Poush Sankranti

So here is story of Poush Sankranti which is also better known as Makar Sankranti or Pongal or Lohri or Bihu. This is the day when Sun transitions from one zodiac to another in its celestial path. In the parts of India where I belong to, Sun transitions from Poush to Magh and so it’s called the Poush Sankranti (Sankranti meaning the last day of the month). And it’s been a quite special day from my childhood.

Actually things started to happen from a day earlier only. On the previous day in the afternoon Moms and grand Moms will sweep the Aangan of the home (what you know as courtyard) with mud and cow dung. Now it might not sound very beautiful, especially in the urban locations. There is hardly any concept of courtyard or open lawns or playing areas for children. But as I have grown up mostly in the remotest villages of India, I saw all those things happening. And I can bet it was so beautiful. The whole courtyard used to look so spic and span. And when it dried up the fresh smell always used to be a pleasure.

Then by the evening again it was time for Moms and grand Moms to get their hands busy with coconut, milk, rice powder, jaggery and many more sweet things. This was the best part of the whole occasion for us. Because we used to get to eat lots of Pithas (sweet dishes made of all those above) not only at our own home, but since everyone will follow the same ritual and invite everyone else, it used to be a gala treat time for us. So we will all leave our books aside and sit sown with them to see those beautiful things getting ready to go to our big belly.

Also all the kids from a locality will gather together and arrange for a picnic on that night. They will get a makeshift house done with khair (I do not know what it called in English, basically it is the left over of the plant after the farmers used to pick up the golden rice from them) and bamboos. In the cold winter night they will stay in that small house and prepare dishes like chicken for everyone. And in the morning they will all get up, take a cold bath and then set that house on fire and soak in the blazing heat of the fire. Oh God! It used to be such a fun and pleasure that can not be described. Imagine you get up at 5 on a chilled morning, its all foggy around, you take bath in freezing cold water and then do not even wait to dress up properly but run to the fire! The joy it used to give was just unbelievable. And remember that I told about the bamboos. So whenever the joints of the bamboos catch fire it used to burst making sounds like, ‘pot, pot’! And we used to count those! :D

I remember two incidents particular to this. First, when we were in a very very remote village. Now on the two sides of our home, there were two families and the kids of those families were not fond of each other. Even the grown ups were not, I guess! However, so they will make separate picnic spots within a distance of 100 meters and woo each other in verbal arguments. So once it went so far, that one party literally bombed the house made by other party to set it on fire in the middle of the night. Oh my God! It was such a chaos. That time the grown ups actually had to interfere and calm things down. Since the house was already burnt, next morning they had to put a huge wood to keep the fire alive.

And in the next story, when we moved to a very remote village I hardly knew any of the kids there in the neighbourhood in the initial days. But I wanted that fire on the cold morning. So what to do? Now in winter during this time of the year the trees will shed leafs and in a village there were more trees in a house than what you can see in a block of a metropolitan. So what I will do is start collecting those leafs from one week earlier and on that morning use them as a complement for the house and it used to work pretty fine. Oh btw, we used to call that picnic house as ‘Burir Ghor ’ (the house of the old lady).

And as the Sun will rise and they clock will tick our feast used to start. After finishing off the first round quickly at home, we will set off for the whole locality, going from houses to houses and eating those delicious Pithas. These things are so tasty, and sweet and rich that even we will feel like our stomachs are already full but will never give up!

That’s not the end of the story! We will finish off our lunch also quickly. Because after that we will have loot! Yes, you read it correct. It used to be called loot only and the concept was also somehow similar to what you can think of generally. Actually what used to happen is, a group of people, whom we would call ‘Baishnov Dall’ (the Brahmins) will come to every home. They will sing with Dhol, Kartal and at the end of it they will through some dry sweets (Batasha, Kadambo) among the people and we will go and fight for those! Now you could buy those at the market but there was a secret for doing this. So that’s how the name loot was originated.

Now we would collect as much as of those sweets we could and get them home. We will give all that to our mother and ask her to prepare Mistanna (Payesam or Kheer) with those. No one will probably disagree to the fact that it will not make any difference to the taste of the Mistanna but for us it used to taste sweeter, if I may say so. And so in the evening we will have another round of the feast. But you know at the end of the day … after all these overdoses of sweets and sweets and more sweets the only thing we would look for is – a simple dish made my Mom for the dinner. And that used to taste heavenly, no doubt!

Jai Gurudev!
Love!

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Its’ been seven years that I have ever done any of these things. So this year I decided to try all those things (like making Pithas which I never ever did earlier) and see what happens. After all, all this is for fun only, no? So I bought some stuff in the evening and started with the coconut, till then all went fine. Also I put the alarm at 6 in the morning to get up and take a bath. But since I went to sleep at only 12 in the night, the earliest I could get up was at 8. However I collected some leafs from the front of the house. Took a bath, well, not with cold water but with hot water. And then went on to get some heat from the fire. Finished my meditation. Started making those Pithas. It was an utter disaster, not to mention. However, I could make a few of those for me and my friends. So when my parents called in the evening, though we laughed about it, I told them that at least we got to taste those for the day. And they will be happy to know that, I still remember those beautiful days and tried to keep that culture alive in me. Next time I sure can do better! What say? :-)