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Makar Sankrant -a Day of Friendship By- Pratibha Kelapure Pratibha lives in Bay Area California, where she has spent most of her adult life. She discovered her passion for literature at an early age, but became a software engineer later on. She retains a child's naivete, curiosity and sense of wonder about the world around her. Kindness is her philosophy in life.

Makar literally means 'Capricorn' and Sankrant is the day when the sun passes from one sign of the zodiac to the next. The Sankrant of any month is considered auspicious as it signifies a fresh start. Maker Sankrant is celebrated in the month of Magha when the sun passes through the winter solstice, from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn. Makar Sankrant is celebrated on January 14th, and is the only festival of the Indian calendar, which is celebrated on a fixed day of the solar month.

However, Sankrant is much more than that. Makar Sankrant is also celebrated throughout India as a harvest festival. It is a way of giving thanks to the elements of nature that help man. This is the period when the winter recedes, paving the way for the summer. It is the time when the farmers bring home their harvest. In the coastal regions, it is a harvest festival dedicated to Indra. In Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, it is celebrated as a three-day harvest festival Pongal. In Assam, the festival is celebrated as Bhogali Bihu, and in Punjab, it is called Lohri. In Gujrat, the festival is celebrated as kite festival. The following pages contain more information.
The First Festival of the Century- Makar Sankranti
Makar Sankranti

In the state of Maharashtra, Sankrant is the festival of friendship, a time to celebrate the old friendships, to form the new ones and repair the old ones. The slogan of this festival is "Tilgul ghyA Ani goD bolA." The literal translation is "Accept tilgul and speak sweetly." Tilgul a sweet concoction made out of til - sesame seeds and gul - jaggery, is the symbol of friendship. Friends are asked to emulate the quality of Tilgul and stick together in lasting friendship and love.

Let bygones be bygones, bury the hatchet, water under the bridge, make new friends, but keep the old, and many more expressions of patching up the friendships, remind me of the festival of Sankrant. I don't think there is any place in the world where the young schoolgirls don't go through the cycle of making and breaking friendships. The final exam stress and the long summer months have always soured many friendships. Sankrant was a day of reckoning. Each Sankrant you would see at least one girl clutching a packet of tilgul in her palms, walking nervously towards a friend with whom she had a huge fight the summer earlier. Within a matter of minutes, the tilgul would be accepted and so would the offer of friendship. As it turns out, I am long overdue for offering tilgul to one of my childhood friends Meena. Meena was four years older and yet, she became my friend. She was the one who taught me how to ride a bicycle. If you knew me, and my total lack of motor skills, you would understand what an enormous task that must have been. For Meena though, it was all in the day's fun. That whole summer, I walked around with deep wounds on my knees. I lived in total awe of the mechanic who used to fix the punctured tire tube. It was always Meena to the rescue; she would do the talking to the mechanic to save me a few anAs. Anyway after a year or so, we had some kind of fight and we stopped speaking to each other. My family moved before we had a chance to make up. To this day, I regret the fact. So, this article is for Meena. If we met today, neither she nor I would recognize each other. But I still owe her a packet of tilgul and some gentle soft words.

Another delicacy that is served during this festival in Maharashtra is called halwA. HalwA is a small and spiked sugar ball with til seed in the center. These balls can be colored orange, yellow, green etc, and are used in making ornaments and jewelry. Babies and new brides are adorned with this jewelry for the haldi-kukkum function. The fabric used for the baby clothes or for the Sari is usually black or some other dark color with small golden or silver stars or bootas on it. Some small household gifts referred as waN are distributed to women attending the haldi-kumkum ceremony.

As you can imagine from the picture of the baby wearing these ornaments, that although they are cute on the babies and perhaps on some beautiful new bride, for most of the working women of my generation the practice was somewhat uncomfortable. Most of us fortunately did not have to suffer through the wearing of sweets on our bodies. It was a charming tradition and there is some amazing talent involved in preparing those halwA balls and the crafting ornaments from those balls.

On a humorous note, I find some similarity between holiday fruitcake in the West and the leftover tilgul. Long after the actual Sankrant day is over, people keep offering tilgul to each other and after a while it becomes a nuisance. Tilgul keeps making rounds like a holiday fruitcake. I remember, after busy rounds of Haldi-kumkum functions, exhausted women would come home and compare the quality of tilgul received at each neighbor's place. The quality and the value of the WaNs received would also be compared. Coming up with an idea for the waNs that would stand out among the neighborhood waNs could make or break a new daughter-in-law's reputation.

Well such were the traditions. I will always remember my mother's advice, "Keep the good part of any tradition and ignore the rest." So I pause at this moment and remember all the friendships I have developed through the years and pray that I remain true to them.

I hope to bring a little information about each month's Indian festival with a bit of rumination thrown in for the SAWF readers in upcoming issues.

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