Year of the Male Iron Tiger

Okay, so most of you were busy with your Valentine's Day stuff, I'm sure. How could you miss it!

While the major portion of the Indian Television time was taken up with the re-hashing of the Pune blasts, there was some space given to the Great Indian Preoccupation with Valentine's Day.

I remember a time when the local card store owner went "huh???" when we asked for Valentine Day cards. This was as recent as 1986. Our generation would get creative with 'All Occasion' cards.

And then came the Satellite TV invasion.

MTV suddenly began singing and dancing in Hindi, and ARCHIES came up with a dozen frothy reasons to sell merchandise.

I would think that North Indians had their own Valentine's day ... The one where married females starve themselves and turn hungry eyes to the moon .. It's called Karva Chauth, and in translation it sounds a lot like Bitter Fourth - but let's leave it at that.

I'm peeved because as a person from the Hills of the North East, there was a rather important even celebrated on the Fourteenth of Feb this year - one that's far more interesting than luke warm Valentine's Day , and it has a lot of great food linked to it as well. I'm talking about Losar -- being celebrated with such gusto in my native Sikkim, while every dhobi and his donkey in Bihar was braying about 'Bhalentine's Divas'.

Losar is the Tibetan New Year, and this year it's the Year of the Male Iron Tiger. The Chinese New Year falls on the same day as the Tibetan one.The word of Losar is a Tibetan word which means New Year. The word is composed of two characters: LO and Sar. Lo means Year and Sar means New.

The celebration of Losar can be traced back to Tibetan pre-Buddhist period. At that time, Tibetans were followers of the Bon religion, and held a spiritual ceremony every winter! Well, it's the time where we relish Gyathuk, and lots of Chhang. I should have been in Bodh Gaya today...  That's a part of Bihar which would have seen some great celebrations.

 

In years gone by, certain streets in Calcutta would come alive with the Indian Chinese community celebrating the New Year in a big way! There's nothing to beat the 108 dish banquet that affluent Chinese people serve!

 

Anyway, my celebrations in Patna were very low key, and my neighbours must have been thankful!