People and Places - Uma Gunasilan | Текст песни

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• People and Places
• Uma Gunasilan

Группа Learning English. Продолжение текста:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/people_and_places/pdfs/people_uma_gunasilan_070906.pdf

William: Hello and welcome to People and Places – the programme that introduces you
to people as interesting as you are!
My name’s William Kremer. This week we’re going to find out about an
interesting festival that takes place every year, and at the same time we’re
going to practise listening comprehension. To tell us all about this festival,
we’re going to hear from a young woman called Uma. Listen to Uma introduce
herself and try to hear when she’s from.
Uma: My name is Uma Gunasilan. I am a Malaysian…of Indian origin. And er… I’m
the sixth generation born in Malaysia - my family, about six generations ago
came from India to Malaysia to work… and er…we’ve been there ever since.
William: Well, Uma described herself as a Malaysian…but she said she was ‘of Indian
origin’. If someone says she is of Indian origin, it can mean she was born in
India – but here, Uma means that her family is from India, originally. She is the
sixth generation born in Malaysia – so her family left India a long time ago!
For Uma and other Tamil Hindus in Malaysia, a very important festival every
year is Thaipusam, which takes place in January or February. It’s a very
personal sort of festival, as Uma explains:
Uma: Thaipusam is a very religious kind of festival: it’s about you and God and how
you want to reach Him and how you want to let go of your sins and you know
have an agreement with Him, you know, something like that.
William: ‘Thaipusam is about you and God and how you want to reach Him’, Uma says.
So, it’s your decision exactly how much you do for Thaipusam – and what you
do. As Uma puts it: ‘you have an agreement with God’.
Uma: Thaipusam is a very religious kind of festival: it’s about you and God and how
you want to reach Him and how you want to let go of your sins and you know
have an agreement with Him, you know, something like that.
William: Uma also mentions ‘letting go of sin’ – so at Thaipusam people do things to
show God that they regret doing bad things. But they also do things to thank
God for keeping His side of the agreement:
Uma: If you say, usually it’s, it’s something that happened the year before or
some…some… few years ago – where you promised God, saying, ‘If I get that
job’ or ‘If I get a child’, ‘If my father lives through this heart attack, then I will,
you know, come to you and I will do this for you’.
William: So, what sort of things do people do at Thaipusam? Listen to Uma and see how
many things you can hear.
Uma: Erm, for a person who wants to take part, I mean, seriously in… in… in… in
a… I don’t know, letting go of his sins and reaching God during that period of
time… he has to go through about forty days of being a vegetarian and
abstaining from er… any sexual encounters, eating garlic even and things like
that – for forty days, he does that, he doesn’t even sleep on a mattress, he
sleeps on the floor.
William: Uma said that if a person really wants to take part seriously they have to go
through - they have to suffer - about forty days of abstaining from things. If
you abstain from something you don’t do it. So to let go of their sins, these devotees abstain from meat - they are vegetarian for forty days. They also
abstain from any sexual encounters and from eating garlic. Uma says that they
even sleep on the floor instead of their comfortable beds!
At the end of those forty days, the devotees meet at a temple where they do
things that normally cause pain. This includes piercing their bodies – putting
sharp objects through their skin.
Uma: He could do one piercing, from one cheek to the other, he could do a whole lot
of piercing all through his, his body… he could walk on, on slippers that have
nails…

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