Makara Sankranti and its Significance in India

Happy Makara Sankranti to all my Telugu friends, Happy Pongal to my Tamil friends. May you all have the best of the harvest in the coming year - of meeting your personal and family goals, and successes and joys. Even though all in my family get our status and livelihood from service economy activities - Sankranti is one festival we treasure coming together. There is something of this agricultura...l festival thats pure joy and bliss to us - something thats closer to our family roots and rich heritage and culture. Love the Rangoli, the kites, the sonorous sounds of Haridasu, the salutation to the only God who goes "live" - Sun God - for a bountiful year of crops, the assortment of dishes for Sankranti, the sweet dishes, the Bommala Koluvu, the Kanuma and the Bhogi festivals, the usage of cowdung with both hands as an anti-pollutant, the reverberations on top of the terraces with mike boxes and latest songs amidst "Kaate" and "other sirens", the new clothes, the exhibition or fairs and site seeing with the biggest gang of cousins and elders and brothers-in-law, the new movies, the works... Except for the last two generations, my family has always been agrarian in its pursuit of economic activities - but Sankranti is an annual reminder of where we come from and where we finally belong to. We may be a remittance economy and a tertiary superpower, but Sankranti is a pure lifestyle-charging festival thats a package of many worlds in three days. No wonder, Andhra Pradesh which comes alphabetically first in every listing - never mind the boos for the time being- sees a bird-migration of sorts where folks everywhere go back to their villages for 3 days. In Hyderabad alone, it is rare to see a "bird migration" of almost a crore. I hope and pray nothing in the world can take away the pleasures of celebrating this unique lifestyle festival with a God that we see everyday - Sun. And to top it all with the movies. The Sun transits every month into a new Zodiac sign but its transit into the Northern hemisphere is always an auspicious beginning and a special moment in a year - a sign of things waiting to get into momentum mode, to get serious, to wake up and smell the coffee. I hope the same momentum is gathered and seen by everybody who believes in this festival and even by those who do not believe in this festival.