A Small Sankranti Souvenir!

The phone started beeping incessantly a day earlier with notifications. Messages were pouring in from enthusiastic well-wishers who wanted to be the first to wish you on  Makar Sankranti. There were lovely images of kites, til and gud laddoos (traditional sweets made with sesame seeds and jaggery on Sankranti), haldi-kumkum, flowers, sugarcane, and other related items associated with this festival. On the day of the festival, there was a tsunami of much more of the same. 

Notwithstanding the frenetic activity on the phone, my mind wandered back to the time when Sankranti meant visiting relatives and friends on a cool January day, touching the feet of elders and receiving til-gud laddoos or barfis from them along with the friendly refrain: til gul ghya, goad goad bola (take til gul and talk sweetly).

If a family had had a wedding or the birth of a baby in the months preceding this festival, then the new bride or the new baby would be adorned with jewellery made using halwa (small spiky balls made by coating sesame seeds with sugar syrup on low heat for a long time, a laborious process as the stirring is done using one's fingers). The whiter and spikier the halwa, the better. The bride would usually wear a black saree--otherwise taboo on auspicious occasions--and the white ornaments would stand out beautifully on that.

Sometimes, a kind relative living in a distant town would send a few balls of halwa sealed in a plastic bag kept inside a postal envelope. What fun it was to open that envelope, read the hand-written letter and relish the sweet!

Neighbourhood ladies used to exchange clay pots filled with fresh green peas, sugarcane pieces, ber, and other seasonal fruits and vegetables. It was wonderful to lay your hands on one of these and enjoy the winter goodies. Ladies would also exchange small items of personal or household use as gifts. Bangles, combs, soaps, hair clips, safety pins, pens, postage stamps, inland letters. There used to be a great deal of excitement and anticipation surrounding these gifts.

Such simple times! What makes these memories precious are the personal interactions when wishing someone on an auspicious day. There is always space for these memories. No need to delete them, unlike the ones we keep deleting from our phones every now and then lest their storage space is full!