Poinguinim’s Gadyanchi zatra brings around 5,000 people together after a 5-year hiatus

Canacona: At Mahalwada in

Poinguinim

, Canacona, once every three years in the month of May, devotees gather at the Shri Betal temple to celebrate the ‘Gadyanchi

zatra

’. Four male devotees perform the rituals as the ‘gade’, dressed in white loincloths and after observing days of abstinence.

In the unique ritual, in front of the Shri Betal temple, a tall platform of arecanut trunks is erected, over which the ‘gade’ are suspended by hooks linked to a revolving wheel. Only when the audience declares to the ‘mhal gado’ or the chief gado that they are satisfied are the ‘gade’ set free.

A document written on a cloth dating back to 1823 AD is read out on the occasion.

Elderly

people

sit nearby during the rituals and continuously sing folk songs known as ‘naman’ to the beats of dhol.

Though the zatrotsav was last observed in 2017 and was to be held three years later, it missed its traditional date because of the pandemic. This year, more than

5

,000 people attended the utsav, with massive parking arrangements made in Poinguinim as well as Galgibaga. The rituals began

around

4pm and devotees poured in by the bus loads.

On May 21, the ‘gade’ ran a distance of 12 kilometres to reach the Shri Betal temple. They were then tied up in between the two wooden poles which are raised 50 feet above the ground and the gade were then rotated in the air.

The gade will break their abstinence by taking a dip in Talpona river on May 28 and the 22-day rituals will come to an end at the Shri Betal temple with ‘rangoveli pujan’ on May 30.

Lord Betal is one amongst the five deities worshipped at the Shri Parshuram Panchgram Devasthan complex at Poinguinim. The tri-annual ‘Ghadyanchi zatra’ brings

together

26 communities from the three villages of Poinguinim, Loliem and Khargal, making it the only festival in Canacona that

brings

so many communities together.


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