No money, no purchase, it is a dry Sankranthi this year!

 

In Karnataka, a day before Sankranthi, all the roads would be blocked as people would be on the streets buying things for the festival. New dresses for the children and elders, pooja items, sweets, flowers, fruits and especially sesame and sugarcane were brought on the eve of Sankranthi.

 

This year, the small scale vendors were seen waiting for the people as there were only handful of people buying things for the festival. Most of them who came out for purchasing were trying to use their cash only on most essential things, leaving the vendors in tears.

 

Sankranthi also known as Makara Sankranthi is celebrated throughout the Karnataka as the Suggi festival or the harvest festival. As agriculture is important for most of the people in the state, tools used in the farming are cleaned, washed and worshipped. The cows are given a bath, decorated with colour papers are given their favourite food and are worshipped.

 

The children in the family wear new dresses and go to their neighbours' houses with a basket or pack of sesame seeds mixed with jaggery, and a kind of pulse; a piece of sugarcane and small packets of kumkum and turmeric, wishing everyone prosperity and as a mark of good relations with others.

 

This year, as there was not much rush for purchase, the festival of prosperity will be a low key affair. All this because of the cash crunch created by demonetisation. The ATMs continue to run without cash and one cannot do much with the limit of ₹4,000 withdrawal.

 

Sankranthi is celebrated with various names throughout India:

•    Makar Sankranti is celebrated in Chhattisgarh, Goa, Odisha, Haryana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Jammu

•    Thai Pongal or Uzhavar Thirunal in Tamil Nadu

•    Uttarayan in Gujarat

•    Maghi in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab.

•    Bhogali Bihu in Assam

•    Shishur Saenkraat in Kashmir Valley

•    Khichdi in Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar

•    Poush Sangkranti in West Bengal