Tired of the dull detached life in the city? Take a trip down to a village during a festival, especially Pongal! Pongal is arguably the most important Thamizh festival of the year.
The Thamizh calendar is a bit different from the Western calendar that we use. This website shows both calendars for the current year, one month at a time.
The Pongal festival starts off on the last day of the Margazhi month (according to the Thamizh Calendar). The day is called Bhogi. It is a day when people thoroughly clean their homes and collect unwanted and unusable articles. Later in the evening, those articles that can be burnt are thrown into a bonfire and burnt publicly. In villages, where people live in thatched huts, the entire thatched roof is taken apart and reconstructed.
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The last and fourth day of the Pongal festival is called Kaanum Pongal. This is the day when families go out of their homes on long trips for the entire day. Usually, a trip to the temple is on the agenda. In some cases, families would go to a distant temple to appease a particular God. This is followed by a trip to meet elderly folks in the family to secure their blessings and to greet them on the festive occasion. Lunch is packed and carried during the trip. All the members of the family make it a point to sit together and eat lunch without fail. During the evening, families go to the beach or to a place of amusement (zoos, museums, cinema etc) and have fun till it gets dark.
How we celebrate festivals in the city isn’t half as grand as how people celebrate in the villages.
Bibliography:
Thamizh - The Tamil way of saying Tamil.
Pongal(festival) - A 4 day festival that falls around January 14th every year.
Bhogi - The first day of the 4 day festival
Thai Pongal - The second day of the 4 day festival
Maattu Pongal - The third day of the 4 day festival
Kaanum Pongal - The fourth and final dayPongal(dish) - Rice is collected in pots and cooked with milk till it overflows. There are many variants of this dish.
Margazhi, Thai - Months on the Thamizh calendar.
Kolam - A design made by sprinkling rice powder on the floor. Colour powders are mixed with rice powder to get multi-coloured designs.
Alanganallur - A panchayat town in the district of Madurai in Tamil Nadu.