The Sun does not care for the names we give it.
Astronomically, it is a cold mechanical tilt—the transition into Makara Rashi, the beginning of the northward journey we call Uttarayanam. But to the human soul, it is the heartbeat of the world resetting. Across the dust of India and the peaks of Nepal, the air fills with a thousand names: Pongal, Lohri, Magh Bihu, Khichdi, Shakrain. Different tongues. Different altars. One star.
We often mistake the science of nature for the meaning of it. You do not need to understand celestial mechanics to feel the return of the light. You only need to have been cold. You only need to have been in the dark.
The Fire of the Threshold
Bhogi is the threshold. It is the day of the bonfire, where the old is surrendered to the flames. But the heaviest things we carry are not made of wood or cloth. They are made of thought.
We burn old assumptions. We burn the hasty judgments that have grown brittle in our hearts. We burn the stories we told ourselves about other people without ever seeing their faces.
I learned this at my own front door.
A delivery boy stood there, his breath blooming in the air. When I finally opened the door, he looked at me with a strange, flickering exhaustion. “I thought someone was standing there,” he said. “Watching me through the slit. Looking at me, but refusing to open.”
I looked at my door. There was a narrow, polished mirror panel embedded in the wood.

He hadn’t seen a person. He hadn’t seen an intention. He had seen a reflection of his own anxiety, framed in glass.
Two people. One door. One moment. But we were living in two different universes. He was in a story of rejection; I was simply in a moment of delay. It became clear then: It is not the door that divides us. It is the mind that bends the light until the truth is unrecognizable.
The Theater of the Mind
We believe we respond to the world, but we are merely reacting to our own shadows.
A delay becomes an insult. A silence becomes a conspiracy. A reflection becomes an enemy. Reality is a quiet, simple thing, but the human mind is a Shakespearean director—it demands drama. It demands a theater of grievances.
Bhogi is the ritual of burning the script. It is the realization that:

• Hurry distorts.
• Calm reveals.

The Turning
As the Sun turns north, the days stretch their limbs. The shadows shorten. This movement is not just a map coordinate; it is a psychological migration. It is the transition from Reaction to Awareness.
We may not all be astronomers, but we all know the feeling of the weight lifting. That shared warmth is the thread that binds the festival together, crossing borders of language and belief.
This Sankranti, let the old stories turn to ash. Let us step into the light of Uttarayanam unburdened by the ghosts we saw in the mirror.
Not every pause is a closed door. Not every silence is a judgment.
As the Sun turns, may we turn with it—from the theatrical to the real, from the distortion to the truth.
Welcome the tilt of light in this Uttarayanam with clarity.

Happy Thai Pongal—may the sweet overflow in your kitchen and in your perceptions alike. 🌾☀️