With homes across Bengaluru all set to celebrate Ugadi by getting together with beloved family members, mixing up bevu-bella, and cooking up bisi-bisi holige, payasa and vade, your favourite Kannada celebrities are gearing up to do the same. Here’s what these stars have planned for the festival while hoping for more ‘sihi’ than ‘kahi’ for the year ahead.
We always have family over for lunch or dinner together because everyone’s busy with their own work throughout the year and this is when we get to get together, reflect on what’s happening with everyone and the coming year. Of course, there’s a lot of traditional cuisine – sweets made out of fresh jaggery like coconut barfi and payasam which Upi (actor Upendra) loves. He also loves rice so there’s a rice item like chitranna, different kinds of veggies, rasam, and ‘kootu’ made of mixed vegetables. We also decorate the pooja room and do a Lakshmi-Ganesha pooja with a special prasadam offered to the gods.
All festivals used to happen at my ajji’s house, with the entire family cooking together. For me, that meant cooking ambode, my brother would cook bajji, and my aunts would cook a lot more. Ajji passed away three years ago but, in her memory, we still get together at her house. For me, Ugadi is all about eating together and having huggi, sweet pongal, and other dishes that my ajji used to make but now, my mom (Sudha Belawadi, actor) and aunts make everything she used to.
Ugadi is very special to me because it falls so close to my birthday which is on March 29, so it’s almost like we celebrate my birthday and Ugadi together. When we were kids, we used to fight to eat more bella (jaggery) than bevu (neem leaves) – we did not want to eat the neem leaves at all! What the festival means to me is the nostalgia it carries. We buy clothes whenever we want now with online shopping. But when I was a child, we had thrice a year we could buy new clothes – birthdays, Deepavali, and Ugadi. We were not allowed to try them on before the festival so we would wait eagerly to wear it on the day of the festival. It was fun!
Ugadi has always been a special time for me — it’s about new beginnings, family, and reflections on the past year. This year, amid all the excitement of Firefly and my debut, I want to keep it simple yet meaningful. I’ll be celebrating with my family, having a quiet meal together with all the festival food I grew up loving. Growing up, it was about new textbooks for the next school year, preparing for final exams, and getting excited for the summer holidays. Those little things gave the day a sense of warmth and belonging. Now, it’s more about introspection and gratitude. Earlier, I was just excited about eating the festival food and getting pocket money from elders. Now, I understand the deeper meaning behind it – the idea of welcoming a new chapter.
Most Indian festivals are unique because of their symbolism. Sankranti is marked by eating ‘yellu-bella’, signifying the end of winter and the beginning of Harvest season. Ugadi is marked by eating ‘bevu-bella’, a mixture of neem and jaggery. The idea is that life has both the bitter and the sweet. So we have to learn to take both in our stride. That is an important life lesson to remember even as we celebrate the beginning of a new year. I am in the middle of shooting for my latest film Balaramana Dinagalu. My next schedule begins in April. So I will celebrate Ugadi by preparing for my movie shoot.