The people of Tripura celebrated Poush Sankranti with much pomp and fanfare on Wednesday.
The women cleaned their houses and decorated their courtyard with decorative rangolis, known as 'alpans' in Tripura.
Rangoli is a traditional decorative folk art of India in which decorative designs are made on the floors of living rooms and courtyards during the Hindu festivals. These decorative patterns and symbol of religious belief are created by the women to welcome goddess Lakshmi with good fortune, health and wealth.
Traditionally, household things like rice flour, lime, coloured mud, leafs and flowers are used to create these patterns. The synthetic colours are also used these days.
Sathi Kalyanjit, a resident of Tripura, said that she prefers natural colours over synthetic colours for the rangoli.
"To celebrate Poush Sankranti festival, we are decorating our house and the courtyard with various rangolis coloured with various colour mud. We are not using any synthetic colour but mud of various colour like black, red, pink, yellow and others. We also prepare various types of rice cakes and of vegetables," Kalyanjit said.
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Since Sankranti is a harvest festival, the sweet rice cakes made from the harvested crop is offered to god.
"We have harvested new crop and with that rice we give offering of sweet rice cakes to the God and celebrate Poush Sankranti," said Anjan Sarkar, a farmer.
It is also believed that the revered Bhishma from Mahabharata died on this day.
"We observe the death anniversary of Bhishma. We have constructed this hut and do picnic in it and later burn it in the morning," said Partha Debnath, a local villager.
On Sankranti, millions of devotees throng the ghats of Ganga to take a holy dip as it is considered to be auspicious.
The term Sankranti means overpowering of one sign over another. Sankranti is based on solar calendar unlike other festivals that are based on lunar calendar.