Ponggal O Ponggal! 

Mid-last week, Little India in Singapore was teeming over with people as Indians scrambled to buy the items needed to celebrate the harvest festival, Ponggal.

Sugarcanes lined up along the street in front of the shops while clay pots were stacked up in every corner for shoppers to choose from. Flower sellers were stringing jasmine flowers quickly to meet the demand while Tamil music and car horns filled the air.

The lanes were chock full of people haggling to get the best deal, where rows and rows of makeshift tables were set-up to sell ingredients such as turmeric plants and fruits, needed to make the milk rice called Chakkarai Ponggal.                                                      

Others swarmed around the pen where they kept the cows that would be commemorated and blessed on the second day of the festivities.

 

This non-religious ceremony is celebrated by thousands of Southern Indians all over the world to pay tribute to the first harvest of rice, grain and vegetables. A sweet rice is made by boiling milk, rice, Indian soft brown sugar called jiggery, raisings, sugar, milk, ghee and cashew nuts in clay pots. They watch the pot boil over, spilling the rice and cry “Ponggal oh Ponggal”, signifying that the house is blessed and the family can look forward to prosperity. It is later served to those who were present for the ceremony.

Celebrated over the course of three days every year, the festival was started some 5, 000 years ago in India by farmers. To prepare, households are thoroughly cleaned, fresh mango leaves are hung at the doorway and sugar canes are places at the entrance of the house. Sweets and savouries such as muruku, payasam and vadai are also made.

On the second day, the cows are blessed and bathed in a sweet mixture of sandalwood and turmeric to commemorate their hard work for ploughing the fields.