BETA

eetings Oru readers, let me take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year. It seems like it was only a short time ago that I wrote an article about the origins and significance of pongal and yet another year has passed and pongal is here once again. And what a year it has been! So much has changed for so many of us, we continue to grow in mind, body and soul and the world around is also changing rapidly. Good events and bad events precede one another and each day someone somewhere in the world is suffering.

What this past year has taught me is that nothing is forever, not ideas, not possessions nor life…nothing is forever. However there was one thing that I found that never ever perishes and that precious thing is ‘hope’. Pongal is a significant time of hope for as the great saying goes ‘thai pirandhal vazhi pirrakkum’ (literal translation = month is born, the way is born) meaning that when the month of Thai dawns there will be way of love, peace, harmony, prosperity, joyousness in everyone's life.

When so much is going on in the tumultuous world we live in, we often forget to hope and instead turn to other means to try to achieve what we want – and not all of them are right, but we do it anyway. What we should try and remember is that like each one of us there are millions more people hoping for things that are important to them and each of their hopes and dreams are just as precious as our own.

By hoping one can persevere and get through even the toughest times, to place your hope and faith in a higher allows each of us the strength to get through life. To hope ensures that you never ever give up and succeed in achieving what you want no matter how hard that may be; Pongal is a time when this hope is given praise to.

How many of us stop to be grateful for the food that we eat or the water that we drink? Living in the western world allows us these pleasures in life that we all take for granted and often do not stop to think twice about. However, if each one of us was truly thankful for and understood the privileges that are given to us we would never complain again. There are millions of people around the world without clean water to drink, food to eat or a shelter to sleep under. What ever the reasons for this we cannot overlook their situation and no matter what race of belief they hold we should be thankful that we are blessed enough to live a life that has provided us with basic things that would be a luxury to others. Like I have said before, we are all guilty of not appreciating and we are all guilty of forever wanting more, that is just the eternal dilemma faced by mankind.

However we are educated, wise and moral enough to understand that we should not take things for granted. So everyone, when you are eating your delicious pongal and savouring the sweet taste, be thankful for what you have in life; and have hope for others who are not in your situation for ‘Where there is hope there is life…’