By Gillian Murdoch

SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) - Racing across red-hot coals does not impress the crowds at Singapore's annual Theemithi fire walking festival. As far as the Hindu faithful are concerned, the slower, the better.

The toughest devotees stroll, rather than scurry, bare-foot across the fire pit at the city-state's oldest and largest Hindu temple, Sri Mariamman, explained devotees as the festival opened in the early hours of Monday morning.

"My husband is in line," said one woman among the crowd that pressed up to the blue safety barriers as they waited for the all-male walk to begin.

"He'll be slow and steady."

Celebrated in the Hindu month of Aipasi, the Theemithi fire walk takes place at dawn on the Monday before Diwali, Festival of Lights.

Dressed in saffron or yellow coloured loincloths, bare-chested male devotees walk over a pit of burning coals about three metres long to show their respect for the Hindu heroine Draupadi.

The star of an epic poem called the Mahabharata, Draupadi walked across fire unscathed to prove her purity after being gambled away by one of her five husbands in a game of dice.

With thousands lining up to cross the coals, and a crowd of hundreds chanting mantras, not even a 3 a.m. thunderstorm dampened the mood. By 4 a.m., as the rains eased, temple volunteers folded up an emergency tarpaulin held over the pit, signalling the start of the event.

By then the frenzied atmosphere of anticipation, stoked by the delay and a soundtrack of ritual chanting, conch blowing and energetic drumming, had become too much for some in the crowd.

"You will see quite a lot of spontaneous trances", explained onlooker Jaya as a middle-aged woman shrieked and writhed in the throng in front of him, and minutes later another woman followed.

Modern-day Theemithi devotees come mainly from south Indian Hindu communities, with the ritual an annual event in Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa.

Abstaining from eating meat and having sex for an odd-numbered period of days in the run-up to the event, they hope the mythic princess will grant them favours for their fire walking leap of faith.

Seeing his cousin take half a dozen steps across the red hot coals towards the cooling pool of goat's milk at the end will be Singaporean Jaya's personal highlight among the Hindu calendar's roster of festivals.

"There are so many festivals. There's one almost everyday. This is the only major one I come to," he said.