Happy Pongal!
You may not have celebrated it where you live but Pongal is a big thing here in South India. It's when everyone celebrates the new harvest and in particular the first crop of rice which is blessed.
The hotel held their own puja conducted by a priest who came on his motorbike.
A table was placed near the small temple to Ganesha outside the gift shop and the ingredients to make the dish called pongal were laid out (coconut, bananas, dried fruit, turmeric, salt, sugar, rice and lentils) before being cooked on the pot.
At the same time young girls were filling in the chalked kolam on the floor outside the entrance to Reception, with coloured rice, using a very steady hand. (These appear everywhere for Pongal, they seem to be outside everyone's front door.) It took them about an hour to complete it and they were happy for our group to lend a hand.
The chalk outline
Adding the coloured rice
The final kolam
When the sun was in the right place the priest washed Ganesha with milk, then water, and made an offering to the Gods.
In the background bullocks were being prepared to take us for a ride on carts to a local village.
We were offered the cooked pongal and were blessed by the priest using ash from the fire. I gave most of my pongal as a bhuta offering to the two inseparable guinea fowl strutting around the place.
The bullock ride was spectacular - 5 carts set off, carrying 3 or 4 people each, along country lanes, main roads, residential districts of Thanjavur then local villages. Everyone on the street waved at us and we waved back shouting 'Happy Pongal!'.
Raja, the Catering Manager at our hotel, told us that many of the people we met had seen very few Europeans in their life so we were quite the celebrities! With our bottled water and our umbrella sun shades it was like were had returned to the times of the Raj!
We were offered all sorts of food along the way - mini-bananas, sugar cane, coconuts. After about 45 minutes of bouncing up and down potholes, and wiping ourselves down from the bullock with diarrhoea we arrived at the village and were given a garland of flowers, blessed with more ash, and sat down in plastic chairs so the whole village could introduce themselves, and take photos of us.
The children were dressed in their Sunday best, learning pat-a-cake pat-a-cake from Caroline, Wendy handed out pens and biscuits she had bought for this purpose, and everyone - every man, woman and child of speaking age - repeated 'Happy Pongal!', gave us a huge smile and shook our hand vigorously. Everyone was given a whole coconut to drink and a stick of sugar cane and there were more offerings of fruit.
After 15 minutes we were herded back onto the carts and driven back, with the crazy young bullock cart drivers overtaking each other whenever local buses and trucks allowed. On quieter roads children on bicycles would draw near, tell us their names, ask where we were from and start a small conversation.
It was quite a ride. The generosity - and generosity of spirit - we experienced was humbling. I vowed to remember this day when we return home and the cynicism creeps back.
Nursing our post-bullock buttocks (numb bum) we had a discussion in the afternoon on the topic of the different definitions of sraddha - the trust, conviction and faith required for any yogi. (We also had an asana class in the morning before the Pongal puja.) The yoga day finished with chanting of the sraddhastukam by the bank of the river just before sunset.
As the bar was closed for Pongal, Wendy arranged for drinks to be served in her room and our party was joined by 4 members of the hotel staff who made the.Planter's Punch cocktails using rum, pineapple juice, orange juice and lemon juice before our very eyes, coming back later to deliver snacks like masala nuts.
After all that I will spare you tonight's buffet menu, which was accompanied by traditional folk dancing and drumming :-)
What a day!
Namaste!
You may not have celebrated it where you live but Pongal is a big thing here in South India. It's when everyone celebrates the new harvest and in particular the first crop of rice which is blessed.
The hotel held their own puja conducted by a priest who came on his motorbike.
A table was placed near the small temple to Ganesha outside the gift shop and the ingredients to make the dish called pongal were laid out (coconut, bananas, dried fruit, turmeric, salt, sugar, rice and lentils) before being cooked on the pot.
At the same time young girls were filling in the chalked kolam on the floor outside the entrance to Reception, with coloured rice, using a very steady hand. (These appear everywhere for Pongal, they seem to be outside everyone's front door.) It took them about an hour to complete it and they were happy for our group to lend a hand.
The chalk outline
Adding the coloured rice
The final kolam
In the background bullocks were being prepared to take us for a ride on carts to a local village.
We were offered the cooked pongal and were blessed by the priest using ash from the fire. I gave most of my pongal as a bhuta offering to the two inseparable guinea fowl strutting around the place.
We were offered all sorts of food along the way - mini-bananas, sugar cane, coconuts. After about 45 minutes of bouncing up and down potholes, and wiping ourselves down from the bullock with diarrhoea we arrived at the village and were given a garland of flowers, blessed with more ash, and sat down in plastic chairs so the whole village could introduce themselves, and take photos of us.
After 15 minutes we were herded back onto the carts and driven back, with the crazy young bullock cart drivers overtaking each other whenever local buses and trucks allowed. On quieter roads children on bicycles would draw near, tell us their names, ask where we were from and start a small conversation.
It was quite a ride. The generosity - and generosity of spirit - we experienced was humbling. I vowed to remember this day when we return home and the cynicism creeps back.
Nursing our post-bullock buttocks (numb bum) we had a discussion in the afternoon on the topic of the different definitions of sraddha - the trust, conviction and faith required for any yogi. (We also had an asana class in the morning before the Pongal puja.) The yoga day finished with chanting of the sraddhastukam by the bank of the river just before sunset.
As the bar was closed for Pongal, Wendy arranged for drinks to be served in her room and our party was joined by 4 members of the hotel staff who made the.Planter's Punch cocktails using rum, pineapple juice, orange juice and lemon juice before our very eyes, coming back later to deliver snacks like masala nuts.
After all that I will spare you tonight's buffet menu, which was accompanied by traditional folk dancing and drumming :-)
What a day!
Namaste!
