The fact that India is extremely rooted to Mother Earth makes it very easy to understand how the Pongal celebrations are so heart-felt.
While living in the South of India, the first January I spent in Bangalore, I was astonished by witnessing the ferment in the city. I could feel a lot of agitation in the streets:
intense trading happening in the stores and to the side of the road. Animals, people and sugarcane everywhere.
It was Pongal or Makar Sankranti.
The festival happens in mid-January and it lasts four days.
It is meant to thank the gods for the fresh harvest and it is also an auspicious celebration for the harvest to come.
Pongal is observed especially by the Tamil community that is very large in Bangalore.
The first day (Bhogi Pongal), is about cleaning the house and getting rid of the useless clothes and objects that are burned in a fire to celebrate Lord Indra (God of rains and clouds).
On the second day (Surya Pongal), after the cleaning, the house is decorated and the entrances are garnished with colored rice flour used to draw on the ground geometrical patterns called kolam. According to the tradition each family has to boil rice with sugar cane, milk, cashews and coconut and let it overflow the terracotta pot. The term Pongal means in fact to boil or overflow and this brings luck for the year ahead.
On the third day, (Mattu Pongal), the cattle are feed with the rice pots offered the day before to the god of the sun (Surya), the animals are adorned with flowers, bells and colors. The traditional fight men-bull (jallikattu), thank god, has been banned almost everywhere because of its cruelty: a crowd of men had to fight with a bull (sent by Lod Shiva according to the Myth) to grab the money pocket previously fixed between the bull's horns.
On the fourth day (Kaanum Pongal), it's time for sharing and enjoying the harvested food on a banana leaf, after blessing the house with turmeric water, wearing new clothes.
The rituals celebrate the transition from winter to spring and similarly to many Indian festivals, it is a thanksgiving for what has been gifted from gods.
In India, a large part of the population is supported by what comes from the earth and the amount of rain means abundance or shortage of food for a whole year. It is a life rhythm that most people are not used to anymore, but in the past and even now to a certain extent, a good or bad harvest season can be life-changing.
Even in the era of cell phones and high tech, the Indian population doesn't forget the essential.
Life's suffering is less painful with a full stomach.
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