Leh, December 19 – Residents of the Ladakhi capital are celebrating the famous ‘Losar’ or New Year festival in the belief that the Gods would be pleased and the evil spirits would be waved off. Losar is being celebrated two months in advance to the actual new year as per tradition. Legend has it that an ancient king decided to advance the New Year celebrations by two months as he had to go on a conquest to another kindgom. Losar is a Tibetan word for New Year. “Lo” means year and “sar” means new. The annual Losar, as per the Tibetan calendar, also known as Ha-Sha-La or the death of the “King with the donkey toe”, generally commences one month prior to the Gregorian New Year and the celebrations continue till January end.
Buddhists celebrates Losar at village level where they ensure that the spiritual village God and Goddesses are felicitated through offerings and presentation of dances, food, drinks, general merry-making and scents.
Losar is the favourite festival of Buddhists, celebrated with gaiety and fervor in which the entire population of the region participates with full zeal and zest. Men carry torches of wood and visit each other’s homes during the celebrations. The rituals are conducted for weeks together in which complicated prayer ceremonies are conducted to felicitate the ancestors and to oust the evil and negative forces from the villages. People believe that they celebrate Losar to eliminate all the sufferings and miseries of the past years and for the coming year to bring happiness and prosperity in their lives “Losar means a new year. All the evil deeds performed by us during the entire year are eliminated from our lives and we welcome the new year with respect and enthusiasm. We make resolution that we’ll do good and auspicious deeds in the coming year,” says Tsewang Dorjey, a local. Although the unique customary practices marking Losar celebrations are still prevalent in many of the villages in Ladakh, but most of the towns have lost the sheen of the festival.
“We should celebrate the festival with the old traditions. This festival is an integral part of the cutlure of Ladakh. But due to the changing lifestyles, people have no time. But still they should find time to celebrate it in the same way as it was celebrated past 30-40 years with all its mandatory rituals,” said famous Ladakhi artist Padmashree Morup Namgyal.
Though apparently such prevailing customs are degrading, but much of the rituals are still performed with much fervour.
