This temple cooked Ven Pongal but afterwards, it catered snacks, one of which is the Chakkarai Pongal (right photo, far left in the plate).

A main ingredient in Chakkarai Pongal is jaggery, a form of brown sugar from palm trees or sugar cane that’s an important ingredient in Indian cuisine, and this ingredient gives Chakkarai Pongal its color. Thanks to the hospitality of the temple, UrbanWire got to taste the plate of food on the right. We assumed that sweet Pongal would taste sugary, but you get a stronger hint of spice, and it has the texture of a thick Chinese congee.

Lakshmi says that although her family is happily settled here, she doesn’t want her personal identity to change, so “celebrating these festivals is a way of connecting to these cultural values”. She says that “maintaining the culture” keeps her attached to her country, community, and gives her a strong identity.

For Yaamanni, although generations of her family have been on the move, migrating from India to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and are now in Singapore, the tradition of celebrating Pongal is “quite alive and not forgotten”. To her, celebrating Pongal festival in a city like Singapore promotes family-bonding as well as reinforcing the value that food doesn’t come easy.

“We wake up in the morning, prepare the Pongal, and come together as a family to celebrate it. It teaches us that food doesn’t come easy and how each aspect (the farmers, cows, sun) comes together and play a part in the rice we eat. (And those are) reasons why I would continue celebrating Pongal festival even in the future.”

Lakshmi agrees. She says celebrating Pongal helps her “maintain the culture and heritage”, as well as to “thank the farmers for working hard to produce the things we eat”, “thank the sun god for giving us good things”, and also to “hope for overflow of prosperity”.