Om Sai Ram! Happy Ponggal Everybody.At 5.27 pm, it’s way too late to wish. But better late than never :).
What is pongal? It’s something that I have just newly learned a few years back. Thanks to the explanation from my mother in-law and my sisters and of course my betterhalf. To sum it up, it’s Harvest Festival.
A celebration widely celebrated by Tamils mostly.
In Tamil, Pongal means “boiling over /spill over”. The celebration starts with boiling milk in a clay pot and letting it boil / spill over. This symbolizes abundance within the household. A true symbolic tradition. House is cleaned, painted and Kolams are made in front of the house. Kolam is done before the sunrise, so that when the Sun God sees, he will come and bless that particular household.
This celebration is mainly to celebrate and thank the Sun God – Surya for his great gift of good harvest and usually those celebrating would offer him the first grain to him to mark the “Surya Mangalya” .
This festival is known to be celebrated for over 1000 years and looks like it will be celebrated for another 1000 years more!
On the way back from work yesterday, I saw so many people “transporting” sugarcane in their car and some just in their motorbike. Sugarcanes are placed in front of the house. Why? Sugarcane symbolizes sweetness and happiness. Besides that , there is also a myth that have indicated that on a Perum Pongal day, Lord Shiva performed the miracle of feeding sugarcane to a stone image of an elephant in the Madurai Meenakshi Temple.
Ok, enough about the History – which is a combination of info from my family and also the net – Thank god for my ever accessible world wide web *wink*.
Happy Ponggal – God Bless!
