happy lohri

First of all wishing you all a very happy lohri!
lohri!!!!!! what a beautiful and warm festival in the chilly punjabi winters! the day of lohri is suppose to mark the end of harsh winters and temperature becomes better.It is also associated with a good harvest of winter crop , wheat, so people would take different food items, like till(sesame), groundnuts, jaggery etc and offer to place of worship.
My earliest memories of lohri are when my younger brother was born and we were coming to punjab to celebrate his first lohri. In punjab the festival is also celebrated for the birth of baby boy. My father had been specially instructed by my grandparents that they were having a special celebration to mark the birth of their eldest grandson so no matter what dad to take leave and come.
I was super excited about all this and wanted to go to dadi ghar to celebrate kake ki lohri, kaka being a way to call small baby boy in punjab.
since my dad had a big family consisting of 8 siblings , we had lot more lohris in our family after my brother's lohri.
In those days many small kids would move from one home to other and sing lohri song Sunder mundriye ho!
Tera kaun vicaharaa ho!
Dullah bhatti walla ho!
Dullhe di dhee vyayae ho!Ser shakkar payee ho!
Kudi da laal pathaka ho!
Kudi da saalu paatta ho!
Salu kaun samete!
Chache choori kutti! zamidara lutti!
Zamindaar sudhaye!
bade bhole aaye!
Ek bhola reh gaya!
Sipahee far ke lai gaya!
Sipahee ne mari eet!
Sanoo de de lohri te teri jeeve jodi!
Bhaanvey ro te bhaanvey pit!


which can be roughly translated as Oh beautiful girl
Who will think about you
He is Dulla Bhatti
Dulla's daughter got marriedHe gave 1 kg sugar!
The girl is wearing a red suit!
But her shawl is torn!
Who will stitch her shawl?!
The uncle made choori! The landlords looted it!
Landlords are beaten up then!
Lots of innocent guys came to save
One innocent boy got left behind
The police arrested him!
The policeman hit him with a brick!
Give us lohri ..long live your couple!
Whether you cry, or bang your head later!

That also reminds me of story about dhulla bhatti who was a punjabi robbin hood who looted rich and helped poor specially in poor girls marriage.

In evening we would have a bonfire at home and people would first do a parikarma ( taking a round around bonfire) and put til, jaggery , peanuts and popcorns etc in the fire and pray to god for blessings and shout "Aadar aye dilather jaye" (May honor come and poverty vanish!)
then we would dance and sing songs!
finally we had a sumptuous and yummy home cooked meal , saag and makki ki roti , gachak etc!
on this day mom would specially cook rice kheer but it was suppose to be eaten next day , it is called pau rijhi magh khadi, which means cooked in paush month and eaten in magh month!

Due to my father's job we travelled a lot and where we went my dad celebrated lohri with much festivities and would call his friends from local area.

Among all this one thing which always struck me that lohri was celebrated especially when a boy in the family married and then people would tease the newly married couple to have another big lohri celebrations next year, which was to have a baby boy by next year.
also although we had lot of baby girls being born in the family but lohri was celebrated on large scale with big gathering when a baby boy was born.
when i would ask my elders i was told , this is how it has been from ages and many would say dheeyan vaste teeyan ne ( for girls we have teej festival) , it was true that teej was a female dominated festival but still it was not for a special baby girl. As a kid i would ask my parents again and again why we never had a lohri celebration for me!! although if i look back i can say that never did once my parents differentiated between me and my brother and i was given same love, freedom and opportunities as him but i always wished to see a lohri for a girl baby!

anyway life moved on and lohri also changed over the years.
now no kids come to ask for lohri except the kids of labourers or from poor families but one thing which remained was the big celebration for the baby boy!
traditionally in punjab people have always preferred boys which explains the badly skewed sex ratio so much so that it has become a big problem.
Thankfully we are seeing some hope in this situation and people are changing their mentality ,I after a long time this year i got to celebrate lohri in punjab and this year we saw lot of people celebrating the birth of the baby girl also , lohri dheeyan di!
I am happy that people are not taking the birth of a girl as a bad news but are infact celebrating it!
It gives me immense happiness to see not only younger generation but also people from my grandparents generation realising the importance of girl child.
may be now we are finally thanking god in the right sense and that makes this festival even more sweeter!
I hope to attend more such lohris of sunder munderyes!!

 

Thanks for the fb suby!
Yes I know makar sankranti is pongal in Tamil nadu, my dh is a tamilian
I love the whole festival feeling of pongal too, its slightly different from lohri but the basic idea of thanking god and praying for prosperity is same.
U can say I enjoy best of both worlds
Tc