Samayapuram festival: Poo Choridal and the Chithirai chariot

For the 28 days of Poo Choridal, from the last Sunday of Masi to the last Sunday of Panguni, the goddess is believed to keep a fast, the pachai pattini viratham, for the welfare of her devotees. Only light offerings are made. The main image at Samayapuram is shaped from sand and clay with medicinal herbs and is never bathed, so the ritual bath is given to a small stone image in front of her, and during the fast it uses only liquids: buttermilk, sugarcane juice, tender coconut water and panagam, a jaggery drink.

The Sundays are the days to see. By the temple's rule the management offers the first flowers on Sunday morning, and then the gates open for everyone else. Devotees carry baskets of flowers around the shrine, and the flowers are passed from the flagstaff (kodimaram) to the sanctum until they cover the goddess, cooling her before the summer heat. The temple sends the used flowers to its compost yard.

Many devotees also bring mavilakku, a sweet of rice flour, jaggery and ghee, and rural pilgrims offer raw salt. Small silver or steel replicas of body parts, dropped into the offering box, ask the goddess to heal an illness.

The April festival opens with the hoisting of the temple flag, and the chariot (ther) procession comes on the tenth day: the goddess rides the temple car, which devotees pull through the streets of Samayapuram by hand. Devotees come in lakhs (hundreds of thousands), and the Tiruchirappalli district collector declares a local holiday for the chariot day. The festival continues afterwards with the float festival (teppam), when the goddess is taken out on the temple tank.

The temple's festivals also see acts of extreme devotion: some devotees fulfil vows by walking over hot coals or carrying hot clay pots in bare hands. These are vows, not performances; watch from where the volunteers place you.

Samayapuram is a town on National Highway 45 near Tiruchirappalli, about 300 km south of Chennai.

Mariamman is a Tamil mother goddess whose name Incredible India links to mari, rain, worshipped as a form of Shakti (see Durga), and devotees come to Samayapuram above all to ask for cures. A legend says her image once stood in the great Ranganathaswamy temple at Srirangam, was carried out of it and was found by passers-by, who built a shrine for it. The present temple was built by King Vijayaraya Chakravarti II in the early 18th century. Today it is run by the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department and is counted the second-richest temple in the state by cash income, after Palani.