If you clicked on to read this story just because you had a picture of the La Tomatina festival projected in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, then you are not alone. Humne bhi dekhi hai Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.
While La Tomatina is all about playing with tomatoes, a village in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu has its own version of the festival where they use cow dung instead of tomatoes.
Read it twice or thrice but that’s that.
Celebrated in Gumatapura village of Tamil Nadu, the festival called Gore Habba is celebrated some days after Diwali. During the entirety of the festival, people play with harmless cow dung that they collect in a dung pool.
The villagers believe that the cow dung has the capability to enhance an individual’s health and entertains healing effects.
“Cow dung is very natural and has a lot of medicinal benefits. Others might say if we throw cow dung at each other we will get some infections or even some disease. But with the trust of our god Beereshwara, we are playing in the cow dung, so nothing happens to us,” RT quoted a villager Prabhu as saying.
While most of us would yuck away after seeing the video of people playing with the excrement, the joy on these people faces reeks the grounded nature of the villagers.
