Have you ever heard about South India??
People from other countries always think that rest of India also looks like North India.. But let me tell you the things about South India.. Sometimes things about whole India too..
It's not a story. If you ar...
I am sure Diwali and Holi is the most famous festival that you ever heard about.
But we South Indians have a lot of festivals.
When people meant India is a really diverse country, it really is. We have thousands of festivals which were celebrated by some people while the other have some other festivals.
India is a country with full of festivals.
Let me explain pongal, a festival we celebrate for 4 days to thank the farmers and agriculture related things.
(Some customs that I noted in this chapter about the festival pongal may vary from region to region.)
First about pongal, the word pongal means to over flow. Like you are cooking milk in a pot and if they overflow they say it is 'pongal'(something similar like this..).
And there is many traditional dishes which are named pongal (like some are spicy but when we say pongal it means rice with jaggery)
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^ Sweet one..
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^ spicy one..
The first day of pongal celebration is Bhogi pongal.
The basic concept of this day is to get rid of your past and start a new present without worrying about your past.
This is the basic concept. So to do that some people burn the possession that they had which reminded them of their worst. But as time goes on people started to burn old things that they never going to use again.
From where I am from, we don't celebrate bhogi. We don't burn the things instead of that we will take new resolution and donate our old usable belongings to orphanage or elder homes.
( As I am saying many of you guys can disagree with me, but this is how we celebrate bhogi not all but some.It may vary from region to region. We don't burn things instead we just clean our house).
There is a Tamil Calendar too.. Like every country has its own.. Our country has too many..
The first day of Thai ( Tamil month), we celebrate Suriya Pongal. (Suriya means sun).
We celebrate Suriya pongal in the second day of pongal celebration.
We wore new dress and we put kolam.
We decorate pots and paint them and in morning we make pongal in the outside under the sun. We buy sugarcane and ginger plant. Sugarcane and pongal festival is inseparable. Ginger plant is used to decorate the pots for pongal festival.
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Like this👇
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The third day of Pongal is Mattu Pongal ( in which mattu means cow). Since, this festival is to thank agriculture. We thank cow since we used to do agriculture with the help of cow and oxen.(Still some people do that).
We start the day by giving a bath to the cow and decorating it with flowers and painting it's horn. At this time we will have most fun. Like if you are from a household who had many cows then you can relate to this.
The most eventful part of today is that there will horse races and oxen races and so on. And there will be our traditional game named 'Jalikattu'. (I will do another chapter about Jallikattu).
We will take cows to nearby rivers or to somewhere like a pond or drain in our grove. And when the cow was going to enter our house, we will put small amount of straw and set it in fire and let the cow pass through it. We don't put too much fire. It's just an ritual(idk about this one. I tried to search about it but I didn't get any results. So, if you guys know why people are doing it. Feel free to comment here, I will edit it later).
Then the fourth day of Pongal is Kannum pongal, in that day we as a community will celebrate this. Games will be hosted in every village and kids will participate in it. ( I never joined in games since I suck in sports and I get nervous if there is more people.)
Not only in Tamilnadu but people in other states in South India celebrate this festival with different names. Pongal as Pedda Panduga in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Makara Sankranti in Karnataka and Maharashtra.Bihu in Assam, Magha Mela in parts of central and north India, as Makar Sankranti in the west, Maghara Valaku in Kerala, and by other names with different customs too..
~~ That's all I think 😅.
I am sorry that this chapter might be boring because I don't know many things about Pongal even though I am celebrating this festival for all my life. I really felt shameful for not knowing many things.
