ANNAKUT - Mountain of Food

Today we had Annakut celebrations at home. The whole community of friends and relatives eagerly wait for this puja at our home. Annakut is celebrated on the 1st day of Gujarati new year and also called Bestu Varsh. The day as per Hindu calender of the Vikram era is Kartik sud 1. As Hindu year comes to an end, families come together to celebrate one of the most sacred and important festivals, Diwali. Traditionally this time of the year also coincides with the completion of the harvest. Young and old join together to collect God's harvest of bountiful blessings. As an offering of gratitude to God for his blessings, the new harvest is first used to cook exquisite foods for the Lord. Since may be more than hundred years Annakut is celebrated at our home. We have almost 150 odd close friends over for Prayers and then to take prasad(meal). It is said the 56 delicacies are made but if I am not wrong almost 75 odd things are cooked and everything is home cooked. And all those who have enjoyed this delicacies over the years can vouch that all the food cooked is delicious and tasty. All the food cooked is placed before the God and a mound of cooked rice, symbolic of Mt. Govardhan, is placed in the center. Everybody then sings prayers and kirtan praying to God to accept them. This lasts for almost two hours and then this sanctified prasad(food) is eaten by all the devotees. The amount of work that goes into making all the food and then serving to everyone makes me wonder how God gives us all the energy to do this. By the end of the day every one is just plain tired like hell.

There are three different versions as to why we celebrate Annakut. The first story goes that on this day Lord Baman asked King Bali for three strides of Land and King Bali pleased Lord BamanBamanji gave him a boon that this day will be remembered as Balipratipadaa.
The second story goes that because this is when all harvesting is completed and all food grains are bought home people used to pray to Lord Indra - the God of rains for being kind to them and giving them enough rains during the monsoon because of which they had a good crop. God Krishna didn't appreciate the idea of praying to Lord Indra as he believed that this was because of men's hard work in the field and there was no need to please Lord Indra. Upset at this Lord Indra had flooded with rains Gokul to destroy it. God Krishna then lifted Mount Goverdhan on his smallest finger to protect everyone from the heavy rains. The underlying sentiment of this episode is that mundane factors such as house, wealth, mountain, trees or earth, in themselves do not have the power to protect us. Only the Lord Purushottam has the power to deliver us. Relative to His powers, that of the lesser deities pale into insignificance. Therefore it is better to accept 'sharnagati' (refuge) of the Lord Supreme and offer Him pujan. Over the ages, these sentiments have been consolidated by offering Govardhan puja. This is also known as 'Annakut', 'Anna' meaning food and 'kut', mountain.
The third story goes that this 1st day of the year represents the day of happiness and joy. Lord Ved Vyas tells King Yudhisthir 'O Yudhishthir, on this day of 'Padvo' (first day), the person who remains joyous will experience happiness throughout the year. The one who wastes it miserably, will experience misery during the year.'

What ever be the logic behind this but we in the family enjoy each moment of this and its really so heartening to see grand mom at 80 or Divyansh at 12 serving each and every guest with so much of respect and love the delicious prasad.

Well the night before we celebrated Diwali with great pomp. It was all festivities , lights and firecrackers. Minoo lead in decorating the home beautifully and she has matured so much over the years in taking care of our rich traditions that I feel proud of her. Some pictures of firecrackers and Diwali lighting and lamps can be seen at my flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandeep40/.

Shortly I will upload couple of videos on youtube and send the link for you to enjoy with us in our happy moments.

An Update

Its been quiet some time I have written anything.  This write up is just an update to what has happened over the last few weeks before I get back to regular writing.

Health has been not good. I am under regular physiotherapy. There is a general weekness and pain in the left leg and knee. The body is stiff overall. Its difficult to run and bend while playing Tennis but I am regular though I am loosing most of the time. I am proud of my partner Manish who though we loose keeps motivating me and is never upset. By the way we won last Sunday a triangular tournament, so not bad.  I am also doing a weight loss program and hope to loose the extra five kgs that I have. 

Sameep has moved on in his life. He is now at Pune for his higher studies. He got admission in Symboisis college.  Living away from the comforts and security of home should make him more responsible. He is intelligent enough to undersatnd whats good and bad in life and I am sure would make good use of the exposure he is going to get over over the next 5-7 years in higher studies.  At this time he is home for Diwali break.

Priya, my secretary has left job as she is getting married and moving to a different city. She was a great help in managing my job. I still recollect when I had to go to the Licensing Authority to sign for my arms license renewal - the clerk there told her that "Madam,  Look,I have done your job without any hassle, she replied back," Its good for you, you did it otherwise you would have invited trouble for yourself". I wish her all the best in her married life.

I had an opportunity to go and visit the Taj mahal couple of weeks back when a good friend of mine was here from Finland. The last I visited Taj was in 1994 and it really a beauty. Check out some of the pics at my flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandeep40/ . But the most unfortunate thing there is the Touts and all the small time sellers who just bother you so much specially when they see a foreigner , you feel embarassed and bad. Taj is the biggest tourist attraction in this country and if we can not have good management there, its a shame. 

The world is going through one of its worst financial phase. The whole system is on a weak platform. God knows, who is accountable for this but its gonna bring lot of suffering to the masses.  If I look at this as a layman I have seen in my life time a socialist country like USSR collapse and complete failure of capitalistic free market economy like USA. I think India on the middle path is strong fundamentally - we neither grow vertically nor crash. If only we had no corruption.......I recollect our late Prime MinisterRajiv Gandhi once acknowledging that only 10% reaches the benificiary from what the Government spends rest is eaten away by sharks. I hate this - at least we the so called civilised educated people of this country should do what ever to stop something like this taking place if we come to know.

I think I would be regular now back to my own self. Diwali is round the corner. Its a great celebration time and on all such occassions I miss Babuji.