Pongal 'harvest festival' to be celebrated by Indian community throughout the world

KUALA SELANGOR: Pongal is a four-day harvest festival primarily celebrated in Tamil Nadu, a southern state of India and many other parts of the world where the tradition is continued, including in Malaysia.
For as long as people have been planting and gathering food, there has been some form of harvest festival and Pongal is one of the most important and popular Hindu festival of the year.
This four-day festival of thanksgiving to nature takes its name from the Tamil word meaning "to boil" and is held in the month of Thai (January-February) during the season when rice and other cereals, sugar-cane, and turmeric (an essential ingredient in Tamil cooking) are harvested.
Mid-January is an important time in the Tamil calendar. The harvest festival, Pongal, falls typically on the 14th or the 15th of January and is the quintessential "Tamil Festival".
Pongal is therefore a harvest festival, a traditional occasion for giving thanks to nature, for celebrating the life cycles that give us grain.
Tamils say "Thai pirandhaal vazhi pirakkum", (The birth of the Thai month brings good fortune) and believe that knotty family problems will be solved with the advent of the Tamil month Thai that begins on Pongal day.
The very mention of Pongal is not complete without "sweet tasty rice" boiled in a decorated pot and when the cooked rice comes to a boil and spills over the pot, the savoury rice is offered to the "sun god" as an appreciation for the good harvest.
Just like savoury rice, new decorated pots for boiling the rice is a must in every household — rich or poor — and during this auspicious day, the demand for clay pots hits the roof, so to speak.
Though rice cookers, slow cookers, steamers and many other forms of cooking utensils are used for preparing food on the table daily, the arrival of Pongal turns the clock back to the traditional way of cooking rice — thus clay pots and fire wood are a must to boil the rice during Pongal and when speaking of pots, Krishnan Pottery readily comes to everyone's mind.
Krishnan Pottery is living proof that despite modernisation, the demand for traditional and cultural exhibits made of clay like cooking pots, flower pots, vase, water containers are still very much in demand, especially among the Indian community.
A visit to the plant showed heaps of pots lined up to dry, indicating that demand for clay pots remain high, especially with the arrival of Pongal on Jan 14.
Krishnan Pottery is managed by K. Mahavisnoo, 33, a third generation descendant of the family business that has survived the trials and tribulations of modernisation.
"The demand for clay pots increases tremendously during Pongal every year because almost 95% of the Indian community in Malaysia use clay pots to cook the sweet rice.
"We as the manufacturers are indeed grateful and proud to note that Malaysians are still holding on to tradition and culture because my friend in India had recently told me that many among the Indian community in India were using aluminium pots to cook the sweet rice during Pongal," he told Bernama.
Mahavisnoo who inherited the business which his family had started 70 years ago, said he was into the business since the age of 17, adding that his company produced about 35,000 clay pots during the Pongal festival.
"That will not be able to cater for the overall demand because about 200,000 pots are used during the Pongal festival throughout the country. Once the pots are skilfully crafted, they are dried for two days before the designs are added," he said.
Despite the high demand during festive seasons, Mahavisnoo lamented the stiff competition faced by the industry due to the introduction of ceramic products that a blended into clay.
"The introduction of moulds and modern technique has 'drained' the traditional art of making pots using hands. Very few people remain in the industry because there are not many skilled 'pottery' experts," he said.
He added that the younger generation are not keen to venture into such skills or business due to other lucrative offers. — Bernama