Sunday 15th January 2023

Today was a very special day - probably the day that I have enjoyed most so far. I was up at 06:00 and left the Guest House at 06:30 to walk through Norwood and on to Daya's house. It was like a ghost town, apart from a few women creating beautiful street patterns for Pongal, and a man feeding pigeons. I took the most beautiful photograph on my way to Daya's, which will be my first photo today, and one that will stay in my memory for a long time.

I arrived at Daya's at 07:00, as promised and his aunt already had the Pongal celebrations underway and had got a fire going in the front of the house to cook on. She was cooking the main food, also called pongal, which is like a sweet, sticky rice pudding, although other foods were arranged on the celebration table too, as Pongal is, in effect, as sort of Harvest Festival, to show gratitude for a successful harvest.

Ragu drew a rather intricate street pattern, but his was left white, with a flower at the centre of it, as different Tamil groups have slightly different traditions when it comes to these drawings. By mid-morning, the ceremonies were completed, and we all went down to the recreation ground then, where there were a variety of family activities arranged to celebrate Thai Pongal Day, including a football tournament, which was clearly the highlight of the day.

As the final of the football tournament was played as the sun was going down, the presentation of cups and trophies for the day took place in the dark, so it was almost 19:30 by the time we got back to Daya's place, and it made a lot more sense to stay at the Guest House for one more night, especially as we were told mid-way through the afternoon that we had to go on a special mission to Maskeliya the next day to pick up a cake for someone's birthday!

Today's photographs will just consist of my early morning walk to Daya's. I will save the others for tomorrow (and even Monday), as I took so many photographs over what turned out to be a very exciting weekend.