V(V)esak Day

A couple of nights ago, my friend Larry was in town from Singapore and we met up for drinks along Jalan Bukit Bintang. I told him I couldn’t stay out late because it was Wesak Day the next morning, and he asked me, “Why is it spelt with a W? Not with a V?”

I’m not sure either. I remember it being ‘V’ all this while, but everyone lately’s been using ‘W’. Maybe I am just confused.

Anyway, so I woke up early yesterday for my annual ‘pilgrimage’ of sorts. My family would usually head over to the Brickfields Buddhist Temple on this day. I was quite gutted ‘cos I wanted to take some photos but sleepyhead here (read: me) forgot to bring my camera.

Thank God (or Buddha?) for the iPhone. I managed to get some shots.

The one below is me being blessed by two of the monks (is that the right term?). This is routine for most visitor to the temple on Wesak Day where we queue up, get holy water sprinkled on us and then get the yellow string which we usually wear around our wrist.

As we were leaving, this band of young performers playing some sort of percussion equipment led someone very important – I suspect he is the high reverend of the temple or something like that ‘cos the comentator on the PA system asked everyone to stop all activities as he is lead out to perform some prayers.

What I thought was quite interesting this year also is the picture below.

Yup, DiGi had a stall among the many lining the road leading to the entrance of the temple. Usually, these are stalls selling Buddha figurine, religious books, vegetarian dishes etc. But DiGi was pretty conspicuous there, offering free bottles of mineral water. Whatever I think about their service (I still can’t get reception at my table in the office!), this is brilliant marketing, no? Magnum (yes, the 4D company) also had bottles of water distributed (didn’t see them, but saw the bottles laying around.

Finally, the good news is that no one attacked mum this year. Previously, mum would bring lots of loose change to distribute to the rows of beggars at the entrance of the temple.

But last year, we as a family decided that she should not do it after their literally “attacked” her. What happened was mum took out her loose change and started dropping some in each beggar’s cup, but upon seeing this, the ones at the end of the line just rushed towards mum, grabbing at her hands. She almost fell down backwards as they were pushing her.

So while I sympathise with these poor folks, my mother’s well-being is my priority. So mum donated the money to the Myanmar Cyclone Nargis relief fund and the China earthquake fund that they were collecting for in the temple instead.

I didn’t manage to get many shots as I prefer taking these shots using my camera, and I was rushing to head back to work. I did ge t some shots last year – if you’re interested in seeing them, you can view them at my Flickr page.

Tags: beggars, brickfields temple, DiGi, Magnum 4D, vesak, Wesak