(Singing)“We had joy, We had fun We had seasons in the sun”Toastmasters, ladies and gentlemen
When I look back at my child hood all the wonderful memories I have, are centered around one event. That’s none other than, Sri Lankan New Year. Unlike many other countries in Sri Lanka New Year is celebrated in mid April.
This is based on the sun’s motion from the House of Pisces to the Aries signaling the dawn of the new year. This also coincides with the harvest festival. Usually the New Year falls on 14th of April. The month of April is the school vacation and all most all the offices are closed for about 1 week. What makes this New Year so different is that there are set of auspicious times. Every year these lucky times are calculated by the astrologers.
If you go to Sri Lanka in April you would here the blasting of crackers so loud, people fire crackers at each auspicious time and in general in April. You know the new year is coming when your dogs are crouching under the beds, scared of crackers and wouldn’t come out until the end of April
In Sri Lanka there is an exact time to end the previous year and a specific time to start the new year. Strangely there is nearly 5 or 6 hours gap between these two times. So the time between the last year and the new year is called “nonagathaya” which means neutral time. This time period is considered as an evil time period and therefore people don’t do any important work during this period. Which means no cooking at houses, no visiting other houses, no shopping basically nothing. During this time people try to engage themselves in religious activities by visiting temples.
Out of all the auspicious time the first one is the one for cooking. When the time arrives the bells starts to ring in temples and the crackers are blasting and in every house of the country mothers switch on the fire of the cooker at the same time and what do they all cook? they all cook milk rice which is considered as a very auspicious dish in Sri Lanka.
Then after few hours comes the auspicious time to eat, and to start work. The dining tables get filled with all the delicious Sri lankan sweets and other dishes which are only made during the New year season. New year is a good excuse to eat all your favorite food. Usually the father will feed everyone their first bite of the year. Here you will see my dad feeding my little nephew. The amazing thing about these rituals is that the whole country is doing the same thing at the same time. Which make you feel united or connected in some way.
For me the most joyous part comes right after this auspicious time. Every year after we take the meal we would go to our grandma’s house. I’m blessed with a huge family with many aunts, uncles and 20 cousins. You can see a picture of all of us together
At my grandma’s place on New Year’s Day we get the blessing of adults. How do we do that? We worship all the relatives who are elder to us even in one year. In return you get a hug, a gift and sometimes even money. Talking about money there is a special game we play with the cousins at this time of the year. It’s a betting game we play with money using a dice. With this My grandma’s place turn out to be a small casino. Of course adults would turn a blind eye because new year comes just once a year. In the afternoon the whole family will divide in to two groups and play cricket in the garden. As u can see in the picture, I’m not very good at it. At night we always have a fireworks show where we have loads of fun together.
Then after few hours comes the auspicious time to eat, and to start work. The dining tables get filled with all the delicious Sri lankan sweets and other dishes which are only made during the New year season. New year is a good excuse to eat all your favorite food. Usually the father will feed everyone their first bite of the year. Here you will see my dad feeding my little nephew. The amazing thing about these rituals is that the whole country is doing the same thing at the same time. Which make you feel united or connected in some way.
For me the most joyous part comes right after this auspicious time. Every year after we take the meal we would go to our grandma’s house. I’m blessed with a huge family with many aunts, uncles and 20 cousins. You can see a picture of all of us together
At my grandma’s place on New Year’s Day we get the blessing of adults. How do we do that? We worship all the relatives who are elder to us even in one year. In return you get a hug, a gift and sometimes even money. Talking about money there is a special game we play with the cousins at this time of the year. It’s a betting game we play with money using a dice. With this My grandma’s place turn out to be a small casino. Of course adults would turn a blind eye because new year comes just once a year. In the afternoon the whole family will divide in to two groups and play cricket in the garden. As u can see in the picture, I’m not very good at it. At night we always have a fireworks show where we have loads of fun together.
This is just the beginning of the new year. Next day all of us would go to my uncles holiday resort and we have a new year sports festival there. There are many traditional games as you can see in the pictures. On this day comes the next auspicious time to apply herbal oil on our hair. My grandma would apply herbal oil on everyone’s head at the time. For us the most important part is the swimming pool in the resort. We would spend more than 8 hours in the pool playing various water games.
On 3rd day after the new year. All of our cousins would go on a trip sometimes with parents and sometimes without parents. We all had the most joyful time on these trips.
Usually four days after the newyear comes the last auspicious time. It’s the time to go back to work marking the end of the new-year. As always every good thing comes to an end. It basically kills me to stay away from my family during this new year season knowing what a load of fun I’m missing here. Therefore we had a small party at our place on the new year’s day in Japan with some of our Sri Lankan friends. I cooked milk rice at the same time as my mom cooked in Sri Lanka and we ate at the same time watching my family eating the New Year meal via skype.
As a kid for me that season was all about heavenly food and having a good time with my best buddies.
Time is flowing by and lot of things change but only thing that will not change is how much those memories would mean to me. In fact, they become sweeter with time. I might not be a part of my family tradition anymore but what is important is building our own family traditions. So as they say, “best is yet to come”
