Fairs & Festival |
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| Baisakhi |
Highlights: Visit Punjab during Baisakhi to see the land of turbaned-warriors in their gay abandon! Watch dance performances, try different lip-smacking cuisine, tour villages and mustard harvests and leave with memories, more colourful than you had expected!
Significance: Baisakhi is a harvest festival celebrated in North India, especially in Punjab and Haryana, when the rabi crop is ready for harvesting. It holds significance for the Sikhs as the day when their tenth Guru Gobind Singh organised the order of the Khalsa, their religion. It is also believed that Gautam Buddha attained Nirvana on this day. Based on the Indian solar calendar, this festival falls on April 13 every year and on April 14 once every 36 years.
The Festival
The Festival is celebrated throughout North India, but the best spectacle can be had if you visit Punjab. Traditional dance forms like Bhangra and Gidda, sprightly and energetic, turn the festival into a carnival of sorts.
Baisakhi is basically a farmer?s festival and prayers are offered at temples and Gurudwaras for good harvest. Baisakhi corresponds many festivities around the nation - in Bengal it is Naba Barsha (New Year), in Assam it is Bihu, in Tamil Nadu it is Puthandu and in Kerala it is celebrated as Vishu. Other North Indian states like Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal also celebrate their own forms of Baisakhi. |
| Diwali |
Highlights: Come, be a part of India?s most fascinating event ? Diwali or the Festival of Lights when the entire nation, villages and cities alike, gets transformed into a speckled carpet of sorts, with oil lamps, electric lights, candles, fire crackers contrasting against the darkness around!
Significance: Like Holi, Diwali or Deepavali ? the Festival of Lights ? is celebrated all over India every October/November. Diwali is basically a religious event celebrated by the followers of Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism, believed to rejoice the return of Shri Ramchandra, an iconic King from the Ramayana, with his wife ? Sita mata, after defeating Ravana of Lanka. Though India is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation Diwali is celebrated by the entire nation irrespective of faith.
The Festival
Diwali or Deepavali is celebrated 20 days after Dussera and it marks the triumph of ?Good? over ?Evil?, of ?Light? over ?Darkness? represented by the lighting of diyas, firecrackers, decorating the homes with lights and rangolis (flower/colour carpets). People buy, distribute new clothes, gift items, sweets, firecrackers, clean and paint their houses and what not!
Though the basic festivities remain the same, it is blended in regional flavours. In South India, they light firecrackers at the dawn of the naraka chaturdashii. In North India, Diwali is celebrated on Lakshmi Puja. It is a ?No Moon? evening or Amavasya ? just the perfect contrast to make the vista of artificial lights and firecrackers even more charismatic. |
| Kumbh Mela |
Highlights: The Kumbh Mela, held every 12 years, is perhaps world?s biggest religious gathering and the most sacred of all Hindu festivals. It attracts devotees from across the globe, especially the naked sadhus or nagas of militant Hindu monastic order.
Significance: Mythology has it that the gods and the demons once fought the battle for a kumbh (pot) of amrit (nectar of immortality). The battle lasted for 12 years and during the battle, drops of amrit fell at Prayag, Nasik, Ujjain and Haridwar. These became the sites for hosting the Kumbh Mela every 12 years. According to astrologers, the Kumbh Mela takes place when the planet Jupiter enters Aquarius and the Sun enters Aries. Every six years, Prayag, in Allahabad, hosts the Ardha (Half) Kumbh Mela and the dates are declared according to the astrological predictions.
The Festivals
The Kumbh Mela, though basically a Hindu festival, transgresses the binds of religion by attracting millions of devotees of almost every caste, creed and culture. The trend is believed to have been started by King Harshvardhana of Ujjain who made lavish donations to the poor and the holy men of all religions during this fair. The four locations of the Kumbh Mela are:
1. Prayag, near the city of Allahabad (in Uttar Pradesh), at the confluence of three holy rivers Ganga (Ganges), Yamuna and Saraswati.
2. Haridwar (in the state of Uttranchal), at the spot where the river Ganga enters the plains from Himalayas
3. Ujjain (in Madhya Pradesh), on the banks of Ksipra river
4. Nasik (in Maharashtra) on the banks of Godavari river
The event begins with a ritual bath in the holy river at a predetermined time, followed by devotional singing, religious discussions where doctrines are debated, mass-feeding of the devotees and the poor people and so on.
Mark Twain?s 1895 visit of the Kumbh Mela made him quote the following citation:
"It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites."
Mark Tully?s No Full Stops in India ? a book that delves into the political significance of the Kumbh Mela of Allahabad, samples a fine read for reference. |
| Pushkar Fair |
Highlights: Auction of some 50,000 camels make the Pushkar Mela Asia?s largest cattle Fair and one of India?s most visited event attended by up to 2 lakh visitors from around the globe. Camel-judging contests, hot-air ballooning, horse dealing, folk festivities, meditating sadhus create excellent vistas, best captured in film.
Significance: The Pushkar Fair, held every November, is India?s largest livestock trading festival. Hindus believe that taking a dip in the Pushkar Lake during the Pushkar Mela cleanses the sins of the previous and the present birth.
The Festival
Pushkar, with world?s only Brahma Temple, is a renowned Hindu pilgrimage site in Rajasthan. Pilgrims do not come back without taking a dip in the holy Pushkar Lake. The Pushkar Fair turns this small tourist hamlet into a colourful sea of human beings and livestock, which include traders, musicians, mystics, tourists, folk performers, devotees and what not. The Rajasthan Tourism Corporation sets up tourist information camps from where the schedule of cultural activities can be had. Seemingly, the event reminisces a carnival, but for livestock traders this event is much awaited for business purposes. |
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