During the third weekend of October, Bacolod City of Philippines immerses itself in the spirit of carnival  -  dance, music and masks for it is the time for MassKara Festival, which falls on October 17-19 this year.

The story and origin of this festival dates back about 3 decades when Bacolod, a sugar industry rich city, suffered due to the introduction of sugar-substitute industries. This coupled with the tragedy of a vessel sinking and taking 700 lives brought the city to an all-time low. To lift everyone’s spirit and to live up to the other name the city had, City of Smiles, the city’s artists with the local government decided to hold a festival of smiles.  Thus was born ‘MassKara Festival’, where ‘mass’ means multitude and ‘kara’ means faces in Spanish, thereby meaning multitude of faces. Also, mascara in Filipino means mask, which people obviously wear during the festival. The masks are no ordinary, poker-faced masks. In tune with the objective behind the festival, the masks worn are of smiling faces.

On the lines of Brazil’s Carnival and Mardi Gras, the MassKara festival is also about a street dance competition, where dancers wearing masks walk down the streets of Bacolod with people from all over Philippines coming over to watch the 3 day extravaganza. MassKara falls on the third weekend of October every year setting it as close to the Charter Anniversary as possible.

The carnival is divided in to two categories – school and barangay. Barangay is the crowd-puller and a highlight of the show. However, unlike the Carnival in Brazil, the spectators here can’t participate along with the moving dancers in the parade. They can of course, stand on the sidewalks dancing, clapping and cheering. Three days are filled with dance and music with people making merry till the wee hours of the morning.

There are festivals that we have been celebrating because of old legends and traditions, sometimes without even knowing the true story or history behind it. But when a festival is created  by the people for the people, there can’t be a bigger reason than this to celebrate happiness and the human spirit. Do we need any more reasons to put MassKara Festival on our list of festivals to experience? Besides, Philippines is just 6 hours by flight from Delhi making it a quick weekend getaway!