Hello everyone! Happy Sankranti to everyone who is celebrating! Sankranti of better known as more specifically, Makara Sankranti is a festival celebrated as Sun enters the rashi of Makara which is the zodiac sign of Capricorn in the Hindu calendar. It marks the end of winter days and the beginning of the new harvest season.
Some parts of the celebration varies from culture to culture. In mine, we make many traditional food items and some sweets as well. Before eating them, we do some prayers and make offerings to the ancestors to seek their blessings. Other activities done are cooking rice milk with sugar first thing in the morning and flying kites in the sky.
This is a moment captured while the preparations were being done. My father was cutting some jasmine flower garlands for my grandparents' pictures and a deceased uncle. The banana leaf is where the food will be offered to the ancestors. The rest of the items are all prayers related things.
We set the pictures of my grandparents and a picture of my late uncle as well. We decorated the pictures with flower and garlands. The offerings in this pictures are betel leaves as my grandma used to eat them, and some fruits which we arranged at the sides. We also placed a lamp in the middle which we will be lighting up for prayers later.
These are all the prayers items. The black blocks are called sambrani. They are lighted up used to perform prayers on special days usually. Here we use it every Fridays and during festivals. The little white blocks are camphor. The long sticks are incense sticks which are used to clear the energy of the space for prayers.
This is little Bantoo. He was curious about what we were doing so early in the morning.
This is after doing the prayers and offerings. We offered the ancestors a delightful vegetarian meal with rice, some bananas, apples, oranges, grapes and some sweets as well. My grandfather likes tea so we placed a glass of tea for him.
Here's a closer look of the yummy meal. The sweet is called Theepi Garelu. It is the one looking like a doughnut. It is made by frying the batter in hot oil. Then they need to be dipped and cooked jaggery syrup which is a type of sugar. I accidentally burnt my hand twice, while cooking the sugar as I was in a rush trying to melt the jaggery. Ugh, my bad. We can't make a rainbow without some rain right.
So that was our simple Sankranti celebration. The cooking part was rushy and wasn't simple at all but it was all worth it in the end. Thank you for dropping by and I wish that everyone have a blessed day.