Sri Lanka New Year

Sri Lanka New Year

April 14 is New Year's Day for the Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka and for most of Sri Lanka this means weeks of preparation and celebration. Houses are painted and cleaned,  new clothes are bought, and  holiday treats are made to be ready for a week of celebrating.

Gamini serving tea in his yard

Our hosts, Gamini and Dhammi's home

Gomini outstanding in his (tea) field

We had the great fortune of being invited to one of the University professor's home for the New Year. The family lives in the mountains, so we reveled in the cool weather and the lush surroundings of tea plantations, rice paddies and vegetable gardens. It seemed like paradise.

Hiking the very steep tea plantation above the house

 Dhammi, our host, had spent weeks making treats including a Sri Lankan version of the caramels that we make. The dodol requires 10 coconuts that require splitting open, grating by hand and squeezing the milk out of the coconut to be used in the candy. The milk gets put into a huge pot over a wood fire and 4 kilos of jaggery, a palm sugar, is added, and then it gets stirred for an hour and a half with the coconut oil being skimmed off as it cooks. The dark brown liquid is poured into a flat pan and after cooling is cut into small squares and makes 8 kilos of bars. This is just one of many time intensive treats that were offered again and again with tea at everyone's home.

New Year's treats of every kind

At New Years everyone visits each other and tea is served at every visit with a huge tray of sweets. Sri Lankan hospitality in spades. One day we visited friends and relations of the family and had tea 7 times. Needless to say between the very sugared tea and the sweets we had quite the buzz on.

Time to eat with the whole family

New Year has an inauspicious and auspicious time that require certain traditions to be performed. The inauspicious time started at exactly at 7pm on New Year's Eve, and at that time all activity stops including eating, working, driving, and  cooking. We were entertained by the daughter and sons of the family playing guitar and singing. Lovely.

Dhammi's kitchen

Dhammi stirring the milk rice over the wood fire

At the auspicious time all over Sri Lanka, exactly 4:06am, fireworks went off, and everyone lit a fire in the clay wood-fired stove in the kitchen and the kiribath, or milk rice, was put on. This required more coconuts to be grated and squeezed to make coconut milk that was then cooked with rice. At 7am more fireworks went off and we were allowed to eat, but before we did this Gamini, our host, made a ball out of the milk rice which he hand fed to each of his kids and then gave them money wrapped in a leaf. To show their respect to their father they got down on their knees,  bowed and touched his feet.

Dishing up the milk rice

Gomini giving his son the first bite of milk rice at the auspicious time