The Pongal Festival

13-16/01/12

So the children are going to be picked up and taken home on Friday for the Pongal Holiday.
The Pongal Festival! A big deal.
Pongal itself is a sticky sweet rice dish.

1. Sweet Pongal

Ingredients

·                                 Raw Rice – 2 cups

·                                 Jaggery – 2 cups

·                                 Ghee (Clarified Butter) – 1 1/2 cups

·                                 Elaichi (Cardamom) – 6 (powdered)

·                                 Cashewnuts – 12 (fried in ghee) and cut into small pieces

·                                 Kishmish – (12-15 (fried in ghee)

Method:

1.                                 Clean and wash the rice well, add 5 cups of water and pressure cook. Keep Jaggery in a medium frying pan, add 1 cup of water and boil. When it melts, strain through a strainer to remove the dirt.

2.                                 Replace and boil again. When it becomes slightly thick, add the cooked rice and stir continuously till it becomes thick. Start adding Ghee now and then, stirring continuously.

3.                                 When it starts leaving the sides of the pan and the ghee starts oozing out, put powdered cardamom and stir well. Add Cashewnuts and Kishmish fried in ghee. Coconut scrapings can be added at the end before serving.

Read more: http://www.top-indian-recipes.com/blog/3-sweet-pongal-recipes-for-sankranthi/#ixzz1jnYlk7RC

-Some Background-  It is a harvest festival celebrating the new bounty and solving of the years problems- symbolised by letting the rice boil over the sides of the pot. It is a 4 day holiday and only in Tamil Nadu. First day you clean EVERYTHING in your house, replace old earthenware pots with new. Refreshed. Khader took me to some villages close by who the Illam gets fresh milk from, to drop off new milk pails and sugar cane (karambu) and pongal ingredients. Khader is the man in centre with a white shirt.

Day two, a beautiful Rangole is drawn on your doorstep, these are flowing geometric designs (some look like atom diagrams) drawn every day in white on the doorstep, today it is traditional to make it in colour, include sugar cane in the drawing as well as the over-flowing pot.The people below are Vasimile, the managing director of Dhan in Madurai and his daughters with theirs.

  

This is the actual day of celebrating the harvest and making the pongal (though I've been eating it for the last two days!) Day three is celebrating the animals which help the farmers- the cows are decorated and given special food..

The fourth day one vists one's family.

THURSDAY - Went along to the boys government run high school and saw one ('Muniaple', i need to check spelling for sure!) receive a prize :)

I also spent some time at the primary school for their pongal celebration and prize giving for pongal pictures. (I got to choose the top three! felt pretty special)

FRIDAY - five of the girls (Swetharami, Devabarathi, Dharmalksmi and two others i'm not sure who) did an amazing Rangoli, a day early as they would be home on the actual day for it she also won the rangoli competition at her school.  And it was the day their parents and guardians would ask about the school. A father led a ceremony topraise the shrine in the dining room.

So of course everyone was at least a couple of hours late! (granted, some of the parents had to travel for about 5-7 hours to get here). I was asked to sit at the front of the class room with Nagarathinam, Mr Khader and Deva (this situation is getting to be a very common occurrence…). Then I had to sit through about an hour an a half of tamil talking, which when someone gets going can be very soporific. I tried my darndest to stay alert and awake looking! And I thought I was doing pretty well, but it since turns out I wasn’t. I still feel pretty embarrassed. But come on! What’s a tired person with no understanding of what’s going on to do? I was asked to say my piece, and I said how I was enjoying being with their gorgeous children, and said that they study very diligently, and the home seemed to me to be an excellent institution. (followed by a time of awake ness, and descending.. into…. sleeeepy………Nod... Dammit!)

-On public Talking-

I had only been here about 4 days at this point, to be honest I’ve not been very prepared at all with being asked a number of times to talk in front of people. Who am I anyway?!, a non-qualified teacher taking a holiday here and seeing if I can contribute to teaching conversational English (and since being asked to contribute more in terms of teaching some remedial acupressure, which is pretty cool but that’s another post….:) But since, I’ve come to believe in the power of being unusual, (with the help of pep talks from Mr K) and have vowed to use my powers for good and not for evil- by at least appearing comfortable (no better way to draw attention to oneself and alienate people than by being uncomfortable). Better yet, to not inhibit the enjoyment I’m feeling from what I’m seeing here with a little bit of fear and feelings of not being qualified enough to talk during public speaking.

Why not share the joy?

After this I had lunch with Mr K and his family served by his granddaughter Nagigha (I hear as Nah-ji-ha) as Boinu (I hear as Bha-nu) was out. It was her first time to serve guests, she did really well! -Only one near scarf in the pot incident- so he could pray at home, and then we came back to the Illam and said goodbye to the children still there.

Then it was 'all of a sudden' organized that I would join in on some Pongol festival touring from Madurai with another foreigner staying with Dhan.