The people of Mithila celeberated age-old festival, Jud-Shital, with traditional gaiety and fervour on Wednesday, on the first day of Baisakh. In the festival people receive water on their heads from their elders. In common parlance, Jud-Shital festival consists of two words, 'jud' which means blessing and 'shital' which refers to coolness. Hence, this festival, as its literal meaning suggests, is observed by people, offering blessing to their juniors, by putting water on their foreheads.
According to Manchan Jha, a priest at Radhakrishna temple of Darbhanga Raj, it is a festival which highlights the significance of water, plants, ponds and cleanliness. "Traditionally, it was observed for cleaning sources of water such as ponds and wells. That's why people which is still prevalent in rular pockets of Mithila and terai region of Nepal. Sadly, the festival has lost some of its original spark of late as many folks have stopped observing this important ritual," Jha said. People woke up early in the morning with cold water, kept overnight in 'lota' to be splashed over one's head from family elders. It is customary to pour water and irrigate trees and plants especially the mangoe plant so as to give it a new lease of life. It is mandatory to eat rice and 'badi' (spongy receipe made from gram flour), that had been cooked and left overnight to cool with chutney of raw mangoes.
"The festival still remains a lot of values to socialise and promote conservation of nature," said Manikant Jha, a Maithili writer and programme anchor. "We used to go out and play in the mud with each other only to wash ourselves in neighbourhood ponds afterwards. Not to forget that the Jud Shital festivity is protected by 'satuwain', being observed a day before in which people eat 'sattu' in the breakfast," he said. "Tradition has it that allthe sources of water, be it tanks or wells or any other such sources; it was cleaned on the Vaishakh Sankranti every year in Mithila. Not to forget hunting excercise in neighbourhood orchard and wrestling competition invariably organised in villages on the occasion," nostalgically recalled noted Maithili poet Jaiprakash Choudhary Janak. This tradition seems to have been gradually disappeared with the advent of modern lifestyle.
