Sadhus chant, sing and dance!

Ambumachi mela and dances, Assam. One sadhu plays his instrument while another dances with a red cloth in his hands. Showmanship of the Aghodi kind!

The just concluded Ambubachi mela at the Kamakhya mandir in Assam or Asom state, India. Women dance to cymbal beats while the met hold up a lit-up plate with something on it... The Ambubachi Mela is the most important mela celebrated in the Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati, Assam.

This yearly mela is celebrated during the monsoon season that happens to fall during the assamese month Ahaar, around the middle of June, when the Brahmaputra river is in spate. It is the celebration of the yearly menstruation course of goddess Kamakhya.

It is believed that the presiding goddess of the temple, Devi Kamakhya, the Mother Shakti, goes through her annual cycle of menstruation during this time stretch. It is also believed that during the monsoon rains the creative and nurturing power of the 'menses' of Mother Earth becomes accessible to devotees at this site during the mela. There is no idol of the presiding deity but she is worshipped in the form of a yoni-like stone instead over which a natural spring flows.

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