Pongal

Pongal (

The harvest festival for rural Pondicherrians. Houses are spring-cleaned and adorned with intricate, colourful patterns. Old clothes and mats are ritually burnt. The mouth-watering Pongal dish is a pot-pourri of rice, jaggery, sugar and raisins, served in new pots. Interestingly, herds of cattle are washed, decorated their horns painted and fed the Pongal dish. People dress up and visit each other. There is no busier day in the Park or the Beach Road