Time to wash away your sins!

Time to wash away your sins!

Jallikattu or bull-taming, part of Pongal in Tamilnadu
Photo: Economic Times

Looking back, it appears as something of an annual ritual. Every year the night of 13th January when we left for our respective homes after the Lohri (perhaps I shall write about that next year!) bonfire and celebration, the neighbourhood bebe (a term of address to an older woman often mother/grandmother) would remind me, “Kude, kal sangraand hai, satte savere nha dho ke sohne kapde pa ke mattha tek layin (Girl, tomorrow is Sangraand. Bow before God after taking a bath and dressing up in good clothes early tomorrow morning).”

By the time I heard bebe’s call nha layi (Have you had your bath?) from across the wall in the early dark, foggy next morning, I would already have washed my hair, had my bath, and dressed in a fresh set of clothes. Salaries were low those days and a veterinary doctor got lesser than the doctor for humans, so with my father’s limited means, we tried to have at least one new article of clothing, even if just a handkerchief (yes, we all used them).

Then I waited for bebe's call to go to the gurdwara for ardaas (prayer) and langar (community kitchen). But every year that was the moment of disappointment for me, for she would say, “Naah, naah, kude tainu thand lag joogi. (No, no, girl, you will catch a cold.) In her eyes I was always a child. When I started working, one year I tried to argue with her that I was a grown up but her patient reply was, “Tun taan raateen vee late aaondi hain. Bimaar hona hai? Ainvein sara din nhin thand with ghummeeda. Putt, Main tere vaste langar lai awangi. (You come back late even at night. Do you want to fall sick? One does not roam about in the cold the whole day. Child, I shall get you langar food.)”

She would leave for the gurudwara to help make rotis. By the time bebe returned from the gurudwara in the afternoon after seva (service)and langar, I would be busy. My mother would have prepared a super-huge amount of gajrela (carrot halwa) cooked on slow fire till it turned almost brown which, it was my responsibility to distribute in the entire neighbourhood. In turn they would give me saronh da saag (sarson ka saag or spiced mustard greens) or maanh dee khichdi (rice and black gram cooked together).

Bebe always came back with just one large parshada (roti) smeared with dal and a hint of some vegetable besides some kadah parshad (wheat flour halwa distributed as prasad) now frozen solid because of the copious amount of desi ghee in it, wrapped in a piece of cloth. That was the high point of the festival for me.

It was a day for prayers and eating simple vegetarian food. Everyone would give grains, milk, and woollens to the needy on Maghi Sangraand.

Somehow, I have never had the heart to go to the gurudwara, or even temple for that matter, on this day ever since, but that memory has stayed in my mind.

I am talking of Makar Sankranti, Capricorn festival. It falls on 14th of January every year but 2024 being a leap year, it falls on the 15^th (A year has 365 and a quarter days, now you do the math). It is believed that this day the Sun moves from the house of dhanu or Sagittarius to makar or Capricorn. The day is dedicated to Surya, the sun god. Days start to warm up after Sankranti.

And then I came to Lucknow. I will talk of the culture shock I had some other time, but right now I shall stick to the topic under my radar.

In Uttar Pradesh, Makar Sankranti is called khichdi. Whether cooking and eating at home or giving away to the needy, the day is fixed for khichdi, which you eat with or without accompaniments. One special activity of the festival is kite-flying in which young or old, all take part with equal enthusiasm.

In fact, Satyam, my friend and colleague, once narrated to me the scale and fascinating scenes of the khichdi festival at Gorakhnath temple in Gorakhpur where in those times there would be mounds and mounds of uncooked rice and dal and cooked khichdi which people offered in the temple.

After some years, Mani got posted to Hyderabad and I noticed Telugus had an elaborate three-day celebration on Makar Sankranti festival. On the first day i.e., Bhogi, people burn all unwanted furniture and wood lying in the house, in some way clearing the path of the old and making place for the new.

The way Kiranmayi Rao explained to me it seemed that in her community the second day was the big day. They have oil massage followed by bath. They make muggulu i.e., draw a rangoli outside the house, put a ball of cow dung in the centre and a flower on top of it. They say their prayers for the occasion, cook food of their ancestors’ choice, offer it to them and then eat it as prasadam. Surprisingly, they cook mutton, chicken and fish that day.

The third day is basically a day of celebration for villagers and farmers who decorate the animals of support they have at home, feed them good food and fruit.

Then Mani got posted to Bangalore. Meera Prasad shared that the Kannadigas worship the Sun, make and eat Pongal, and wear new clothes this day.

A few years later, we packed our bags and left to live in Mani’s next karmbhoomi Chennai. The dense clouds of smoke early on the Sankranti morning which the sea breeze slowly cleared away in the next couple of hours, reminded me of the Telugu ritual of Bhogi. Tamilians also make rangoli with coloured rice flour on the second day when they too make Pongal, the sweet moong dal and rice dish with milk, jaggery, cashew nuts, raisins and ghee, which also gives the festival its name.

There too, the third day is for the animals. Remember the uproar over Jallikattu, a few years ago?

We have not lived in Kerala so I asked artist friend Thejomayee Menon who said they offer fruits and flowers to Lord Ayappa that day. This is the day Makara Villaku or Makara Jyoti is lit at the Sabarimala and devotees end their 40-day tapa (penance). 

Sadhna Mule, a Maharashtrian friend, says they have haldi-kumkum for the married women where they put a teeka or tilak of turmeric and kumkum (red powder used for sacred occasions) and give them small gifts.

A Bengali friend says they make pitha, a sweet with rice flour, coconut, milk with ‘khejurer gur’ (date palm jaggery) as the sweetener.

All over India, those who can go to Ganga, Yamuna, Kaveri, Krishna, or Godavari rivers, take a bath in their sacred waters. 

Remember, how in Hindi films Ram Aur Shyam and Seeta Aur Geeta, twins got separated at Kumbh mela, the pilgrimage held at this time in Prayagraj every twelve years. In fact, I can visualise little children unrecognisable in layers of woollens, wandering off among crowds on the cold dark river bank and getting separated from their parents. I feel no such stories would be possible in future because the police and administration have near-perfected their public address systems.

Top: Dilip Kumar in double role in Ram Aur Shyam (1967)
Bottom: Hema Malini in double role in Seeta Aur Geeta (1972) 

The bathing is believed to wipe your slate of past sins. In almost the whole of India, sweets made of til (sesame) and gur (jaggery) are made, shared and eaten.

This is the day some of the needy are able to fatten up their stores of rice, black gram, sesame, jaggery and puffed rice because daan (Giving way in charity) of these articles is said to please both Sun and Saturn.

It is party time for the domestic or farm animals too who are decorated, worshipped, and fed on goodies they like.

The day opens the gate to auspicious and happy celebrations like grih pravesh (house-warming) or weddings after the passing of the kharmaas, the one month considered inauspicious for holding such events.

I have heard that the festival is celebrated in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sindh (Pakistan) too.

Isn’t it great that different states, communities, and people celebrate this one festival in common ways?

                                                                              -Anupama S Mani