Happy New Year

Wishing all Tamilians and Malayalees across the world a very happy and prosperous New Year. Today (april 14th) marks the birth of a new year as per the Tamil calendar. As per the tamil calendar, the first day of the month Chitrai usually falls on the 14th and sometimes 13th april each year. It is the day when the sun moves into the Meda veedu or Raasi. This is the day when the sun starts its travel across the 12 zodiac signs starting with Mesha/chittirai.


On the eve of the new year, we decorate the altar with a lot of fruits, flowers and money. Then we decorate the deity with jewels.

This is a picture of a decoration of the altar (no, this is not what I did at our place today). Ours is usually a lot simpler.

Elders usually gift a small amount of money to children. When we were kids it was great fun waiting for the elders in the family to give us some money, even if it was just a rupee. I used to collect all these and when it reaches a sizeable amount, I used to buy something that I wanted. Oh what fun those days were!!! We used to go visiting all elders on these occasions. But today, I did not even step out of our apartment!!!! I was totally tired for some reason.

Of course, each festival is associated with its own list of delicacies!!! Poli and vadai are usually part of the menu on the Tamil new year's day. But the MUST-Be-Made dish is the maanga pachadi. This is made with raw mango, jaggery, neem flower, a red chilli. Wondering, what kind of a funny combination of ingredients?? haha. Well, this is to symbolically say that the coming year ahead should be a well-proportioned mixture of a little bit of sweet, little bitterness, something sour and something spicy!!!

Before I sign off for the day, wishing all friends a very happy and a prosperous new year again.