‘Goraihabba’, the Indian version of the famous festival La Tomatina is smearing cow dung on each other and making a whole festival out of it. A video of people from Tamil Nadu, throwing cow dung at each other and playing in heaps of cow dung has gone viral. The viral video shows visuals of people covered in cow dung from head to toe with huge smiles on their faces. The video also shows a comparison of the festival to the La Tomatina scene from the movie ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’.
The festival is locally known as ‘Goraihabba’, for which people collect cow dung from cattle farmers. It is an annual festival celebrated by people in Gumatapuram, Tamil Nadu. The villagers collect cow-dung from almost 3000 cattle heads in around the village and pile it up near the Beereswarar Temple for the celebration.
People that celebrate the festival believe that the using cow dung on the skin ensures “good health”.
“Cow dung is very natural and has a lot of medicinal benefits. Others might say if we throw cow dung at each other we will get some infections or even some disease. But with the trust of our god Beereshwara, we are playing in the cow dung, so nothing happens to us,” a man identified only as Prabhu says in the video.
Previous recallings about the festival say that initially, the festival was celebrated to satisfy the wishes of a dead shepherd’s spirit.