Voices Anand Neelakantan Shampa Dhar-Kamath Ravi Shankar Siddhaant Mohta Deepali Bhardwaj Swami Sukhabodhananda MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment NEW DELHI january 25 2026 SUNDAY PAGES 16 Our Republic of Rare Rituals India measures time not in days and months, but in unknown festivals celebrated by esoteric cultures Mountain Masquerade Raulane R aulane remains Kalpa’s sacred secret. Each spring, just as winter loosens and Holi fades, the village calls upon the sauni— meadow fairies believed to have kept residents warm and safe through the long freeze. Raulane in Himachal Pradesh is both farewell and thanks: a send-off for spirits who shared their invisible shelter. Chosen men become the raula (groom) and the raulane (bride), in a ceremony locals insist is “more than 5,000 years old”. Their costumes astonish: veiled faces, layered cloth, beads, and metal, with the bride dazzling in silver that spills across half her body The groom hides behind . scarves. To reveal a human face would invite malevolent forces and break the reverence owed to celestial guests. For Manoj Negi, homestay owner, the festival shapes the year. “My family has been celebrating Raulane for generations… We thank them for having stayed with us through the winter and protected us, and then give them a grand send off.” Raulane is also an invocation for prosperity There are elements that . tie it to tradition; laugh out loud when the raulane performs, and you invite good luck. Stay silent when the raula demands, and whisper a prayer when everyone does. —Shikha Tripathi T By medha dutta yadav o understand India, one might read its constitution or study its religions. But to truly feel India, one must step into its festivals— explosions of drumbeat, incense, turmeric, flower and chant that don’t just mark time, but give it texture. “Festivals are how India negotiates diversity—not by erasing difference, but by rehearsing it,” says sociologist Namrata Gurung. Beyond Diwali, Holi or Eid, India’s inner grammar is revealed in quieter rituals: Angami purification rites during Sekrenyi in Nagaland, Bootha Kola trances in coastal Karnataka, Bendur cattle offerings in Maharashtra, and Tripura’s bamboo-poled Garia Puja. Historians note that such calendars once stitched the subcontinent together: Hindu markets closed for a Muslim Urs, Jain traders sponsored Holi, Hindu Kolis carried tazias, and Ladakhis joined Losar feasts. Percival Spear called this “intimate pluralism”—unity through participation, not sameness. Today, festivals are also journeys and spectacles. People fly to Naropa in Ladakh, camp at Ziro, or seek Lai Haraoba foods. “Ritual has quietly become recreational,” says sociologist Rohan Chopra. If temple bells once announced festivals, now Instagram and travel vlogs do. Rather than flattening culture, social media has amplified its eccentricity: Baul singers in Shantiniketan, Saka Dawa prayer wheels by blue lakes, teenage girls marching with tubas in Bagru. The digital sphere has become an unexpected patron, documenting, archiving, broadcasting. India’s calendar shows its deepest pluralism: Ganpati passes Eid biryani lanes, Christmas cakes cool beside laddoos, Navratri blends into Dussehra. Identity becomes celebration. Seen from afar, India is a palette that comprises Onam’s yellow, Durga’s red, Ladakh’s indigo, Holi’s neon, Mahavir Jayanti’s white. Each festival a colour; together, a living canvas. Harvest Longings Mopin F elix Anthony a priest in Arunachal Pradesh, speaks with quiet pride about the region’s cultural , rhythm. “Northeast India—and Arunachal Pradesh in particular—is truly a land of festivals,” he says. “With more than a hundred indigenous tribes, almost every month of the year is marked by a celebration.” Among them, he highlights Mopin, celebrated by the Galo tribe in early April as the Galo New Year and the start of the agricultural cycle, rooted in the animistic belief system of Donyi-Polo, and centred on Mopin Ane, the goddess of fertility and abundance. Men organise rituals, women brew fragrant poka rice beer, and the gesture of Eete—soft rice paste brushed on the face—becomes a sign of purity and affection. Dressed in white, the Galo share Apong in bamboo cups, meals of rice and meat, and dance the Popir. “Festivals like Mopin also serve a social purpose,” Anthony notes. “They create spaces where relationships are formed… often leading to lifelong partnerships.” —Tanisha Saxena Seasonal Courtship Bhagoria A cross western Madhya Pradesh’s Bhil belt, the Bhagoria festival shows how celebration becomes ecology economy and social architec, , ture at once. “Observed in early March across the Bhil heartland, Bhagoria unfolds through a network of weekly haats that temporarily transform ordinary marketplaces into ritual landscapes,” says Dr Dhirendra Pratap Singh of the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board. Bamboo pavilions, cloth awnings, circular dances, and improvised pathways rise and vanish within days yet braid lasting social worlds. At the festival’s edge, Mahadev Ji’s shrine gathers families with prayers, offerings, and mahua liquor, “sometimes presented as garlands in honour of the deity notes ,” Madhukar Sharma of Jeevan Jyoti Health Service. Bhagoria is also a sanctioned space of courtship. “If a boy offers a betel leaf to a girl and she accepts and consumes it, the families take it as a symbolic agreement toward marriage,” says Sharma. —Tanisha Saxena Fury Pacified Kodungallur Bharani B hajans and kirtans usually drift through temple courtyards in devotional hush. But at the Sree Kurumba Bhagavathy Temple in Thrissur, Kerala, the Kodungallur Bharani festival crackles with something far more primal. Held in the Malayalam month of Meenam (March-April), it draws thousands who surge through the town in waves of red. At its core is the Bharani pattu—or theripattu—obscene, ribald songs hurled skyward like sonic offerings. “Though there are numerous legends associated with the temple and its deity I believe that it was originally shakti aradhana… and fertility worship , was part of it,” says Dr C Adarsh. “That’s why many of the songs have references to sexual organs and intercourse.” Myth traces the ritual to Bhadrakali whose fury after slaying the demon Darika, was finally tempered , at Kodungallur—an eruption settling into calm. The festival peaks during ‘Kavu Pookal’, when velichappadus—temple oracles—spill into the temple grounds, dressed in red and brandishing sickles or sticks. As drums thunder, they whirl around the sanctum, smiting themselves with swords while singing from the belly rather than the throat. For chief priest M Thrivikraman Adikal, the uproar is not sacrilege, but intimacy “If a child feels hurt by the mother and is upset, they will shout at . and abuse her. Similarly devotees let out their suppressed feelings in front of , their mother.” Photographer KR Sunil, who has documented the festival for over two decades, notes its psychological charge: “It is a space without boundaries where they could vent their anger and frustration and leave feeling healed.” —Priya M Menon