Carey Island's Hindu Residents Celebrate Aadi Perukku

Aadi Perukku is an auspicious Tamil Hindu festival that is celebrated on the 18th day of the holy month of Aadi by Tamil Hindus all across the world. In Malaysia, faith among the Tamil Hindus has grown exponentially and increased throughout the decades, for they are a people who are dedicated to preserving their Hindu way of life. Residents of Carey Island in Selangor showed great devotion towards following and preserving these Hindu rituals and festivities, as many had enthusiastically attended the thiruvizha organised by their local Gangai Amman Temple.

Aadi, in the Tamil calendar, is the month of the monsoon. It is the season when farmers used to show their gratitude towards the rains for watering their newly sown crops. For the Tamil Hindus who live on Carey Island, Morib, Sepang, and Bagan Lalang, this festival is even more enthusiastically celebrated as they live right by the ocean. Various rituals take place during this sacred day that are believed to bring prosperity and protection to the devotees.

Many newly married couples offered their prayers and performed rituals that were believed to bring blessings to their marriage. Along with them, hundreds of devotees from the estate on Carey Island had excitedly attended the thiruvizha to pray and be absorbed by the spirituality of the holy month.

The National Union of Plantation Workers of Carey Island had also contributed to the event by organising free drinks and fruits to be distributed to the devotees. The union workers had expressed that since the location of the temple is isolated, there aren’t any shops nearby where devotees can buy refreshments. In order to curb this problem, they decided to organise a stall that distributed these free refreshments to them.

This was also the first time that the estate management had granted the Tamil Hindu estate workers the right to have a holiday on their holy day. Saravanan, the leader of the National Union of Plantation Workers of Carey Island, expressed that the union had even arranged free transportation for the devotees to travel the 10 kilometres from their estate to the temple.

Since there are many who attend the temple’s festivities each year, executive member Uma Devi has stated that next year the union is planning to organise free food distribution for the devotees. This event was also attended by V. Thamasegaran, the secretary of The National Union of Plantation Workers of Selangor, who graciously granted funds to the union.