On January 14, as Makar Sankranti and Pongal are celebrated across India, kitchens turn into sites of ritual and remembrance. From sweet pongal and tilgul to peethey pancakes and khichdi, harvest foods across regions reflect local ecologies, agriculture, seasonal wisdom, and shared dreams of abundance.
Long before calendars were standardised, the Indian subcontinent marked time by watching crops ripen, and harvest festivals emerged as some of its oldest and most enduring social rituals. Rooted in the agrarian way of life, these celebrations coincided with solar transitions, seasonal shifts, and the completion of the agricultural cycle — moments when communities paused to give thanks for rain, soil, sun, labour, and the reaping. From references in early Sangam poetry to Vedic hymns and regional folk traditions, harvest festivals have historically blended cosmology with everyday survival, linking celestial movement to life on the ground.
Over centuries, as climates, crops, and cultures changed, these festivals took on local names and customs, but their core impulse remained the same: acknowledging abundance, reinforcing community bonds, and redistributing food. Whether observed as Pongal, Makar Sankranti, Magh Bihu, or Lohri, harvest festivals across India continue to reflect a deeply ecological and collective worldview — one in which food is not just sustenance, but a shared expression of gratitude and continuity.
In Tamil Nadu, the Pongal festival is inseparable from the eponymous dish. Newly harvested rice is boiled with milk and jaggery until it spills over — an auspicious sign of abundance — before being tempered with ghee, cashews, and cardamom to make sweet pongal or sakkarai pongal while savoury ven pongal, made with rice and lentils, black pepper, cumin, and curry leaves, anchors festive breakfasts served on banana leaves.
Neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Telangana celebrate the occasion over multiple days, marked by elaborate meals. Sesame seeds and jaggery dominate the table — with ariselu, or sweet jaggery and rice flour pancakes, and sakinalu, or deep-fried savoury rice flour rings — symbolising warmth and sweetness during the winter months. These foods are exchanged between families, reinforcing social ties across seasonal cycles.
In Karnataka, the festival is known for ellu bella: a mix of sesame seeds, jaggery, peanuts, dried coconut, and sugar candy. The phrase “ellu bella thindu, olle mathadi” — meaning “eat sesame and jaggery, speak good words” — captures how food becomes moral instruction, urging sweetness in speech and conduct.
Travel east and the flavours shift. Magh Bihu in Assam and Makar Sankranti in Bengal is incomplete without sweet pitha or peethay — rice flour pancakes and dumplings steamed, fried, or stuffed with jaggery and coconut. Made from freshly harvested rice, these dishes speak directly to agrarian rhythms. In Bihar and Jharkhand, dahi-chura — flattened rice with curd — paired with jaggery and seasonal vegetables is eaten at dawn, powering days of celebration.
Northern India marks the harvest season with foods that fend off winter’s bite. In Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, sesame or til laddoos and rewri dominate, prized for their warming properties. Punjab celebrates Lohri a day earlier, with communal fires and plates of peanuts, popcorn, and sugarcane, followed by hearty winter meals of makki di roti (maize flour flatbreads) and sarson da saag (mustard greens).
In Gujarat and Maharashtra, Uttarayan is sweetened with tilgul or sesame-jaggery confections shared with the saying, “tilgul ghya, god god bola”, meaning “take sesame and jaggery (tilgul), and speak sweetly” in Marathi, echoing the same sweetness associated with Karnataka’s ellu bella.
Across India, these common ingredients — rice, sesame, jaggery, milk — appear in different regions in various forms, giving rise to endlessly local expressions. Together, these dishes remind us that harvest festivals are not only about what is reaped from the soil, but what is preserved through food: a collective memory of how communities eat, share, and practice gratitude.
If you enjoyed reading this, here’s more from Homegrown:
A Taste Of Winter: The Many Pleasures Of Sweet Bengali ‘Peethay’ Pancakes & Dumplings
How A Quintessentially Maharashtrian Winter Festival Ushers In The Harvest Season
‘Food Is Visceral, Yet Personal’: Chef Thomas Zacharias On The Power Of Regional Indian Food