Pola (festival)

Template:Infobox festival Pola is a festival respecting bulls and oxen which is celebrated by farmers in Maharashtra. Pola is a thanksgiving festival of farmers and their families for their bulls. Pola is celebrated in Maharashtra to acknowledge the importance of bulls and oxen, who are a crucial part of agriculture and farming activities. The pampering of Bulls begins a day or two before Pola^[1]. In Maharashtra, farmers and farming families celebrate this festival in praise of their bulls. There is a holiday on the occasion of Pola in rural regions of Maharashtra in schools. Farmers don't do any work with bulls this day.^[2] It is a very important festival for farmers. They dedicate the whole day to their bulls. Women make Rangolis outside in front of their house, tie Toran on top of doors, they prepare puja thalis with kumkum, water, and sweets and an earthen lamp with ghee to do puja, aarti of bulls^[3].The whole family take blessings from their Bulls, touch their feet, do Namaste them. Farmers wash their bulls, colour their horns, change their old year-long ropes, tie new ropes with bells, serve them different kind of grains like Jowar, wheat and lentils, perform their arti (Hindu ritual of respecting of God by moving clay lamp in front of him) and give them naivadya (food offered by devotees to God) to eat. It also celebrates in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Northern parts of Telangana as Polala Amavasya. Pola is a Hindu festival. On the day of Pola, the farmers decorate and respect their bulls. It falls on the day of the Pithori Amavasya (the new moon day) in the month of Shravana (usually in August).^[4]

Oxen are decorated with such ornaments on the pola.

Celebrations

Pola is mainly a farmer's festival, wherein farmers respect their bulls and oxen, to thank them for their support in farming. It occurs after the monsoon sowing and field work, typically in late August or early September. On the day of Pola, the bulls are first given a bath, and then decorated with ornaments and shawls. Their horns are painted, and their necks are adorned with garlands of flowers. The bulls do not work that day, and they are part of procession where farmers celebrate the crop season.

The work of decorated bulls, accompanied by the music and dancing, are carried out in the evenings. The first bullock to go out is an old bullock with a wooden frame (called makhar) tied on its horns. This bullock is made to break a rope of mango leaves stretched between two posts, and is followed by all the other cattle in the village.

The festival is found among Marathas in central and eastern Maharashtra.^[5] A similar festival is observed by Hindus in other parts of India, and is called Mattu Pongal in south and Godhan in north and west India.^[6]

References

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