My mother loved Pongal/Shankaranthi. With approaching warmer days, this festival commemorates the first harvest. Abundance is celebrated with grains, milk, butter, fruits, sugar cane, jaggery, sesame seeds, and nuts. The life-preserving Sun is saluted and thanked for the abundance it provides. The giving earth is profusely thanked.

The sweet Pongal pot with all the harvest ingredients, is left to boil over, signifying the abundance of happiness and prosperity. She always sang, “Maithrim Bajatha,” a prayer for the prosperity of the world, and the benefit for each creature inhabiting it.
“Shreyo Bhuyat, Sakala Janana!”

The link below contains a beautiful rendition with lyrics of the song by  the seer Chandrasekhara Saraswati.

The day after Pongal is called Kanu. It’s a festival where you think of the well-being of siblings and pray for their health, long life, and happiness. You also show the respect for the creatures inhabiting the earth with a ritualistic offer of food.

I remember waking up to the morning sun, helping lug upstairs the festival food reserved for Kanu, along with a couple of rice dishes made out of turmeric and vermilion, to the open terrace. There, my mother would have prepared little decorative patterns of rice flour, and on each pattern, a small banana leaf would be placed. Still groggy, we would be given balls of several kinds of food offering.

With the thought of well being for siblings and for the world at large, we would apportion the offerings in smaller balls. We would also chant a small verse that this offering is for the celebration of the birds and creatures of the earth. This verse sounded like children’s play songs, and even intergenerational grown-ups chanted it. It felt like a children’s tea party game. The verse when translated roughly, insinuates that this whole exercise of food offering is for the wedding and birth of different birds.

Looking back now, it was our first initiation into the idea that the living creatures of the earth are all interconnected and interdependent. The idea that humans are at the top of the food chain somehow seems naïve, when I know we are all in it together. We humans just possess the potential to do the most damage. By implying the idea of new birth, preservation of our earth and all its creatures is ingrained into the children and perpetuated by the adults.

As part of a large family,  I would always observe everyone’s leaves. Now looking back, I was in my little girl’s way, understanding the personalities. There was the organized one, the neat one, the messy one, the hurried one, the patient one, and so on….

Then a hymn to honor the sun would be chanted briefly, along with burning of camphor. We would then leave the premises, and the next morning return to clean up. We just had to pick up and compost the banana leaves; the food would be long gone, and even the rice flour floor design would be cleaned up by the industrious ants! Everything went to the cycle of life, including the biodegradable platter.

In our own home here, it’s raining outside. So the husband, the daughter, and yours truly keep our own in one leaf on the kitchen island where the sun filters in through skylights. We think kind thoughts for the entire universe, and we leave it outside for the thousands of creatures sharing this gentle earth with us.