Thaipusam

25 Jan 2011 - About a week ago Malaysia observed a national holiday for Thaipusam. Thaipusam is a Hindu Festival celebrated mainly by the Tamil community. The festival commemorates when Parvati gave Murugan a spear so he could vanquish the evil demon Soorapadman. It has now been revealed that more than 1,4 million devotees and visitors were at Batu Caves to celebrate Thaipusam on Thursday alone. The Secretary says he had never seen such a large crowd in recent years. "We expected 1.3 million people to come this year, but the actual figure is 100,000 more," he said, adding that last year sw 1,2 million people thronging to the temple. One of the problems connected to the large crowds is rubbish collection. Although the cleaning-up process started immediately after Thaipusam, it took several days to clean up the mess. Workers had collected two rubbish bins of slippers besides finding several identity cards and some money.