Lohri, one of the most popular festival of Punjab is being celebrated today. It is basically a post harvest festival wherin people after a hard day’s work in the field gather together in the evening over a bonfire and enjoy each other’s company singing songs and shaking a leg. However, it also marks the end of winter season and the onset of spring.
For us it has been an enjoyable occassion to get together with our neighbours and friends and share their culture and folklore. This time, we arranged for the firewood, in fact almost half a truckload, sensing the enthusiasm of our immediate neighbour who is a devout Sikh. Towards evening my wife started preparing snacks like samosas and pakoras as well as arranged for the traditional groundnuts, “til” etc. and as darkness sets in I arranged the firewood in the pavement in front of our campus and lighted the bonfire. The kids enjoyed a lot as the colony has not made such celebrations earlier, and they kept playing, singing and dancing till late at night.
Another interesting point is the fact that even though the festival almost always fall on January 13, a day before Makar Sankranti, this time there was some confusion as some astological calculations fixed the date to be 12 January. Anyway, as we had plenty of firewood and the mood lively and enjoyable we thought of continuing the celebration on both the days!!!
