Festive time in villages

A break from work is always a pleasure. Especially it adds more joy if the vacation is planned for a stay in rural villages, that too during Sankranti (Festival of Harvesting) aka Pongal. Yes, it is a fantastic get away during this season.  I spent whole of the last week in my native place. This is not new to me. Usually, I take leave from work during this time of the year and enjoy the country side life. It’s been almost a couple of years since I visited the the villages where I was born and lived for few years during my early childhood. So this year, I had no second thought about going there and spending sometime with minimal intervention with electronic gadgets like mobile, laptop, computers etc., Though I planned to stay away from the internet, email and blog, I decided to carry a data card along with my notebook if required for attending any emergency work related issues. The fact is that I got no chance to use it through out the week, thanks to my colleagues and manager 😉

Let me write about the festival now. Telugu people call it ‘Pedda Panduga’ meaning big festival. The whole event lasts for four days, the first day Bhogi, the second day Sankranti, the third day Kanuma and the fourth day, Mukkanuma. So, obviously I ensured to reach a day before the festival could start and started back to Bangalore after it got over. Each of the 4 days is special and has its own importance. Probably you can do a yahoo search on each of those days and get to know it better, I am not going to write about all that here now. One thing that keeps me wondering is the essence and importance with which the festival is being celebrated year after year. You never get to see it going southwards. I certainly feel proud to be a part of this rich cultural heritage that is being passed on from generations and continuing to celebrate like never before!  I have a number of things to write about this trip. It won’t be right on my part to sum up all those things in a single post. Hence I plan to spread the story over next few articles.