Pongal Celebration!!

Pongal is celebrated during mid of January. It's a harvest festival in TamilNadu & also a thanksgiving to Sun & Nature. And it also been celebrated as Mahara Sankranthi in most of the Indian states.

The day preceding Pongal in Tamil Nadu is called Bhogi when people discard old things and focus on new belongings. Actually the origin of this particular celebration is to discard/destroy all our bad thoughts/habits and start of with a new beginning with all good thoughts but people started burning material things & creating pollution instead of burning their ego.

So here I present a small photolog of how Pongal was celebrated in our home.

There is no pongal without a Kolam (Rangoli). And it's very common that various newspapers/local TV channels organize a kolam competition during pongal.

Here is a Kolam drawn by Mom & Sister infront of our home.



And we are getting ready for the pongal preparation. Stones are ready to keep the pot, small wooden sticks, Sugarcane, oil lamp, Coconut, pumpkin, banana, turmeric, betel leaves & betel nuts.



Couple of years back we have grown all those things mentioned in our own garden & celebrated...

Pot is kept on the stove & they started cooking the Pongal...



Fire! it's one major form of energy which keeps the world functioning...



Pongal in one of the pot got Pongified :-D (Over flown)



Usually water won't over flow when boiled. But the water which we boiled here is the water which was used to wash the rice...

Another pot overflows in full flow...




Here is the completely prepared pots of pongal. One is Sakkarai Pongal (Sweet) & another one is Ven Pongal (Salt & prickle).



You can see the layer of ghee in the left pot ;-)

Hope this was a virtual treat to you folks...