So happened that on Bhogi, the day before Sankranthi, I was on a different early morning walk. It fell on a Sunday, so no park walk, I was walking through the colonies to my parents place.(that's an in process of getting built Sunday ritual :)
I was nicely surprised to see that the tradition of bhogi mantalu still very much on. I must have seen atleast twenty such little fires on.
This guy seemed to be one who was illustrating the essence of the fire, burning up useless stuff (he was burning boxes )
The lane had so many fires right through
It also brought in a flush of memories. Childhood memories when we would do the bhogi manta at Barkatpura. It used to be like a mela, with the whole family there, and kushalma uncle would lead. He'd allow the kids to find anything in the house, anything that was old and ready to go, to be put into the bonfire. Old chairs, modas, rugs, broomsticks, chataas, anything.......it was so much fun.
And the essence of the ritual is so beautiful. Junk the old, and create space for the new. What is today more familiar as 'declutter'. We seem to be left holding just the ritual of the bonfire, without doing the actual declutter.
A wonderful and powerful concept. How much of the old do we hold onto. How much (even without being aware) do we let it influence.... be it in our external world, or the internal. Good time to pause and look :)
No comments:
Post a Comment