Makar Sankranti

The other day I bought some sweet potatoes, boiled those and cut these into pieces, added salt and lemon, to be had as snacks! Simple stuff but the mind went back to that time, back home in Shillong, on cold winter days and awaiting the arrival of Sankranti.

All rituals and celebrations always have a special space in our family and we are not the ones to have kept away from the festivities. My Ma was a working woman, full time between home and office and did everything she could to balance both.  So the ritual, a day before Sankranti was for her to go to office but return early as there were these peethas to be made. So she would boil the sweet potatoes, leave them to cool and ask me to peel the skin and mash them fine. She would particularly tell me to ensure that there were no small pieces left. And when she got home we would both be at it, mash the potatoes finer, add the flour and mix them into a dough. Then make oval shaped pieces with those. We would then fry those, and add the same to the jaggery syrup. 

Then there were pathi peethas and pulis and gojas. We did these in the mud chullhas and even in the biting cold we would be warm from the heat in the kitchen. And most of it was done, we would all sit together and relish the same.

And before this was all done, bhai and me and friends would build a mera-meri ghor, not a perfect hut but had all the ingredients of fun and festivity. The next morning, that is on the Sankranti morning, I would usually be the first to get up, heat the water on a stove(there were no geysers then) and then wake up bhai and the cousins whenever they were with us. One by one, in those cold mornings we would bathe and then go and burn that hut.  By that time Ma would bathe, prepare the peethas for the Gods and then do her Puja. Once that was done, it was peetha time for us.

Things have changed, we have grown up and Ma has left us all behind. This will be the first Sankranti without her and we will not be really celebrating.  I know Baba will miss all these more than us, for he knows what Ma has done to gel into his family, the traditions and the values. May be the nieces will be the reason we prepare some peethas, while hiding our tears.