Mix of red and yellow lucky colours this year

Today, April 13 is Avurudu – a day eagerly awaited by young ones to taste avurudu goodies, wear new clothes, collect gifts and play to their hearts' content. Many are the customs and traditions followed during avurudu– commonly called the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

The elders get ready for avurudu weeks ahead. The house is washed and cleaned. The walls get a new paint. The garden is kept neat and tidy. While the males look after these, the females in the household get busy preparing the kevili – the traditional sweetmeats. A variety of kevum – athirasa, konda, mung – as well as kokis, aasmi, aggala, aluva, veli thalapa take pride of place at the avurudu mese – table laid out with the goodies for the new year. The mother has an additional job. She stitches the new clothes for the children having picked up the lucky colour stipulated by the astrologers. The recommended colour this year is a mix of red and yellow.

The dawn of the new year is preceded by the nonagathe– a period between the end of the old year and the dawn of the new year. With auspicious times being not available during this period, normal day to day activities are stopped until the auspicious times come. The astrologers do the calculations and indicate the time to down tools and await the dawn of the new year. This time is devoted to religious observances.

The entire household goes to the temple, offers flowers and recites stanzas. The young ones prefer to get back home quickly to play with the friends around having got their freedom to forget about their books and school work. This year, this period also known as punya kaalaya starts at 12.05 in the afternoon.

As the time to cook the first meal for the New Year approaches, the mother gets ready with the new utensils she has bought to boil the milk and to prepare kiribath. She had earlier cleaned the cooking area and at the auspicious hour of 6.54 in the evening clad in new clothes, she would light the hearth facing the south and prepare kiribath.

The children are summoned home to get ready for the big moment – veda alleema – starting work for the new year. This year the auspicious time to start work is 8.10 p.m. facing south. The father would give the start by reading a few lines from a book – usually a bana potha, write a few letters and then go out to the garden with a mammoty to till the soil. A small branch of a tree would also be cut. This is obviously a tradition built up over centuries by the farming community when ours was essentially an agriculture based society. The young ones would follow suit. They would read a few paragraphs from a book and write a few lines.

Before the family sit down for the first meal, the exchange of a few currency notes symbolising the ganu denu ('give and take' as they say) take place. While in most households the husband would do the transaction with the wife, in some households, a lucky person would be invited to partake of the first meal prior to which ganu denu would be done. This custom is repeated when relations visit one another. The young ones are not forgotten. In addition to gifts which would mainly be new clothes, they are given money not only by parents but all the elders in the family as well as by close relations who visit during the New Year.

The family would then sit for the first meal with the father at the head of the table. The mother would serve him the first piece of kiribath. She would then serve everyone else. She would serve herself last.
Avurudu is a time for merriment. Traditional games 'which have been forgotten throughout the year are revived during avurudu. The village folk get together and organise avurudu festivals to build a sense of camaraderie and friendship among everyone. Often this is the only time when everyone gets a chance of meeting with even those in employment in far away places, home for the New Year.

Celebrations are not over in a single day. Neither are the customs. Hisa thelgema – the anointing of oil is done on a special day. This year the auspicious time is at 7.42 in the morning on April 16, facing east. It is customary for the village folk to gather at the temple and get the monk to apply the specially prepared oil on the head. An elder in the family usually does it if the family prefers to stay home.