The Festival of Joy and Happiness: Bohag Bihu

Greetings to everyone! Hope you guys are doing great by the grace of God. Well it is the month of April and this month is full of festivals from almost every nook and corners of my beloved country India. Well, yes who does not love festivals and if you’re Indian then you are definitely the one who can’t help himself/herself from enjoying wholeheartedly. While my country enjoys bathing in the rays of sunlight, the harvesting season begins with the lush surrounding a foilage of verdant places. Baishakhi, Vishu, Bihu, Chithirai, Ram navami, Aoling and so many festivals are celebrated regionally all over the nation. As an Assamese by birth, I could not stop myself today from writing and letting you guys know about our precious Bohag Bihu.

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Bihu is something that is part and parcel of each and every Assamese people. Bihu is celebrated thrice in a year and each of them has different meaning and values to the people of Assam. These three Bihu are named as Bohag Bihu or Rongali Bihu, Kati Bihu or Kongali Bihu and Magh Bihu or Bhogali Bihu. The Bohag Bihu is the festival of merriment and joy and marks the arrival of the Assamese new year with the onset of spring. This also marks the first day of the Hindu solar calendar and is celebrated the whole month.

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In Assamese calendar, Bohag is the first month of the year and so this Bihu is known as the Bohag Bihu. This Bihu brings joy and happiness to everyone and so it is also known as Rongali Bihu. Rong means happiness in Assamese. In short it represents happiness of the society. I should have noted earlier that all these three Bihu festivals are related to harvesting and Bohag Bihu is not an exception to it. This Bihu lies in a period where the cultivators have enough of food stored in their granary. The start of the monsoon with the arrival of Bordoichila (also known as Kalbaisakhi) raises the water level in the farm lands and the cultivators starts ploughing the lands to grow paddy.

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Likewise other women my mom also prepares various bihu delicacies like til-pitha, ghila-pitha, vapot dia pitha, sunga-pitha, tekeli-pitha, loskora etc on the eve of the Bihu. While the men are busy preparing tora-pogha (a kind of rope for cattle prepared by indigenous creeper) and various vegetables like bottle gourd, aubergine, bitter melon, cucumber and leaves of dighalati (litsea salicifolia)
and makhioti (flemingia strobilifera) which will be used later in the morning of next day called Goru Bihu.

The first day of the Bihu is dedicated to the cattle (cow) as cows are used during ploughing and they are the means of their livelihood. On this day the bullocks and cows are bathed near a pond or river and we fed them with the cut pieces of vegetables prepared the day before and adorned with garlands. The cattle are allowed to graze in any fields without any restriction on this day and when later in the evening they return, they are tied with new ropes and offered with a special kind of cake prepared for them. The younger one takes the blessings from the elders after returning from the riverside.

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On the next day is called as Manuh Bihu. In the morning from young ones to elderly everyone takes Bihu special dishes like sira, doi, sweets etc. collectively called as jolpan. In this day, the Husori is formally inaugurated in the boundary of namghor (prayer hall).

The unmarried men and women gets dressed in Muga Silk clothes and performs Bihu dance and sings folk songs. These folk songs are called as Bihu Geet and they symbolise romance and love. Sometimes these could be tragic or parody but treated very lightly. The males performs with instruments such as Dhol (a kind of drum), pepa (a flute made of buffalo horn) etc and females performs with gogona (a vibrating reed made of bamboo), xutuli (a kind of flute imitating the sound of birds), toka (made of bamboo) etc. They are thanked with an offering of tamul (betel nut), paan (betel leaf), some cash in a xorai (Offering tray symbolising tradition of Assam made of bell metal) at the end of the performance and the the singers bless the household for the coming year. If there is grief and sorrow in the family, or if the family does not invite the husori singers due to an illness, the husori band offers blessings from podulimukh (from the gate) and move on.

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This is the beauty of this festival and I feel proud to witness and enjoy such brotherly and joyful moments. I am again thrilled to inform you guys that recently the Guinness World Record for largest Bihu performance at a single venue was performed by 11300 female dancers and male drummers. About 15 minute long performance was organised in the Sarusajai stadium in Guwahati.

With that said, I’m wrapping up my post wishing you all A Happy Bohag Bihu on behalf of all Assamese people.

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Thanks for stopping by :)