Lohri has always carried the feeling of a Punjab winter nudging toward spring. The solstice slips by, the daylight stretches by mere minutes, and people step out with the quiet conviction that the worst of the cold has passed. As a child, none of this celestial choreography interested me. What I waited for were the rituals that arrived on schedule, unbothered by science.
The music signalled the start of the season. Long before I could decipher Punjabi folk lyrics, I could tap out the pulse of Dulla Bhatti. When Veer Zaara later turned it into a mass singalong, my cousins and I hummed away without knowing we were echoing the story of a man who rescued kidnapped girls from slave markets. Sundri and Mundri were not just catchy names, but girls who entered folklore and refused to leave. It is remarkable how easily myth blends into childhood, long before history finds us.
What clings to my memory most tenderly is the food. Markets piled high with sugarcane, its sweet perfume cutting through the sharpness of fresh radish. Jaggery simmering in brass pots until it thickens, darkened and finally shattered into the brittle sweetness of gajak and revari. At home the kitchen felt like a symphony. One person scraped mustard leaves, another rolled out makki di roti, and the saag murmured on the stove for hours. Always jaggery, always mooli, and on lucky years, til rice. We called it tricholi, rice and sesame bound by warm jaggery, a dish that tasted like the season was softening.
Evening meant bonfire. I can still feel its warmth on my face and the winter air chilling my spine. Peanuts and popcorn passed from one set of hands to another. A tiny portion always fed to the flames, a gesture of thanks that needed no vocabulary. The elders prayed for a generous harvest. We simply wished for another round of popcorn.
“Lambiyaan raatan lang gaiyaan,” my grandfather would say: the long nights have finally ended. Lohri belongs to an agrarian Punjab. It marks the end of winter, the winter solstice and the promise of longer days.
Across India, the winter harvest arrives with its own rituals. Gurgaon resident Chinmoyee Kalita told me about Bihu in Assam, and how Uruka night marked the close of winter. She laughed about stories from her grandparents’ villages where young men would steal vegetables and chicken from neighbouring homes. People stayed up all night to guard the larders. Dawn arrived with pithas made from the new harvest.
In Bengal, Noida-based home chef and writer Ayandrali Dutta described Poush Sankranti. Khichdi takes centre stage, made with freshly harvested rice and lentils to honour the Sun God as he enters Capricorn. The Sankranti plate brims with pitha filled with fresh coconut and nolen gur, patishapta and dudh puli, rice dumplings simmered in milk, khejur gurer payesh and small coconut and sesame sweets. They are winter on a plate, offered with the quiet pride of a community that lives close to its earth.
Twenty one year old Aparna Paliwal from Delhi spoke of Ghuguti in the Kumaon hills. There is a legend about a long-awaited heir, a pearl necklace, an attempted betrayal and crows that intervened. The king thanked them with sweets made from wheat and jaggery that took the name Ghuguti. Even today families shape the first ghuguti and offer it to the crows before eating it themselves.
In my maternal home, urad dal and rice khichdi are non-negotiable on Makar Sankranti. Heavy with ginger and ghee, it is said to ease the transition from winter to spring. My house help from Bihar insists on dahi chura that day, while my neighbour from Tamil Nadu sends over warm bowls of khara pongal and the sweetest sakkarai pongal.
Delhi in winter is more than smog and citrus. It is a city transformed by harvest celebrations carried here by people from across India. In the weeks ahead I will explore how Delhi becomes a shared table for festivals such as Lohri, Pongal and Ugadi, each rooted in different soils yet speaking the same language of thanks for abundance and the promise of a new season. It is a story of how food and ritual travel, adapt and settle. It is also a story of how Delhi, in its own unhurried way, makes room for them all.