women who prostrate themselves to the ground every few steps. Men and women come and scatter Vibuthi (Holy Ash) on them.
The chariot, preceded by a smaller chariot, was dragged up Chapel Street to the main Uxbridge Road, where the bus lane was reserved for the procession. Once it had moved off the main road, people crowded up to the chariot, holding bowls of coconut and fruits (archanai thattu) as ritual offerings (puja) to be blessed by a temple priest.
Coconuts are a major product of the Tamil areas of India and Sri Lanka and play an important part in many Hindu rituals. Many are cut open or smashed on the ground during the festival, and at times my feet (like those taking part I was not wearing shoes) were soaked in coconut milk. As I left the festival when the procession had travelled around halfway along its route I passed a group of men bringing more sacks of them to be broken.
A few yards down the road was the rest of the procession, including a number of women with flaming bowls of camphor (it burns with a fairly cool flame and leaves no residue - but at least one steward was standing by with a dry powder fire extinguisher in case flames got out of hand) and a larger group of women carrying jugs on their head.
In front of them were a number of male dancers, some with elaborate tiered towers above their heads. Others had heavy wooden frames decorated with flowers and peacock feathers, representing the weight of the sins of the world that the gods have to carry; they were held by ropes by another man, and the ropes were attached to their backs by a handful of large hooks through their flesh, many turned and twisted violently as if to escape.
The proceeds from the sale in the temple of the 'archani thattu' on the festival
day go to the various educational projects for children that the temple sponsors
in northern Sri Lanka, devastated by the civil war there. The temple also
supports other charitable projects in Sri Lanka, and in the last ten years
has sent more the £1.3 million to them.
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All pictures on this section of the site are Copyright © Peter Marshall 2010; to buy prints or for permission to reproduce pictures or to comment on this site, or for any other questions, contact me.
