Wearing a golden headgear and ‘purity wristband’, Veerakumaras, ‘hero-sons’ of Draupadi, walk for 18 to 20 km through old Pete areas, halting at Hazrat Tawakkal Mastan Dargah as part of a long custom, wielding swords and guarding the priest who dances as he balances a ‘karaga’ on his head without touching it. With the scent of camphor and jasmine in the air, and accompanied by the sounds of the drums and the conch, people stand around, waiting to see Draupadi, their ‘amma’.
In pre-Covid times, people travelled from many parts of south India to watch the fete, held to mark the return of Draupadi, whose story is told in the epic ‘Mahabharata’, on earth once a year. Six lakh people are expected to participate in it this year. It owes its specificity to a “constellation” of factors, pivoted on the cult of Draupadi and her hero-sons, Sufism in the region, and urbanism, she writes.Īs this article goes into print in the small hours of April 16 (Saturday), the 11-day festival enters Day 9 with an extravagant procession that lasts till sunrise. Some say it is over 400 years old, others, over 800 years. In her 2001 book ‘Landscapes Of Urban Memory: The Sacred and the Civic in India’s High-Tech City’, Smriti Srinivas writes about the specificity of Bengaluru Karaga, which is among the two oldest festivals of the city, the other being a groundnut fair, Kadlekai Parishe.
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