Chennai: Pongal, the traditional harvest festival, was celebrated in Tamilnadu with religious fervour and gaiety on Thursday.
The festival falls on the first day of the auspicious Tamil month ‘Thai’ every year and people ushered in the festivities with a lot of enthusiasm by worshipping the Sun God.
People attired in new clothes, prepared sweet pongal, a traditional dish made of rice, dhal, jaggery and milk and offered it to Sun God as a mark of thanks by farmers for a bountiful season.
It was celebrated with much fanfare in rural areas where people decorated their courtyards with colourful rangolis and tied festoons and prepared the pongal using the traditional earthern pot.
Thai Pongal was mainly celebrated to convey appreciation to the Sun God for providing the energy for agriculture.
The four-day festivities began Wednesday with ‘Bhogi’, when people discarded old belongings by burning them and celebrated new possessions.
On the third day today, Maattu Pongal is being celebrated by farmers who regard cattle as sources of wealth for providing dairy products, fertilizer and labour for ploughing and transportation.
The farmers decorate their cattle with garlands and paint their horns and take them around the streets to mark the occasion.
The day is also special to women, especially for unmarried girls, who perform ‘Kannu pidi’, a tradition under which they offer various coloured rice in ginger and turmeric leaves at the terrace of their houses for the well being of their brothers and to offer prayers to Sun God.
During Kanu Pidi women feed birds and pray for their brothers’ well being. As part of the “Kaka pidi, Kanu pidi” feast women and girls place coloured rice, cooked
vegetables, banana and sweet pongal on ginger or turmeric leaves for crows to share and enjoy.
During this time women offer prayers in the hope that brother-sister bonding ties remain strong forever.
On Saturday, the last day of the festival, marks the Kaanum Pongal (sightseeing), wherein people from every nook and corner of the state, visit their relatives and throng various important places like beaches, amusement parks and shopping malls.
However, this year, the State government has made all the beaches, including the world’s second largest Marina beach which would resemble a sea of humanity every year, out of bounds for the public in view of the corona pandemic.
The government also banned public from visiting the Arignar Anna Zoological Park at suburban Vandalur, popularly called as Vandalur Zoo, the tourist spot of Mamallapuram, about 55 km from here, and the Guindy Children’s National Park, which used to attract lakhs of visitors on Kaanum Pongal Day.
Though the corona cases has been brought under control and the State number of cases has been on the decline steadily, the emergence of the mutant variant of the virus in the UK, and the fear of the spread of the virus, has prompted the government to ban people from visiting beaches, zoos and other tourist spots this year.