Pots full of sweet hope as Tamils celebrate Ponggal

Festival necessities: Customer Kanitha Kasayan, 34, (centre) buying sugarcane for Ponggal, assisted by provision shop owner Samy N. Nadarajan (right) and Poopathi Rajendran at Lorong Tingkat in Little India, Klang. — SS KANESAN/The Star

FOR businesswoman R. Devi Kanyaa Kumari, the Tamil harvest festival of Ponggal brings back childhood memories of waiting anxiously for a claypot of milk to boil over.

“When the milk boiled and overflowed, my sibling and I would shout ‘ponggal, oh ponggal!’.“This was after we were coaxed to do so by our parents.