Celebrating Sakraat in Finland

Sometimes I wonder if anyone would find this useful. Does it server any purpose? Does it help anyone?

Then I remind myself, I write for two people: me and you.

I have lived in Finland for a good three years now. For most of the time that I have been here, I have been happy, content, walking the trails, listening to podcasts, cooking, cleaning, grocery-shopping.

During winters, I have walked over the frozen Toolo lake. During Christmas I have roamed the streets of Helsinki. On New Years' eve I have danced in the rain, and welcomed the new year with thousands of other people.

This is the first year I celebrated Makar Sankranti in Finland. Makar Sankranti/Sakrat is a Hindu festival which celebrates among other things, movement, change, and in our part of India it is associated with crop harvesting. In India it falls around the time when the winter is getting over and it is getting a bit warmer.

What it means to me, like almost all festivals, is mostly around what we get to eat.

What I remember are these three things:

1. Naha-kha: Bathe then eat. Literally.
2. Touching rice and til kept in a plate. There would be heaps of rice and til kept in the plate, equaling the number of members in the family. And each member would touch/break the heap and combine it with the rest of already touched/broken rice.
3. Tilkut
4. Dahi-chura. Yogurt and flattened rice with jaggery or sugar.

BJPRF organised this celebration in Vanta, Finland. Prerna and I took the 520 and then the 571 to reach the venue. The venue was an atmospheric, traditional, cozy, Finnish cottage with wooden floors and a nice open hall. Attached to the hall was a little space where we had arranged for snacks, and drinks. Attached to that was the kitchen which we did not really use, as association members had prepared and brought the food to be served with them.

As with my childhood memories, the highlight of the event was the food: dahi-chura, khichdi, achar, tilkut, and on and on and on.

Some more pictures