Newa community celebrating Sakimana Punhi

KATHMANDU

Newa community is celebrating Sakimana Punhi or Pindalu Usinne Purni by eating yam and sweet potato boiled in their homes on Friday. Kartik Sukla Purnima is also the first full moon of Nepal Sambat.

Sakimana is also celebrated as a special festival by Bhajan Khalah and Dafa Bhajan Khalas (religious musical troupe) in the Newa community. It also marks the end of the month-long night hymning which started on Kojagrat Purnima. They celebrate the festival by eating boiled yam and making figure designs of fried grains such as maize grains, soybeans, wheat etc which is known as Nasa. Thus, the same grains and other ingredients became the elements of art.

People living in different localities and places, celebrate this festival. They gather at a chowk or in a temple premises and play traditional music.

According to Prof Dr Purushottam Lochan Shrestha, a historian and cultural expert, the Newa community eats yam, sweet potatoes and Nasa only after offering seasonal grains to their deities on this day. Thus, the same grains and other ingredients became the elements of art.

Similarly, priest and cultural activist Harisharan Rajopadhyay said that the temple and the idol of the god were developed from the image of God made from food.  “At first people carved various temples and figures of God from the grains, later they began to build various temples. Therefore, on Sakimana Purni, people began to make God’s figure from the grains, worship it and make offerings of the berries and eat it later,” he said.

As Sakimana Punhi is the first festival that is celebrated after Tihar, it also depicts the food that we can have during winter. The roasted grains and arum roots are eaten to warm up and invigorate the body.