Oh....today is chaitra sankranti and tomorrow NabaBarsha or poela boiskakh! or our Bengali new year! Which year it will be? Well for a person like me it really need not to stress my head to remember all such nity gritty as I just search it and found out from Google. 1421 it will be from tomorrow!!!...............Actually for me those years, months hardly matters now. Almost for nothing do we follow those bengali dates. But what really matters is those sweet memories of celebrating all these special dates which we still live in. Week before Sankranti I could remember Grandma , ma and all others busy in washing and cleaning everything right from all the storage jar in the kitchen. They all used to be so busy. And the excitement used to continue by buying new clothes that we will wear to welcome the new year as if the new year will be noticing us for our dresses. The Day before chaitra Sankranti all the ladies used to get busy preparing sweets and cutting Raw Jackfruit for making 'kathaler Echor' a special bengali delicacy and then Raw mango Dal which are a must in the menu of Chaitra Sankranti. Well to keep those memory alive today I went out in the scorching heat of Hyderabad to see if I can get a little piece of Raw jack-fruit ( I was ready to take all the pain of removing all the sticky glue like enzymes and making it ready for the curry) but couldn't really find it anywhere. Well so for me today Raw mango dal is all there to satisfy my taste bud and sentiments from the memory!! I am missing every moments of those frying sweets in Dalda and the tempting smell. On Nababarsha, we used to touch feet of all the elders to take there blessings and used to visit all the shops and business centres to wish them good business for the coming year. They used to celebrate a ritual of worshiping Lord ganesha 'Godishite' if I could remember it correctly. They all used to give us boxes full of sweets. As it was impossible to eat in all the places, I used to collect all the boxes in a plastic packet and get them home. And later used to open and see and compare with my other cousins how much more or less sweets I have collected! So as I told, for me those moments really matter..........as I know I have left them far across and there is no way to get back there. Visiting Lakshmi Narayan temple in the morning can be replaced with some temple here...........but I cannot get that same smell, same feeling and same excitement in reality.........but only by walking down my memory lane. Still will like to celebrate it my way keeping the spirit alive and wishing all the elders over telephone........Welcome new year....Welcome 1421!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment