Celebrating the harvest and harvesting the celebrations

I remember as a child celebrating Pongal. I was given a metal plate and a spoon and happily beat it as I watched the milk from the cauldron boil over, while my mother deftly dropped rice onto the rising milk!

Then my siblings and I went to the rooftop, sat on the walls, biting into juicy sugarcane stalks; sucking the juice and seeing who can spit the fibrous mass farthest away!

As a celebration of harvest, Pongal is perhaps one of the oldest celebrations. An agrarian society which toiled in tune with the rolling seasonal changes, must have had a great sense of relief when the bounty was harvested in time. For it meant, that the rains came at the time they should and that the rain did not show up when it should not have. It meant, the animals that helped in the growth of the rice paddy were well and the farmers who tended them were well. And that the Sun, that celestial entity worked like a clock not only in providing the nourishing light for plants to thrive, animals and humans to live; but also the heat needed to dry out the rice stalks; making it easier to thresh out the crop crested on top. And the gushing of the boiling milk represented the joy that comes out of a deed that had fruition; tempered by the rice dropped on it after that; which was an affirmation of the thankfulness.

So the ancients thanked the elements, the animals, the farmers, the crops and the fact that they had a harvest. They celebrated their harvest and the tradition remains till date in India; in the South called as Pongal.

In today’s instant everything world, perhaps we need to harvest our celebrations as well. We go through life with its own ups and downs. On a daily basis we read of great things around us and also news of unpalatable happenings. While it is human nature to respond to both, perhaps our internal affirmations should also have a little counter for celebrating the good harvest each day. Not necessarily with beating of a drum or a metal plate, but with an internal joy of thankfulness; that is tempered with the knowledge that many factors came together to make the harvest fruitful. It could be a personal success moment, the first step of a child, a smile from reading a good article or any moment that felt good.

As I reflect on the multitude of “Happy Pongal” notes from my friends and family and respond in kind; I made a note to work on harvesting celebrations each day, like a micro-Pongal moment.

Happy Pongal!

#Pongal #Harvest #Celebration #Gratitude
– Narayan Srinivasan

Jan 14, 2017