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Vesak and “Vesak-revellers”
Vesak is a “festival of lights” metaphorically, when hearts should light up in devotion. But each night of the Vesak week, electric bulbs provide a worldly dazzle and the roads are taken over by thrill-seekers. Amidst the haze of lights, laughter, and milling crowds, senses swim and the significance of the religious festival is soon forgotten.
The accessories of the thrill-seekers are trumpets, headdresses and masks. It is ironical and pitiful that the day we commemorate the Buddha, who preached on the bliss of detachment, should end with such maniacal behaviour. Our cameras captured some of the “Vesak-revellers” in Colombo.
Some of them are not as jovial as they would have been when starting out on their jaunt, like the youth captured in our picture who sobered down under the glare of a policeman, after a misadventure down the road.
