बारह महीने, बारह त्योहार
हर मौसम का अपना उत्सव

Chaiti Chhath

Chaitra Shukla Shashthi

The smaller, quieter Chhath. Fewer families keep it than the Kartik one, but the vratis who do stand in the Budhi Gandak at dawn exactly the same way, and the ghat gets its first soop of the year.

Ram Navami

Chaitra Shukla Navami

Nine days of Chaiti Navratra end with Ram Navami. The Manas path at the temple runs through the night, and this is the week Dr. Madan Mohan Thakur's Ram Charit Manas pravachans were waited for all year.

Mahachandi Yagya (2018)

Chaitra 2018 · a once-in-a-generation event

Not an annual festival but the biggest Malinagar has seen: a bamboo pandal with rows of havan kunds, Naga sadhus by their dhunis, a murti exhibition and a mela with hot jalebis every evening. People came back from every city for it.

Satuani (Mesh Sankranti)

14 April, when the sun enters Mesh

The day of sattu. Roasted-gram sattu is first offered to the gods, then eaten by everyone with gur, green mango chutney, onion and chilli. New earthen pots and a hand-fan are given in daan. It is the last day the old year's fire is lit in the kitchen.

Jud Sheetal (Maithili New Year)

15 April, the day after Satuani

Mithila's own new year. Before sunrise the eldest in the house pours cold water on the heads of the younger ones as a blessing: "jud sheetal", stay cool. Yesterday's cooked food is eaten cold, no fresh fire is lit, and water is poured at the roots of every tree in the baari.

Akshaya Tritiya

Baisakh Shukla Tritiya

The day nothing bought or begun is wasted. New seed is set aside, a new pot of water placed at the door for travellers, and marriages are fixed without consulting the panchang.

Bat Savitri (Barsait)

Jeth Amavasya

Married women fast and tie thread around the old banyan by the pokhar, walking round it while the Savitri-Satyavan katha is told. Hand-fans, wet gram and ripe mango are the prasad; the first litchi of the year is usually eaten today.

Ganga Dussehra

Jeth Shukla Dashami

Snan in the Budhi Gandak at dawn, which stands in for the Ganga it will meet at Khagaria. The young men swim across to the Pusa bank and back, and the ghat is swept for the first time since Chaiti Chhath.

Nag Panchami

Sawan Shukla Panchami

Milk and flowers at the ant-hills and at the nag chitra drawn on the wall by the door. No digging, no ploughing today; the fields belong to the snakes who guard them in the monsoon.

Madhushravani

Sawan Krishna Panchami to Shukla Tritiya, fourteen days

Mithila's own festival of the first married year. The new bride keeps a fourteen-day vrat at her naihar, the katha of Shiva and Gauri is told every evening around a drawn nag-nagin, flowers are gathered at dawn from every garden in the tola, and on the last day comes the "tema", the burning touch on the knee that the groom's family sends. The sasural sends her saris, fruit and the whole tola comes to see.

Raksha Bandhan

Sawan Purnima

Sisters come home from their sasural; brothers come home from Delhi and Bengaluru. For a village with so many daughters married into Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur, Rakhi week fills the Pusa Road autos both ways.

Krishna Janmashtami

Bhado Krishna Ashtami

Midnight at the temple, the jhanki of the baby Krishna in a decorated jhula, and the dahi-chura and makhan-mishri prasad. The children's fancy-dress Krishna and Radha at the middle school is a Malinagar institution.

Teej (Hartalika Teej)

Bhado Shukla Tritiya, the day before Chaukchanda

The great Teej of Bihar. Married women keep a full nirjala vrat for their husbands, from the sargahi meal before dawn to the next morning. Mehndi the night before, the Shiva-Parvati katha in the afternoon, new saris and red bangles, and the jhula in the mango gachhi. Daughters come home to the naihar for it whenever they can.

Chaukchanda (Chauth Chandra)

Bhado Shukla Chaturthi

Mithila's moon festival, the one evening in the year when you are supposed to look at the moon. Ganesh is worshipped at dusk, then every person in the house holds a fruit, a sweet or a curd-filled leaf in their hand and looks up at the fourth-day moon through it before eating. The belief is that seeing it bare-handed brings a false accusation on your head, so the hand is never empty.

Anant Chaturdashi & Vishwakarma Puja

Bhado Shukla Chaturdashi · 17 September

The fourteen-knot anant thread is tied on the arm after the katha. The same week, Vishwakarma Puja at Bhaiya's mill and at every tractor and tube-well pump in the village, with marigold on the engine.

