Sankranti

Happy Sankranthi to you all.

Sankranthi to me meant lots of fun. When my sister was still a baby it meant preparing for her Bhogi Pandlu, where we would invite all the kids from the colony and she would be made to sit on a low stool, me holding her there, and one by one all the aunties coming and pouring a lota full of ber/regi pandlu and coins over her head and all the kids scrabmling to get their hands on the fruit. The first year she cried like she was being lynched, but over the years she got used to it and would scramble with other kids to grab the most fruit!

When we both were a little older, Sankranthi meant preparing way in advance, practising various rangoli patterns so that on the D-day we would be ready with the biggest and the best rangoli in the neighborhood. My mom is an expert at this and she would draw the pattern with the muggu powder and we would follow and fill the patterns with pretty colors. The rangoli business was an early morning thing and we would get up at 5 or 6 am, take a shower, wear new clothes and set about the business of colouring the rangoli. Sometimes we would go overboard and also write stuff like Happy Sankranthi and Mera Bharat Mahan(hehe, I know…weird!) in chalk. Rangoli done, we would saunter inside and follow mom about, trying to see what she was cooking.

Afternoon, post lunch was time for patang! My dad would have taken us to the patang shop a couple of days in advance to pick up what we all liked. Usually I and my sister would get cheap but shiny ones(since ours usually got cut in a few minutes), and my dad picked up the sturdy but light but not pretty, slightly expensive ones. My dad was very serious about his patang flying high, and flying longer than others’ and he took to it like business. After dad tied the ‘kanne’, with precise finger measurements, I was given the job of holding the patang and throwing it high in the air to give it a lift. Our patang would then fly high in the air, like it was destined to, until dad gave it to either me to my sis so he could catch a break. That was when the neighbourhood competitors saw a chink in my dad’s armor and cut our patang mercilessly to the ground! It ended like that EVERY SINGLE YEAR!

Evening was time to go around the neighborhood, distributing sesame laddoos and saying Til Gul Ghya God God Bola. This was fun because we got to see the various Bommala Koluvus(an arrangement of dolls) , and we kids mostly passed judgement as to whose was the best(unofficially, of course). And thus, Sankranthi ended, after we kids had all kinds of fun during the day, and we would wait for the next one, to have as much fun.

Now all we managed this year was some kheer, and some rangoli on paper!

So what did you do on Sankranthi?