Many festivals are celebrated throughout the world and some of them are very weird which leaves us in awe. One of such festivals is ‘ The stone pelting festival’ or ‘Patharon ka Khel‘ is an annual festival in many districts of himachal and uttarakhand .
People in Dhami celebrated this festival on Tuesday after two years of Covid pandemic .
The ‘auspicious’ and ‘customary’ event is held as a sort of contest between two groups of locals of the villages. This stone pelting happens at a designed place .
This fair has been there for 400-500 years. According to people’s belief this ritual originated in the 18th century when humans were sacrificed to appease Goddess Bhadrakali. Later, human sacrifice was stopped and instead a ’tilak’ of blood was smeared on the statue of the goddess after the stone-pelting festival. The contestants line up and pelt stones at each other till one participant is hurt and blood oozes out. The contest then ends and a tilak of blood is smeared on the idol.
After this the fair ends . It was done to end the evil practice of human sacrifice .
Pandemic affected this drastically . However people didn’t stop celebrating the event and did not break the tradition even in the pandemic but huge masses were not able to participate .
That was the main reason for the enthusiasm that people had for this fair . Their excitement was high. People enjoyed it fully and were able to celebrate it to their fullest.
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Malvika Tiwari, |
