Subhashish Nath, New Delhi, 8th November 2022
I was explaining to my wife, who isn’t Odia, just now about the fact that for us Odias, Kartik Purnima is an important event. In the early hours of Kartik Purnima, Odias set sail for Java, Sumatra, Bali, Borneo, Simhala and other far off places for maritime trade. We commemorate our past by celebrating ‘Boita Bandana Utsava’ (setting sail to miniature flotillas in the nearest water body) in the wee hours of Kartik Purnima, which this year is today.
I remember our childhood. We would spend the eve making our own miniature flotillas and decorating them as much as we could. We won’t sleep through the night in fear of not being able to wake up at dawn. We would have saved a little bit of our fire crackers from Deepavali, which we had celebrated fifteen days ago. It was fun to have fire crackers those days because they were made up of organic stuff to create sound effect and not light effect. It wasn’t an era of Chinese made grossly polluting base metal heavy ‘fire crackers’ to have glorious light effects while upping the sound effects to vulgarly dangerous levels. It was okay to burst crackers made out of palm leaves with a little gun powder (‘tala photaka’ we called them in Odia). So evading the digression about fire crackers and going back to Kartik Purnima, the kid who overslept and missed the fun of decorated paper boats would be told of having some FOMO guilt the next season.
The famous ‘Bali Jatra’ of Cuttack would officially start on Kartik Purnima. I’m digressing again. We were in Goa in June this year. San Joao Festival happened during that period. It reminded me of ‘Boita Bandana Utsava’ of my childhood. ‘Bali Jatra’ of Cuttack would I remember many many years later when I saw Christmas markets or fairs of country side Europe. We went to ‘Bali Jatra’ to eat ‘thunka puri.’ The best toys of my life were brought from ‘Bali Jatra.’ In fact, that was our only exposure to real toy shops in our lives. I wish I had kept the fire truck that was bought for me four decades ago. I have vivid memories of it. Now I come back to the real thing. Kartik Purnima is kind of non eventful (if you don’t go to ‘Bali Jatra’ in the evening and on all evenings for the next few days) after the morning’s paper boat activity.
The real fun is reserved for the next day. ‘Chhada Khai.’ The first day of Margashira. Most Odias don’t eat non-vegetarian food for the whole of the month of Kartik (Odias are otherwise gleeful non-vegetarians). Almost all the Odias don’t eat non-vegetarian food on the last five days of Kartik that includes the day of Kartik Purnima. So the Odias go mad the next day that is the first day of Margashira. That’s the day of ‘Chhada Khai.’ You indulge in non-vegetarian food to make up for what you missed out in the past month or the past five days depending on what was your case. The whole State would be in a state of picnic. A person like me, who never abstained from my food habits during Kartik, always wondered how much more intense the spirit of ‘Chhada Khai’ would be for those who actually did. ‘Chhada Khai’ celebrations shall have to be experienced to be believed: pure love for good food and the madness that comes with it.
