Lohri

As kids, Anuj, my younger brother, and I used to religiously go to the neighborhood houses, singing the Lohri songs and asking for Lohri.

Singing the songs and asking for money/peanuts (literally peanuts) now feels a bit like begging, but the tradition is old and it was a hell lot of fun then.

Two rupees from a house made us happy. Ten rupees was princely. And when someone gave us a fifty rupee note once, it became the topic for that year.

However, not everyone was generous. Once, we went in a team of 4 and an Uncle Scrooge of an uncle gave us a 25 paisa coin and told us to share. We left respectfully, but put him, his family and his tribe through the choicest of abuses soon.

We (children of the capitalist era) preferred hard cash over other things like peanuts, gachak or rewdi. However, whatever we earned, in cash or kind, was valued dearly. And our parents were encouraging enough to double whatever we earned after two days of hard labour.

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We were jealous of the kids from the nearby villages who seemed much more professional than us.

They got finished with the Lohri song quickly, their approach was business-like and their bags seemed fuller with the haul. Also, they clearly knew more songs than us; the only one we knew was “Sundar Mundariye Ho!”

We also sometimes laughed in the middle of our performance, and at times, could not bring that authority and assertiveness that should precede your asking “Lohri do ji lohri!”