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Thaipusam
The Tamil festival of Murugan, with milk pots, vegetarian fasting and sweets scented with cardamom and rosewater.
Spices for Thaipusam
Thaipusam is celebrated by Tamil communities with processions to temples such as Batu Caves. Devotees fast for days on a strict vegetarian diet and carry pots of milk or kavadi to the temple. Stalls outside sell coconut water, buttermilk with ginger and curry leaf, murukku seasoned with cumin and chilli, and sweets perfumed with cardamom. The food is simple and plain because it follows a time of discipline, and spice is a thing to be restrained until the fast is over.
The spices
Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Thaipusam" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Cumin: Sanjay Acharya, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Ginger: Venkatx5, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Cardamom: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, source