Food, rituals and kites sum up the spirit of Sankranti

Some things don’t change. And for Telugus around the world, Sankranti has to be one of those things. No matter which part of the world they are in or what they’re doing, come Sankranti and it’s as though time stands still. Everyone wants a Sankranti celebration that’s a throwback to their childhood, and they strive to keep it alive the best way they can. Whether their best Sankranti memories are from a farm in a small village where they watched cock fights or the rooftop of a cluttered neighborhood in a city, from where they won glorious pench fights, everyone has their own version of their favourite kind of Sankranti Sambaralu, filled with their kind of celebrations. From patang parties on roof tops and pench fights with neighborhood

kite

fliers, to muggus, murukus and blockbuster matinee releases — Sankranti is about all this and more. We speak to city folk who give us a peek into just what makes Sankranti in their home/ hometown so special.

‘No patangs for me; I trip on the sweets’I’m a

Secunderabad

boy and here the festival is all about the patangs. However, I don’t fly kites, so the food is my favourite part about this festival. The sweets especially. Though I don’t eat many sweets now, as a child I used to gorge on the chakkara pongali, nuvvula laddu, bobbatlu, payasam et al. I’m usually away from home during Sankranti, but this year I’m home and I’m looking forward to catching up with my extended family.

‘I used to make my own kites out of newspapers to battle it out on Sankranti’
Lighting the bonfire to start the day of

Bhogi

is one of the most awaited rituals that I wait for during this festive season but the best part of Sankranti has to be kite flying. When I was a kid, my uncle once got kites from the US, they were huge ones and blue in colour. I was so crazy about kite flying that I used to make my own kites using newspapers and would go to the beach to fly them. During a time when there was no social media or PubG, flying kites were the real sport between friends and family and I miss that spirit these days.

Bhogi mantalu and rangolis amp up the festive vibe in my hometown Rajahmundry
I hail from Rajahmundry and the vibe there is just amazing during Sankranti. The women in my family would all make the Sankranti muggulu and me and my borthers would help them fill the colours. In our street, there used to be a rangoli competition, and the entire colony used to take part and celebrate the spirit of Sankranti. Setting up the Bhogi mantalu, was so much fun, as all the boys would scrounge the whole locality for waste material to burn them in the fire.
— Sashi Kiran Tikka, filmmaker

Rituals, sweets and kites is what ring in the Sankranti spirit
Though I grew up in Delhi where you don’t find the Sankranti vibe we have in the Telugu states, my parents made sure that we stayed true to our traditions. We used to do pooja at home, buy new clothes, do the gowramma (gobbemmas) and make sweets. I’ve tried to inculcate the same in values in my six-year-old son. Every year, my husband goes to Old City to buy kites and manja, and the father-son-duo fly kites together and have loads of fun. Kite flying is now an annual tradition in our household.
—

Yamini Reddy

, dancer

Memories of my mother’s muggus and flying kites with my dad define Sankranti for me
Sankranti brings back a treasure trove of memories. My mom would decorate the courtyard with beautiful gobbemmas embellished with turmeric, kumkuma, flowers and nava dhanyalu (a mix of nine sacred grains). A day before the festival, regi pallu (plums) are placed on the foreheads of the young children as a form of blessing. We would all bathe our cows, oil their horns, smear kumkum on their temples and feed them the payasam we made at our houses. My dad used to make the kites himself and fly them along with us.
— Suddala Ashok Teja, lyricist