Tilgul ghya… goad goad bola

Today is Makar Sankranti. A Hindu festival that celebrates the Sun. Although it is rarely sunny on January 14 (or January 15) in the part of the world I currently live in, the soul, the heart of the festival spreads warmth. Even when there is little outside.

My memories of festivals mostly revolve around food, the sweets in particular, the festivities, the people. I remember the making of tilgul, the super sticky jaggery, melted and mixed with toasted sesame (with coconut and peanuts in some recipes), flavored with a heady dash of cardamom. With palms greased with ghee, plenty of ghee, the balls are rolled out whilst the mixture is still warm, or smooshed and flattened into a large plate, to be cut into square, rectangles or my favorite, diamond shapes.

A word of warning about the warm gul (jaggery) and warm tilgul. Boy, does the sticky mixture hold heat! My tongue may still be recovering from the PTSD of my youthful tilgul delinquencies - ahem…of trying to get some before it cooled.

Dedicated to the sun, the festival marks the onset of warmer weather and longer days. While most Hindu festivals follow the lunar calendar and hence fall on different dates every year, Sankranti, is the only festival (that I know), that follows the solar system and the Gregorian calendar and falls on the same day every year (well, sometimes, a day difference).

In Maharashtra, tilgul ghya goad bola... is what you say when you give tilgul to one another. Translated literally, “Take this sweet, and speak sweet”. I suppose it signifies allowing sweetness into our lives, letting go of the dark and the grudges, of new beginnings amidst the increasing light.

Celebrated differently in different parts of India, the theme remains the same. The end of dark times.

Traditionally, these festivals hold their origins in harvest cycles and significances. And although not many of us will go out into our fields today, we could adapt them to the world around us and apply their significance to our current urban worlds, our political climates, our hopes and our humanity.

And while my mind was sweet and nostalgic this morning, with memories of tilgul, and the smell of warm gul (jaggery), scrumptious gulpolis, and even a blister or two from eating tilgul before it cooled, my mind was also entrenched in recent political events.

Earlier, I had started this poem and some rambling thoughts on recent political events. I may never complete the poem, and the rambling thoughts are probably incongruous in a piece filled with sweet memories and sticky sesame sweets. Yet, I will stick them right there… for after all, that is the life we live in. With all its duality.

 History repeats, they say,

With a shrug, insouciant

It’s happened afore

We’ll watch it unfold again

But who are the “they”

Can “they” be the “we”

who say no, to repeating history

To senseless actions

That destroy our peace

How long will we hide

behind complacent beliefs

That history repeats

 Leaders wield power. Even the weakest, the most cowardly, the most brazen. They hold in their hands, the ability to mobilize the masses. For at least someone will follow, without questioning the wisdom in the message, in the rhetoric, without forethought of its consequences.

Leaders wield power. Power to sway the masses. Mold minds. Influence the course of history. You don’t have to be a media studies student to know that it is simply a matter of repeating a message over and over till it seems true. Ask Goebbels or his ghost. Or the modern-day Goebbels that seem to crop up the world over. And we let them. For in our complacence, we have accepted that history repeats.

And even if the above thoughts are a jolt from the sticky sweetness of my nostalgia, I cannot find a better time, a better festival, one that celebrates the Sun and new beginnings to talk about recent political events with fervent hopes of more light and brighter days and new beginnings…

Tilgul ghya goad goad bola…