Neem in the New Year

The Hindu New Year, celebrated in certain parts of India, is one that welcomes the spring season with open arms. Though the festival has different names throughout the country – known as Gudi Padwa, Ugadi, Yugadi, Cheti Chang, and Navreh – the celebration marks the beginning of Chaitra, the first month in the Panchanga, otherwise known as the lunar calendar. As neem is an important part of life in India, the tree is prominent in these festivities.

The main celebration marks the New Year, the ending of the harvest season, and the beginning of spring. It is also the day in which the world was recreated after the great flood. Therefore, food and new beginnings are an important theme for this celebration. Traditions include new clothes, bathing (often with neem leaves), applying hair oil, cleaning the house, and hanging mango leaves. Some celebrators even create dolls made of mango and neem leaves, hanging the “gudi” at the entrance of their houses.

This celebration is also characterized by the preparation and consumption of neem leaves and jaggery, a sweet, boiled down sugar cane juice, mixture. This is an important and meaningful way to not only purify the body for the start of the New Year, but also to represent the ups and downs of life’s journey through the taste of a bittersweet mixture.

There are many foods included in this festival, each with different meanings, but all natural foods relating to the journey of life:

Neem: sorrow, hardship
Jaggery: happiness
Green chili: anger
Salt: fear
Tamarind: disgust
Unripened mango: surprise