Pongal Festival At Home!

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We celebrated Pongal festival at home this morning! This is a very important festival celebrated throughout India in different names in different states.  Pongal in Tamilnadu, Makar Shankraanti in Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra, UP, MP, Goa etc. Uttarayana in Gujarat and Rajastan, Lohri in Punjab.  This is basically, a 'Harvest Festival'  Our country is  mainly a farming country.  So this festival gives importance to the 'Sun god' who helps the farmers for their cultivation. This festival comes in the month of Jan. (around 14/15th and in the Tamil month, 'thai'). The previous day is called 'Bhogi', when we clean the house and destroy all the old and unwanted things.  The next day to Pongal, is Maattu pongal, which is like thanksgiving for the cattle which helped them in farming...Maattu pongal is celebrated in a grand way in villages. Read more about Pongal in the wikipedia link here .

At home, we clean the house for 'Bhogi'.  The sweet for the day is 'pooran poli'.  The next day is Pongal.  We draw beautiful ronglis/kolams in front of our house in the morning (You can see them in the wikipedia link!).  We hang a bunch of mango leaves on the door step to indicate that we have a festival/celebration at home.  We cook Sweet pongal (Raw rice, moong dhal and jaggery combination dish), Ven pongal (same rice and moong dhal with salt, pepper etc.), Yezhu curry koottu (koottu is  a typical Tamilian dish prepared with coconut, dhania, chilli, hing etc. alongwith minimum 7 vegetables like root veg. (Potato, yam, sweet potato), veg. from creepers (avarai kaai - val beans and its seed, pumpkin - red and white),  veg. from plants like beans and raw banana. We make black gram vada also.  Curd rice as usual.

We cook the sweet pongal in a brass vessel which is visible in the photo.  Then tie the vessel with ginger and turmeric plants  and take it outside  to our backyard near the tulsi plant. We draw a small kolam of sun god (one circle surrounded by small small lines!) and place the vessel on it.  Then we do a small pooja and offer the sweet to the Sun god (in our earlier houses we were doing this in our balcony).  Then bring the vessel inside and keep it in front of the gods and do the normal pooja.  We have to decorate the pooja room with sugar cane like you see in the picture. Sugar cane is a a must for this festival. Then...'pet pooja' means eat them!

We do the pooja near the steps in front of the Tulsi plant, placing the vessel facing east!

Turmeric and ginger plant...these are very important for this festival!

The next day to Pongal is Kaanum pongal...i.e. visiting relatives, mainly visiting mother's place or go out and enjoy! In our house my sis in law and other relatives come home. This festival is celebrated by the women/girls of the house for the well being of their brothers.  In the morning we keep coloured rice balls which are made from the left over sweet pongal and curd rice. We add some haldi and kumkum to a portion of the curd rice.  We keep these balls in 3 to 5 lines on turmeric leaves along with beetel leaves, nuts, banana and a sugar cane piece.  We do this mostly on the terrace.  We do a small pooja and offer them to the gods and pray for the well being of our siblings, mainly brothers!  Have a spoon of the previous day's sweet pongal and take head bath after this small ceremony.

For lunch we make different types of mixed rice like pulianjaatham (tamarind rice or lemon rice), coconut rice, ellu saadam (til rice), karuveppilai saadam (curry leaves rice), curd rice etc.  We make the pastes for all these rice before hand and just mix them on that day.  More kuzhambu with White pumpkin to mix with the mixed rice. Vada and paayasam will be there.  Eat and then we mostly play cards.  We used to have many members in our family earlier.  Now the children have grown up and got married and have gone out. Slowly our family is getting smaller and smaller! We, nearly 12 to 15 people, used to sit in a BIG round and play cards till night! Those days are gone! We used to have the sugar-cane eating session after lunch...now except for a small piece, others go to the servants!

Next year's pongal will be in our new flat...pongal will be offered to the sun god in our new balcony!

Happy Pongal to all!


Edited to add on 16.1.13:

Kaanum Pongal...comes on the next day to Pongal

I have written about Kaanum pongal above.  This is the picture of the small ceremony which we did yesterday morning!

The crows which come home to eat my curd rice (link) never eat this coloured rice with haldi, kumkum etc.!