By IANS
Kuala Lumpur : The Indian festival, Pongal, was celebrated across Malaysia with traditional fervour Tuesday. Tamils across the country boiled milk in the traditional manner and held feasts – either in their homes or in the community centres.
Media reports quoted family heads saying they enjoyed the celebrations and hoped to pass on the tradition to their children.
Pongal is a harvest festival celebrated by Tamil farmers in India to mark the beginning of the auspicious month of Thai on the Tamil calendar and is celebrated for three days, usually between Jan 13 and Jan 16 every year.
Wednesday is “mattu pongal”, where cows are blessed, decorated and given a day’s rest as a gesture of appreciation. Thursday is “kanni pongal” where single girls perform rituals in the hope of getting a good husband.
In Kuala Lumpur, the “muhibbah” spirit was evident at the national Pongal festival Tuesday with participants from different races as well as foreigners joining the celebrations, The Star newspaper reported.
“I am excited about Pongal and decided to stir the pot myself as I wanted to know how the rice is cooked,” college student Siti Nurfariza Muhd Hamdan, 20, said at Menara in Kuala Lumpur, where the celebrations were held.
Organising chairman P. Kamalanathan said this year’s celebration was themed “preserving unity through traditional values”. He added that some 150 pongal pots and various ingredients were provided for participants to cook the traditional milk rice.