Colours of Pongal

January arrives in my street wearing yellow.

Not the yellow of school buses or caution signs, but sugarcane yellow, turmeric yellow, the yellow of new rice heaped in clay pots. Pongal does not knock. It simply moves in, ties a mango leaf across the doorframe, and starts cooking.

At 4 a.m. my grandmother lights the fire herself. No gas stove on this one day. The clay pot sits on bricks, and when the milk rises and spills over, the whole family shouts "Pongalo Pongal!" like we are greeting an old friend who finally came home.

The kolam outside our gate takes two hours and both my hands. Amma draws the pattern; I fill it with colours ground from rice flour dyed red and green and violet. By noon the street looks like someone opened a pencil box across the road.

In the evening we fold the sugarcane leaves, feed the cows, and wear our newest clothes to the temple terrace. The sky over Mylapore turns orange, then purple, then that deep honest blue that only January knows.

Pongal ends. The pot is washed, the kolam fades under a hundred feet. But somewhere in me, January stays yellow all year round.