The Setting Sun Gets the First Offering

A Chhath Puja reflection on ritual, belonging and gratitude

 

Every community has a ritual that binds its people together. The very word ritual may be hard to digest for the new-age pundits of logic and for those drunk on the newfound wisdom of smartphones and the general bravado of being different. But the fact remains that much of what keeps us going, and keeps us together, is difficult to explain. Some of it may even be considered primitive and irrational.

Love, too, is irrational.

The First Offering Goes to the Setting Sun

At Chhath, the first offering is made to the setting Sun. Standing in water, the vrati thanks the Sun for sustaining life and asks Chhathi Maiya, the benevolent mother, to watch over her children. The following morning, the family is back at the ghat before dawn to offer arghya to the rising Sun.

Where Chhath Comes From

The name Chhath comes from Shashthi, the sixth lunar day. The better-known observance falls in Kartik, a few days after Diwali. Sun worship in India goes back to the Rig Veda, though when Chhath took its present form is harder to say. Some families tell the story of Ram and Sita observing a fast after their return from Lanka. Others speak of Draupadi or of Karna, the son of Surya. In Munger (Bihar) there is a local tradition that Sita observed the vrat on a rock in the Ganga. The stories vary, as stories do when they are told and retold across generations.

Four Days, Beginning at Home

The worship at the ghat is the part most people see. It begins at home.

•      Day 1, Nahay Khay (literally, Bath and eat): the house is cleaned and the person who has taken the vow bathes and eats a simple ritual meal.

•      Day 2, Kharna: the vrati fasts until the evening meal, often of kheer, after which begins the longer fast without food or water.

•      Day 3: the thekua has to be made, the fruit and sugarcane gathered, and the bamboo baskets packed for the walk to the ghat.

•      Day 4: after the morning offering, the fast ends and the prasad is shared.

It Takes Many Hands

One person may keep the fast, but quite a few people are needed to keep Chhath. Someone makes the thekua, someone carries the basket, and someone starts the song that everybody else seems to know. Across Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh and the Terai of Nepal, Hindu families do much the same thing in different languages and on different sides of administrative boundaries. A family makes an offering. A neighbourhood comes together. And year after year, people who have moved away arrange their lives around being there for it.

Call It What You May

Is it animism? Paganism? Call it what you may. Ask someone from Bihar, whatever their caste, creed or religion, what Chhath brings to mind. The answer might be a song heard from the next house, the smell of thekua being made, or the sight of a familiar ghat lit with earthen lamps. For many who had to leave Bihar for want of opportunities, even one of those memories is enough to feel the pull of a place they still call home.

Where There Is a Crowd, Politics Seeps In

And where there is a crowd, politics seeps in. There are those who will rationalise the futility of a ritual and call the people who practise it uncouth. They expect Biharis to work hard and keep their cities running, then make jokes about the dust and dirt in the neighbourhoods those same workers can afford to live in. To me, the likes of the Thackerays personify a politics that finds an audience for that contempt and knows how to keep it entertained.

Then there are those who see an important vote bank in the same people. A clean ghat, proper lighting and arrangements for a large gathering are part of the job. Where the pomp begins is when a politician’s face becomes more conspicuous than the people who have come to pray.

Spare a Thought for the Journey

So the next time the trains are packed, the roads are jammed and the flights are overbooked, spare a thought for the people making that journey. A vrati standing in the water may ask Chhathi Maiya to protect her children. The Sun she thanks shines on yours as well. In that sense, there are people standing in the water twice in the space of a night to say thank you on behalf of us all.

 

The smart thing to say, of course, is that no one cares for a setting sun.

At Chhath, it receives the first offering.

Three Thanks, One Prayer

So here’s to:

•      The Sun that sustains us

•      Chhathi Maiya, whom we ask to watch over our children

•      The vratis and their families, who carry Chhath from one generation to the next

A Hand Held at the Ghat

A child who once held her mother’s hand at the ghat may one day stand in the same water with a child of her own. She sings the songs she heard growing up and says the same prayers, with the same devotion and the same hope for a more beautiful world for us all.

The Bond Chhath Sustains

That is the bond Chhath sustains.

Each generation is taught to give thanks, and each has someone to teach.