About the lunisolar new year and the tastes of life

“The number one thing we do on Yugadi is convey the young panchangam place and say it,” says Sree Gururaja, now retired from senior posts in the United Nations. The Koramangala resident and long-time Bangalorean talks about the customs that she continues to uphold, all of which are described below. But specifically, Sree makes an Appi Payasam, which I have tasted in her home. “This is common in the Madhwa Brahmin community which I belong to and it is a rich basundi-type dish made with fried chiroti-rava puris, which are then simmered in sweetened thickened milk”.But first the panchangam. Yuga-adi is the beginning of a yuga, which in the Hindu imagination has much more resonance and length than a mere year. But for people in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, this is the New Year, one of the four auspicious days where anything begun will yield fruit (Akshaya Tritiya is another). So we clean our homes, discard old things, buy new things, and eat the famous Yugadi pachadi, but more on that later.Yugadi is on Chaitra Shukla Pratipada (Chaitra month or March-April in the lunisolar calendar). Shukla paksha is the waxing or bright fortnight. Pratipada is the first day after the new moon or Amavasya. Often but not always, this day is marked by the nakshatra called Revathi.Yugadi has deep mythological meaning in the Hindu oral storytelling tradition. According to the Brahma Purana, Lord Brahma began the creation of the universe on this day. Lord Rama was crowned in Ayodhya, marking the beginning of the Shalivahana era.And the sun transits to Aries or Mesha Rashi, the first of the 12 zodiac signs in Vedic astrology or Jyotish. Vasanta Ritu or spring is in full bloom and in fact, we have just celebrated Basant Panchami.Preparations for Yugadi begin almost a month before the actual date. This is the season when white neem flowers fill the Azadirachta indica or neem tree, also called India’s mini pharmacy. Folks in the know, all over India, whether in city or village, spread a clean white cloth under the neem tree and catch falling blossoms which are then dried and stored for consumption throughout the year. Often these young neem flowers are fried in ghee and served atop a mound of hot white rice and a fragrant if bitter condiment.But the main use of these dried neem flowers happens during Yugadi when it plays a signature role in the making of the Yugadi pachadi. The whole point of this dish is to metaphorically convey what life is about.It contains the six tastes or “Shadruchigalu” which convey the six primary emotions. Neem flowers for bitterness; jaggery for sweetness; young tamarind for sour; salt for, well, salty; pepper for spice and pungency; and young mango for astringency.Fanciful stories abound. If you get more neem in the first mouthful of the pachadi, the feeling is that the next year will be bitter. If you get more jaggery, it will be sweet. But really, this dish is about accepting that life is about sweet and bitter episodes, leaving a sweet or bitter taste in your mouth; and even amongst the sweet moments lie strands of bitterness.To distil this further, you have the practice of consuming the bevu-bella (neem-jaggery) first thing in the morning, often as a panaka or a drink along with young tamarind, and thinly cut mango. This is not just ritualistic. Studies show that this particular combination “recorded higher levels of b carotene iron, zinc and copper than other foods.”Of course, this is not all that we eat. Like most festivals, Yugadi too involves a feast with the holige as the beginning, middle and end. The holige is the only sweet in Karnataka that has its own shops or holige mane outlets. In the centre is a sweet, fragrant filling called hoorana. The hoorana itself can be of two kinds: one made with grated coconut, called kayi, and the other with pulses or bele. Homesick NRIs prefer to carry back the bele-filled holige because it lasts longer.The preparation of the hoorana is a test of a cook’s skill. It must be smooth, perfectly balanced between the nuttiness of the chana dal and the smokiness of the jaggery, and encased in a dough so thin it is almost translucent. The holige (called obbattu in certain parts of Karnataka) is not served as a delicate, post-meal confection. It is served as a central part of the oota (meal), hot off the tawa, and doused not in sugar syrup like the North Indian gulab-jamun, but in fresh, liquid thuppa (ghee). This is sweet as a main course – filling, nutritious, and celebratory.The other dish that makes its entrance during Yugadi is the Mavinakayi Chitranna (raw mango rice). The use of raw mango in the rice is a seasonal marker; it is the first harvest of the mango before the heat of summer turns them sweet, providing a sharp, tangy counterpoint to the heavy sweetness of the holige.In Bengaluru, Yugadi is both a reset and an act of taking stock of the future. We may begin our day by checking our phones, but on this day, elders take us by our arms and feed us a bitter-sweet mixture, thus reminding us that days may change but the future remains filled with all types of tastes, or in this case the six tastes or shad-ruchi.(Shoba Narayan is Bengaluru-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications.)