Koovagam Festival: Unique Transgender Identity Festival

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Koovagam festival registers a massive attendance of transgenders from all over the world. It is a Kashi of Transgender culture which attracts the cross dressers from all over the world.

Koovagam festival is a mass marriage ceremony of transvestites or transgenders with Mohini, the feminine avatar of Krishna, or the son of Pandava Arjuna, the Aravan/Kuthandeshwarar, based on what gender they identify themselves with, and the marriage just lasts for a day.

The next day they become widows and express their pain through dances, Oppari (mourning cries), breaking bangles and cutting thalis. The first part of the festival is momentary ecstacy and the second part is permanent agony.

The Wedding Ceremony: This small, blue temple is the focus point of the Koovagam Festival as several key activities, including the wedding of Aravan with Mohini, take place here.

To conduct the wedding, the temple, which has several idols including Mohini and Kuthandeshwarar, also has priests who preside over the occasion. Most of the priests have been doing this for generations, even if it is only a part-time activity for them.

The penultimate day of the festival is extremely hectic for the priests as they have to preside the function where thousands of transgender participants get married simultaneously. They take help to solemnise the weddings.

The next morning all the newly-wed brides arrive at the temple, wearing a bridal costume, and relive their last few moments of being Aravan's bride by singing and dancing. They also perform several pujas or prayers.

The prayers are hectic and several gunny sacks of camphor are burnt by the brides celebrate their last minutes of happiness as within a few hours, Aravan would be sacrified, leaving behind thousands of mourning wives.

Thousands of Transgenders in a bridal attire walk to the temple to get a thali tied. Transgenders dance and sing songs, set up bonfires and celebrate this marriage to make Aravan happy.

For transgenders marriage is not a pleasant experience that one looks forward to. It is a celebration of pain, sacrifice and one-sided unrequitted love and cry for acceptance from society. Thali tying ends with first night which is when the whole village is awake and offer prayers to Aravan that night.

The Day Of Widowhood; The real tragic mood sets in when the procession with the chariot of Aravan starts moving. Those cross dressers now are exposed to the rude shock of life, of breaking bangles, tearing the thali apart, and donning white sarees to show that they are widowed and they sing songs mournfully.

The giant statue of Aravan reaches the neighbouring village Pandhaladi which is about 2 km away and then cremated by burning the idol, throwing all his newly wed wives into the throes of mourning.

After widowhood is forcibly imposed on them, it is their time now to face the rude reality of life, of facing a life of discrimination, and the humiliation on a daily basis. Garlands, jewelleries, thalis, sindoors, and the bridal attires are taken away as the gruesome imprints of widowhood slowly rewrite their destinies on their foreheads.

The scene changes almost instantly, within a second of the happy commotion, to that of a chest-beating, loud-wailing gathering of people, with no past, present or future. They walk on determinedly, with their tear drenched white sarees and the dishevelled hairs to greet the next miserable step in their lives.

They take two days to get adjusted to the widowhood. The third day, they worship Aravan, perform Annadan to NGOs, after this ceremony, they get back to their cross-dressing scenario.

Transgender Outlook On Life: One of the hapless victims of this brutal system, confesses that they will never get to taste the happiness of a newlywed bride, but surely know the pain of a bride when she loses her husband.

These days, a lot of transgender population from overseas assemble here to share the pain and agony of being in the body of a transgender every minute of their lives.

Despite the verdict by the supreme court, people still don't recognise them as a part of the global populace. At least a town in Tamil Nadu recognises their emotions and helps them to express their agony and ecstasies at least for a day. This is a grand occasion for them because this is the only chance for them to marry.