One Transit, Many Festivals

The sun's entry into Makara is a single astronomical instant observed across India, and what happens on it looks entirely different depending on where you are.

• Punjab keeps Lohri on the evening before, around a bonfire, with sesame, jaggery, popcorn and peanuts thrown into it, and songs about Dulla Bhatti. The following day is Maghi, which for Sikhs carries the memory of the forty at Muktsar.
• Assam keeps Magh Bihu, or Bhogali Bihu, the festival of feasting: temporary huts of bamboo and thatch built and burnt, buffalo fights in some districts, and an enormous amount of food.
• Gujarat keeps Uttarayan by flying kites from every roof in Ahmedabad from dawn, with a second round of lantern kites after dark.
• Tamil Nadu keeps Thai Pongal, four days built around rice boiling over in a new pot.
• Bengal keeps Poush Sankranti with rice-flour pithe, and a large bathing fair at Gangasagar where the river meets the sea.
• Karnataka keeps Sankranthi with ellu bella, a mixture of sesame, jaggery, groundnut and coconut, exchanged with the line asking the recipient to take it and speak sweetly.
• Maharashtra exchanges tilgul laddus with the same sentiment, and married women hold haldi-kunku gatherings.
• Uttar Pradesh keeps Khichdi, and the Magh Mela at Prayagraj takes its largest bathe of the year on this morning.

Calling all of this one festival is defensible only at the level of the astronomy. The bonfire in Punjab and the kites in Gujarat are not variants of a common rite; they are separate observances that happen to be triggered by the same position of the sun.