As Pakistan marches to modern time, the

winter festival of Lohri falls off the calendar

Haroon KhalidUpdated January 21, 2017

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Winters can be quite miserable in Lahore. For about a month,

starting from the middle of December to the mid of January, the
sun remains hidden behind a thick blanket of smog. In the night,
traffic comes to a complete halt as the city is embraced by the cloak
of fog.
For a city that in the summers almost touches 50 Celsius followed by a
dragged and taxing humid monsoon, the cool respite has its romantic charms
– tava machli, dry fruit and gajjar ka halwa. Grouped around the glow of the
gas heater, covered in thick blankets, my entire family used to savor these
winter delights.

But then under the “economic boom” of Pervez Musharraf, thousands of CNG
gas stations were given permission to open up all over the country seriously
affecting the gas supply to households especially during winters when there is
a higher demand. With no warm water and heater, and no sun in the day, all
idealised notions of winters quickly faded away.

According to the Gregorian calendar, winters in the Punjab begin from end of
October and finish around the mid of February. But the Gregorian calendars
can be misleading.
ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD

Designed for a different culture with different climates, imposed upon us by

the colonial administration, the calendar fails to capture the nuances of the
weather in this part of the world. So does the traditional divisions of weather
into four seasons.

Any resident of Punjab would be able to identify the differences in the summer
of June and July, with August. Both are intense and grueling yet in their own
idiosyncratic manner.

From the mid of May to the mid of July are the months of Jeth and Harh,
according to the Punjabi calendar, when the temperature reaches its peak with
sun blazing from the sky, blinding in its heat.
In August, the air is loaded with humidity, weighing heavily on the surface,
even if the temperatures are temperate. It is narrated that after a long spell of
summers the Punjabis are on the verge of losing their minds in this season,
referred to as the month of Bhadon. Even the donkey, who, it is said, doesn’t
mind the heat of the former two months, seeks shade in this season.

There is then this subtle change of season sometime in the middle of

September, when the shade is pleasant but direct heat still exhausting. That is
how the month of Assu is described.

Sawan rain
Another peculiarity is that of Sawan. Even if it doesn’t rain throughout the
month of Harh, which begins from June 15 and finishes on July 15, Punjabis
believe that it will rain on the 1st of Sawan the next month, the month that
lends the monsoon, a distinct season in South Asia, its name. Last year, it
rained on the 1st of Sawan.

If one is to continue accepting the testimony of the Gregorian calendar and the
British-imposed seasons then it could be believed that these winters will
continue through January, ending sometime around the start of February. The
word winter, and even the dates of the month however would fail to recognise
the slight change in weather that would begin from January 13, starting the
month of Magh.

Traditionally if it didn’t rain, this month marked the end of the intense spell of
winter. For many years, now that I have begun noticing, in Lahore, it is around
this time that the sun finally emerges from its hiding.
On the night of January 13, as one month ends and the other begins, from Poh
to Magh, Punjabis celebrate the festival of Lohri, one of the most important
seasonal festivals of the year, a festival that has died in the land of its birth.

Every year on this night, the entire village used to gather at the village centre,
circling around a bonfire. Eating seasonal dry fruit and sharing folk tales and
stories, they would cast the shells of the dry fruit into the fire. Little children
would run from one house to another, similar to Halloween, gathering sweets,
referred to as Lohri, while womenfolk would cook kheer.

This kheer would then be placed somewhere outside where it would cool the
entire night. Early in the morning as the sun of a new season began to rise and
the fire of the night passed out, the villagers would perform ashnan at the
village pool and eat their kheer.

Colonial representations
Not long after, at the end of this month and the beginning of the month of
Phagun (mid-February), the splendid festival of Basant used to be celebrated
in Lahore, before it fell victim to the puritanical brigade.

Two months later on the 1st of Vaisakh, Punjabis would once again resort to
dancing and singing, celebrating the season of Baisakhi, the beginning of
harvest.

Every year the seasons come and go, unnoticed. The desi calendar that
encapsulated the essence of seasons has been lost, as Punjab today rushes
towards modernisation. The colonial legacy of enforcing its own reality and
categories has taken root.

Only the “uneducated” in Punjab today can name these calendars and the
corresponding seasons they represent. For the “educated”, there is only
winter, spring, summer, and autumn, cut-off as they are, from a reality,
oblivious to them, as they are oblivious to their language and the past
experiences that it has captured.

Knowledge only of colonial representation of weather and its months renders

it irrelevant for the “educated” to note the difference between Poh and Magh,
or Bhadon and Assu.

As if this was not enough, further damage was wrought by the paranoia of a
new ideological state, that felt insecure with everything that had not been
Arabised.

Traditional festivals that marked these slight changes in the weather were
slowly either forgotten or banned, in an attempt to purify the land. These
festivals, the last vestige of these diverse seasons were also eventually
forgotten.

Alas, Punjab, the land of 12 seasons is now only left with four seasons. Lohri
will come and go, unnoticed in the land of origin, as will Basant and then
Baisakhi.

This article was originally published on Scroll and has been reproduced with
permission.

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Haroon Khalid has an academic background in anthropology from Lums. He has been travelling extensively
around Pakistan, documenting historical and cultural heritage. He is the author of four books — Imagining
Lahore, Walking with Nanak, In Search of Shiva and A White Trail.