It was the festival of Shankranti a couple of days back. I was talking to one of my good friends about how I do not feel the same kind of excitement that I used to feel about these festivals. When I was in school, about a month before shankranthi, my mother used to start preparing “Yellu ” a mixture of evenly cut small pieces of Jaggery and dry coconut along with roasted peanuts, gram and roasted white sesame seeds. This used to be an elaborate process and my mother would do it all alone. Along with this around a week before the festival, she would start making “Sakkare Achhu” which was made through a very interesting process. Hot sugar syrup was poured into wooden moulds that would create small sugar sculptures after cooling. Different designs of molds like Gazebo, birds, pots and other intricate shapes. Again quietly made by my mother. I used to be fascinated by this as a child.  

Each festival came with its own unique demands and days before them, there was preparation, discussion and excitement around it. I have come to a point where I do not feel the same about them anymore. They have got reduced to a formality with only some remnants of those feelings. I guess this is an aspect of our lives that will not get carried over to the next generation with similar intensity as our parents. Some of us might probably carry a rudimentary version of it to our next generation. A lot of times I look at it from the perspective of erosion. However I am not sure about how personal and important this departure is for me. If it was important I would have done something about it. I would have wanted to retain those wooden moulds and the way the sugar sculptures were made in my life. While I wish for it, I do not have the energy and motivation to retain things that are eroding away as life transitions from one phase to another. I see the same in a lot of my peers. They have a wish and they do not have the interest in working towards fulfilling them.  

The above sharing was a complete tangent from what I actually wanted to talk about. On that Shankranthi day I happened to notice the Rangoli my mother had put outside my house. It was an intricate design made with two clours – white and red. This was probably the first time in many many years I paused and observed this art made by my mother. She has the practice of doing it every morning outside our house. I just wondered how she seeks absolutely no validation for it. Then I thought about so many households in our country that do rangoli outside their houses every morning without any expectation of validation. It intrigues me to see that such an old artform has survived till today without the support of any substantial validation. I do not know if Rangoli will also successfully make it through to the next generation. I do not know what it says about the times that we are living in. 

P.S:  I passionately seek validation at home for occasionally clearing the garbage or tidying the fridge or the cupboard. 

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