Region and its festivals

Every region has its own culture and importance. Our country being the diversified with many religions, castes, creed and sects, there would be many reasons to celebrate.
I am from Andhra Pradesh(not sure if tmrw i would be eligible to use that word).The place where I come from has a mix of Maharashtra as well. And I just love the people in my place in the way they live and mix with each other.
When I was young, I used to go across the fields with my grandfather and my grandmother used to celebrate every small occasion related to fields and all festivals. I didnt understand at that time what they meant as I was just happy eating delicious food made for that occasion( kids...cant help) :D
Now they make perfect sense to me. I just want to list few of the occasions my grandmother used to celebrate being a farmers wife :)

1. Ugadi - Its telugu new year. It brings lots of hopes to the people and pray that their year goes well. My grandfather used to ask us to pick few grains of wheat from his hand. He used to count them and classify as even or odd. Based on that he used to say whether its going to be good or bad year for us. He also used to see panchang and read out about the year. It was a memorable time and now we just celebrate ugadi and do nothing more than puja and eatables. Its sad that my elders forgot the tradition.

2. Mirugu - Its a occasion welcoming the monsoon gods. Its usually celebrated in June. People used to go to forest making some eatables and used to have lots of fun and offer prayers. I remember going few times with my aunts and cousins when I was young. On that day it used to drizzle for sure whatever may be the temperature. For the past few years, its not raining on that day and no one makes a trip to forest. Priorities change and climate change and nature is showing its worst features!!! Monsoons are not on proper times and life is becoming difficult to farmers.

3. Naagula panchami - its an occasion to pray snake god and villagers used to believe more on snake god. The simple reason being snakes help farmers in keeping away rats and mice and protect fields. In my village there was a big ant hill where snakes dwell. We used to pour milk and pray to Shiva on that day!!! It used to be good watching women in traditional attire.

                                                                                                 .... to be continued