Thrissur: The 36-hour-long Thrissur Pooram spectacle came to an end with the ceremonial ritual ‘upcharam chollal’ (bidding adieu) of two leading elephants carrying the thidamb (representational form) of goddeses of Thiruvamabadi and Paramekkav temples at 12 p.m. on Tuesday at the ‘sree moolasthanam’ of Vadakkumnathan temple which hosted the pooram.
It was pachyderm Devidasan which carried the ‘thidamb’ of Thiruvambady bhaga-vathi while Chandrasekaran did the honours for Paramekkavu. Both the leading elephants of the devaswoms exchanged the ceremonial greetings by lifting their trunks, bringing down curtains on Thrissur pooram this year.
The day-two festival on Tuesday witnessed huge turnout of pooram buffs and devotees as on the main pooram day.
Thrissur district collector T.V. Anupama said there was no untoward incident related to pooram other than a few enthusiasts fainting on the pooram ground due to the severe heat and dehydration.
“Both Paramekkavu and Thiruvambady devaswoms co-operated with the district administration in an appreciable manner in the inspection of the magazines where the firework items were stored,” Ms Anupama said. “PESO, fire and safety and revenue officials inspected the magazines for checking the permissible dimensions of the items and calculated the usage of gun powder by weighting all the different the firework items for the sample fireworks on Satruday, main fireworks on Tuesday morning and the mini fireworks on Tuesday noon during the conclusion of the pooram.” After laying the items on the display ground, the officials of all the three departments manually inspected the items placed on the ground. The workers were asked to fix slips, she said.
‘Delay was to control crowds’
Thrissur district collector T.V. Anupama said on Tuesday that the delay in starting the main fireworks during the wee house of Tuesday was for controlling the crowd.
The fireworks of Thiruvambady began at 3.45 a.m as against the scheduled time of 3 a.m. and that of the Paramekkavu started by nearly 5 a.m.
“We found a few persons standing inside the 100-metre mandatory safe zone from the firework display area at different places even after police clearing the crowd inside zone,” Ms Anupama said. “Clearance from DMO, fire and safety and the police are needed before starting the fireworks and that was the reason for the delay.”
“No banned substances were found during the lab test and the difference in the sound as it was evident during the main display was due to the choice of firework items. Paramekkavu may have chosen for more Kuzhiminni out of the 2,000 kg gun powder they could use while Thiruvambady may have used more gundu. It is up to the devaswoms to choose the firework items as per their wish, but we had insisted that there has to be a certain balance. Devaswoms could decide whether they want more colour or sound,” she noted.
