Pongal celebrated in Chennai, Rameshwaram

Pongal, the winter harvest festival, was celebrated across Tamil Nadu with pomp and show.

The celebrations, associated with the sun, was celebrated by making colourful Kolams and preparing traditional food in Chennai and Rameshwaram.

"Pongal festival is the festival of farmers, the festival of Tamilians which everybody celebrates in the state. We make special dishes on this day and distribute it to the poor and amongst our families," Netaji, a resident of Rameshwaram, told ANI.

"We pray to the Sun God for the wellbeing of our family," he added.

The word 'Pongal' in Tamil means to 'to boil', it is also the name of a sweet dish made out of boiled rice, moong dal, milk and jaggery, which is prepared specially to mark the harvest festival

Another resident, Poomagal, said, "Today is Pongal festival. We are celebrating it in the traditional way by praying for the wellbeing of ourselves and our family."

The glimpse of the Pongal celebration was also seen in the Chennai-based church where they offered prayers and prepared Pongal.

The festival celebrates the harvesting of crops including sugarcane, rice and turmeric and falls around the same time as Lohri and Makar Sankranti in mid-January each year.

It is essentially a thanksgiving festival, wherein farmers thank the nature, the Sun God and the farm animals for helping in the productions of crops, while other people thank the farmers for producing the crops.