JOIN USFresh flavours to savour
Food is also an important part of the festival and heralds a new beginning in its own way.
Having Ugadi pachchadi or bevu-bella, a mixture of different tastes dominated by sweet and bitter taste, is one of the main customs of this festival. All the ingredients used in pachchadi are the fresh yields of the season. This is also the season for mangoes and neem and tamarind trees are in full blossom. Farmers extract jaggery from sugarcane crops at this time. When all these six ingredients are mixed, the pachchadi is ready to savour. But people of different region prepare pachchadi in different forms like sauce, paste and powder.
Apart from the traditional bevu-bella, Ugadi also offers delicacies like obbattu, puliogare, ‘mango rice’, ‘coconut milk kheer’ and channa usli. Obbattu or Holige, as it is popularly called in many parts of Karnataka, is the main sweet item of the festival. It is prepared both in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. “In Andhra, we call it Bobbatlu and it is thicker than Holige. We also prepare nippattu, pulihora and khara mixture. For lunch, we prepare many other items using raw mango. Though I have been staying in Bangalore for the last 10 years, Ugadi is always celebrated at home in traditional Andhra style,” says Shubhanghana, a housewife.
Maharashtrians, who celebrate Ugadi, in the name of Gudi Padwa gorge on sannas, a sweet item made of steamed rice and coconut bread, srikhand and poori. In Karnataka also, people from different regions like North Karnataka, Mysore and coastal areas have their own ways of celebrating the fest and recipe of the day varies with each region.
Of late, especially in cities, the customary rituals that go with the festivals have undergone change. Not all, especially those who work in the private sector, get a holiday on Ugadi. And people also find it difficult to prepare holige at home. So in many houses, traditional Ugadi food is replaced by easy to prepare delicacies like gulab jamun and kheer. “For a single woman, preparing obbattu will be an arduous task. Earlier, all of us, cousins and sisters used to meet at one place and prepare it. Now as my children don’t like it much, I make a dish of their choice like burfi, fruit salad or chiroti,” says Rajatha, a housewife. Though delicacies differ from region to region, Ugadi is all about celebrating the new beginning and accepting the different experiences of life with equanimity.