Living with nature..the joy of south India's thanksgiving..

The Tamil calender, based on the lunar position in the skies, indicates that the month of "Thai" (no stress on the a as is the case with the pronunciation for Thailand) rolls around in mid-January. This is the conclusion of the winter harvest (if you could call it winter that is) for the farmers and their harvest has been packaged and shipped off to the local markets.

Now, comes the time for these farmers, the framework of the Indian diaspora, the skeleton to the Indian identity, the backbone of the Indian economy, to offer thanks to the nature and the elements. The festival of Pongal. Spread over three days, to the average joe it signifies three things, on three different days...

The first day of Pongal, called Bhogi, actually falls on the last day of the previous month of the Tamil calendar - the month of Margazhi. Typically the coldest month in the southern parts of India, the beginning of Thai is considered to be a time of good start. The time to step out from the old and into the new. In fact, there is a saying in Tamil that amounts to "when the month of Thai dawns, a new way dawns..."

People celebrate the fact that a new "year" is about to begin by doing away with the old, typically in bonfires. This would be akin to spring cleaning in many parts of the world, when the people would dig out from the snow and slush of the winter, but not by much.

The second day, is the day of Pongal (two syllables, the first syllable Pon almost rhymes with the French word "Mon", and the second syllable gal is pronounced exactly as the second syllable gal in legal). This is the day of offering thanks - thanks to the Sun for blessing his bountiful rays of light on the farmers crop, and in general sustaining life on this earth. Part of the reason that the traditional style of celebrating the festival involved cooking outdoors was the fact that the people wanted to pay their obeisances to the Sun and ceremoniously offer their food to the God.
The food cooked during that day, was typically the fare that the farmers could grow on their little corner in the world - rice, lentils, some root tubers, sugar cane (directly, and also processed, as sugar), and it was the day they finally got to reap the rewards for toil of the days past.

The third day, is Maattu Pongal (Cows Pongal). The traditional farmer in India tilled his land with his two cows and a plough, exacting tough labor from his beasts of burden. Also, his oxen would be the driving power for his cart, when he had to take his harvest into town to sell and make money. This was the day he would get to symbolically repay his gratitude to his animals, for their part agriculture. The cows are bathed, and they are decorated as best as they can be (usually involves tying jingling bells around the cows neck, painting the horns with exotic colours and garlanding with flowers), and then taken around the village in a sort of parade. Probably so the proud farmer can show off to his neighbors of his pride in his animals. On this third day, in the morning, the women folk of the house also lay out the food left over from the previous day for the animals of the neighborhood to eat. Typically they are meant for squirrels, crows, pigeons and other domesticated birds that flock the back porch of homes in south India.

It is yet another way that the old lifestyle of the folks, one that we are so far removed from now, was one that was in tune with nature and kept the humans as a sustaining part of the chain of nature.

To most Tamil folk, pongal is probably the most celebrated of festivals. It is definitely the case in my family because of our ancestry as a line of farmers/landowners. Hey, I am just one generation removed from being a one myself. So this tradition is still fresh in our memories and hence an integral part of my household.

Pongal-o-Pongal