Today, January 14, the sun begins its northbound journey and enters into the sign of Makar (Capricorn). A particularly auspicious day for festivals in India.

In the South, in Tamilnadu and parts of Kerala, this is the time for Ponggal - and in the North, for the harvest festival of Makar Sankranti.

In Bihar, where Makar Sankranti is a key day on the festival calender, the harvest festival is an amazingly colourful spectacle - most of all in the areas along the Ganges River, in the State Capital Patna (Pataliputra), and in Rajgir and its environs.

At the first signs of daylight, men, women and children proceed to the banks of any strectch of water - be it a tank, a baoli, a lake, a reservoir or a river, but of course nothing matches the sanctity of Mother Ganga. Dipping in the cool water is essential: it cleans and purifies both body and soul, before addressing the Sun with prayers and pooja (offerings).

Next, donations are given to the poor and needy: rice, corn, clothes. Who gives and who receives? - Hard to tell, really. What an European would consider to be a state of poverty and need, can quite often still be seen as a certain degree of wealth in India. Therefore, those who one would expect to be at the receiving end, might very well turn up at the provider's side. But whoever does what, next to the embankments, hundreds of homeless, destitute, widows and beggars are waiting in line to take part in the feast.

The rest of the day is spent in a leisurely way, though there certainly is no lack of further excitement. At home, the women prepare a special festival dish called Til Papdi, which is a kind of sweetmeat very similar to laddoos, prepared with sesame seeds and sugar. Chura, tilkut and khichri complete the menu.

Meanwhile, folks are outside, flying kites, either from open grounds or from rooftops. Kites are made of simple coloured paper, which is glued on a light frame of wooden twigs. With layers of hot and cool air covering the landscape like a pile of blankets made from different fabrics, there need not be any wind at all to fly a kite. The ropes are dressed with glass, which makes them sharp as the sharpest knife, and in the process of flying your kite, you would be trying to cut the rope of another one, thus sending it upwards, seemingly forlorn, heading for the Sun as it were, as if it would be an offering to the Gods.

In the evening, the family proceeds to the nearest Shiv Mandir, lighting lamps of sesame oil as a dedication to Lord Shiva.

I have witnessed the Bihari Makar Sankranti many times over the last twenty-or-so years - and I have so many special memories of the families I lived with and the mothers offering me festival food and the children dragging me along to the roof to fly kites, that I cannot help, at every Makar Sankranti day, every year, to spend my day in dreaming and enjoying - wherever I happen to be in the world at the moment.

For - not every piece of news coming from Bihar needs to be drowsed in misery and suffering, or does it?

Therefore: From the Anand community, to all our dear friends in Bihar: Makar Sankranti Mubarak!

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