Let's Celebrate 'Aurudu' with love
As written by Rtr. Hasindri Watawana,
‘Aurudu’, Sinhala and Tamil New Year, brings you the best season to celebrate yourself, to celebrate your life and to celebrate each other. The wondrous changes happening in the surrounding brings the sense of aurudu to light. The birds, the flowers, the trees and everyone get ready to celebrate life. It gives you family time, a time out of monotonous humdrum life. It takes the love around, from north to south, from east to west, from grandparents to their grandchildren creating bright smiles all around. Employees travel home wrapping all the stories to be unfold and families reunite sharing all the joy, care and love. Houses get cleaned up and treated with newest paints and curtains. But the smell of aurudu food wins over the paints. The laughs and giggles carry the enthusiasm all over the place, making everyone excited about this day.
Traditions are the most significant thing about aurudu. It makes whole Sri Lanka do one thing together at the same moment creating huge ripples of blessings that revolves around and far away. The bowl of milk rice and a fountain of milk flowing out symbolize prosperity and peace.
All the traditions have a deeper meaning and a greater history that they strengthen the bonds between families and with nature as well. It is all about reminding you about what you are responsible for. And also it is about unity. Sharing food and gifts, giving money to the kids and making them save, all these simple tasks that we as humans don’t take time to do on the other days, create enormous joy.
Aurudu events take place with lots of fun events that you never get to experience in another season. They are so unique and cultural. They tell a big story about our culture; a colourful and an enthusiastic story, a story that have taken hearts of many people from other cultures towards ours, a giant and a proud story of Sri Lankans and a legacy of thousands of years. All this reminds you about your responsibilities again, the responsibilities you have towards protecting culture as it is and make it a reality for many more generations to come.
The smiles resonate through the woods, through the roads, through the mountains and falls. They are the smiles of genuine hearts that are infectious, contagious. You can see around the people radiating joy and extreme happiness. This is what aurudu creates. Most importantly this is what it brings to our lives, the joy.