Jitiya (Jivitputrika)

Ashwin Krishna Ashtami, eight days after Bhado Purnima

The hardest vrat a Malinagar mother keeps: a full day and night without water, for the long life of her children. The day before is "nahay-khay" with maruwa roti and noni saag; the day after, "paran" with jhor-bhaat. Every son in a city gets a phone call that morning.

Pitru Paksha

Bhado Purnima to Ashwin Amavasya, fifteen days

The fortnight for the ancestors. Tarpan at the ghat each morning, the Brahman fed on the tithi of each departed elder, and no weddings, no new purchases, no beginnings until Mahalaya ends it and the Devi's nine days begin.

Durga Puja at Kali Badi

Ashwin Shukla Pratipada to Dashami

Nine nights of Navratra and the pandal at Kali Badi. Saptami to Navami the whole village is at the pandal; the dhaak, the sandhya aarti, the mela stalls along the road, and the bhasan procession to the Budhi Gandak on Dashami.

Dussehra & Ravan Dahan

Vijaya Dashami

The Ramlila at Ramlila Gachhi, the same ground the buses leave from, has run for as long as anyone remembers. Ravan burns there on Dashami evening and the whole village walks home in the smoke.

Kojagara (Sharad Purnima)

Ashwin Purnima

Mithila's night of Lakshmi and the full moon. In a house with a newly married son, the naihar sends makhana, batasha, paan and curd; the groom sits in the courtyard and the whole tola is fed makhana-kheer left under the moon. The rest of us just eat the kheer.

Diwali: dibiya aur diya

Kartik Amavasya

The first diya at Sokha Baba, then Kali Badi, then home, the fields, the cattle shed, the well and the gachhi. Two kinds of lamps: the dibiya with its lid and kerosene, and the mustard-oil diya. Children run with burning ukka. Dinner is rice, dal, pakora and bhajji.

Govardhan Puja & Bhaiya Dooj

Kartik Shukla Pratipada and Dwitiya

The day after Diwali the cattle are bathed, their horns oiled and painted, and a Govardhan of cow dung is made in the courtyard and worshipped with the new rice. The next day sisters put tika on their brothers' foreheads; in Mithila the sisters also curse their brothers' enemies by crushing a thorn under a pestle, so that no harm reaches them.

Chhath Mahaparv

Kartik Shukla Chaturthi to Saptami

The festival the whole year leans toward. Nahay Khay, Kharna, Sandhya Arghya, Usha Arghya. The ghat on the Budhi Gandak is cleaned by the young men a week ahead; the soop is filled with thekua, sugarcane, banana and coconut; and at dawn on the fourth day every family that could possibly come is standing in the water together.

Help someone get home this Chhath →

Sama Chakeva

Chhath to Kartik Purnima

Mithila's festival of brothers and sisters and of the birds that fly in for winter. Girls shape Sama, Chakeva, Chugla and the birds from clay, sing to them every evening for a week, and on Purnima night the brothers "see off" Sama in the fields of jowar. The chugla's moustache gets burnt.

Kartik Purnima & Dev Deepawali

Kartik Purnima

Snan in the Budhi Gandak at dawn, diyas floated on the water at dusk. The week-long Kartik mela on the road to Pusa ends tonight.

Nava-anna & Vivah Panchami

Aghan, when the dhaan is cut · Aghan Shukla Panchami

The first rice of the harvest is cooked as kheer and offered before anyone eats it. Vivah Panchami, Ram and Sita's wedding day in Mithila, is kept with a small puja at the temple and is still the favourite day for fixing marriages in the village.

Makar Sankranti (Tila Sakrat)

14 January

Dahi-chura, tilkut, lai and gur before anything else is eaten. Snan in the river for the ones brave enough, kites over the wheat fields all afternoon, and the first khichdi of the year in the evening.

Saraswati Puja

Magh Shukla Panchami (Basant Panchami)

Every school, every tola and most houses set up a Saraswati murti. Yellow clothes, yellow rice, the first letters written by every child who turned five, and the loudest speakers of the year. Visarjan the next evening in the Budhi Gandak.

Mahashivratri

Phagun Krishna Chaturdashi

A fast, bel leaves and Gangajal on the Shivling at the temple, and the night-long bhajan. The village's Shivratri mela is where the year's first gol-gappa stalls appear.

Holi & Holika Dahan

Phagun Purnima and the next day

Holika burns the night before at the chowk in every tola. Next morning: colour, then mud, then the river to wash it off. Afternoon is for new clothes, pua and malpua, and the Jogira sung from house to house by the men of the village until the fagua ends at dark.