Have you been to temples during the festivals? Most of the temples have annual festivals, normally lasting for ten days.
The main temples in the city of Chennai have festivals like ‘ther’ (temple car) and ‘teppam’ (float festival). When it was the Panguni festival at Sti Kapaleeswarar temple in Mylapore, it was real festivity for the people of the neighbourhood as well as from the other parts of the city.
The ther is usually given a clean-up of dust and a fresh coat of paint before the festival. It is drawn by thousands of people on all the four mada veedhis and brought back to the place where it is parked during the rest of the period in the year.
This year, a contest for kids to draw and paint the ther was organized on the next day morning. The contest began at 7.30 am and there were a bunch of kids waiting to register for the contest. They squatted on the carpet spread in front of the ther and unfolded their art kit. As the contest was going on more kids from the neighbourhood went back to their homes and brought their kits to take part in the contest.
After an hour, about two dozen kids had painted the drawing of ther. When they were hung on a clothesline, there were too many miniature thers on the spot.
Some had drawn just the ther and some had captured the entire scene with people looking at the colourful ther.
What more? The top five best entries received a Board game on the epic Ramayana, as prizes. The drawings of the board game are by the eminent musician and artist S. Rajam. The next best five drawings were also awarded prizes. A card game on Ramayana and a storybook.
Did you miss this contest? No worry, there are many more interesting contests and events coming up. You can take part in them during the summer holidays
When YOCee’s student reporters get busy, the team at YOCee’s small office takes up the role of the reporters, does the rounds, writes copies and files reports. The team also posts useful info and ePapers produced in-house.