I spent last 15 years in various marketing roles across US, Europe and India and major holidays and festive days have taken a prominent role in my life due to professional reasons.
While living in the US, Walmart would always tell me the next holiday or festival day through its promotional sales.
Soon after Christmas and New Year Sale it will be Valentine’s Day Sale, then Mother's Day Sale, Spring Sale, Father's Day Sale, Summer Sale, Autumn Sale, Thanksgiving Sale, Winter Sale just to name a few and back to Christmas and New Year Sale.
There is no way one could avoid noticing all the marketing promotions around these as soon as you step in to the supermarket for your weekly shopping.
In US, if I casually noticed these, when I moved to UK, I learned the importance of these dates in the hard way. My role at Microsoft required me to organize meetings for senior customer executives and the dates were usually blocked two months in advance.
Once I picked a date free for all Microsoft executives and briefed my events manager Deirdre to block our Box at the Wembley Stadium for the meeting. Deirdre went back to her seat and immediately called me back. “James, I don't think anyone will show up for your meeting. You picked Valentine’s Day for your meeting!
In Britain, you are supposed to be with your partner that evening or depressed and drunk alone somewhere!
Deirdre convinced me the last thing my customer executives would want is to attend a business meeting on Valentine’s Day evening. But she helped me to install a holiday calendar on Microsoft Outlook so that I would never make such goof ups in the future.
After moving back to my Bharat, my village in Kerala, my weekly trip to big supermarkets stopped and my email calendar was the only thing which reminded me of these holidays.
But over the years I noticed there is something more profound around me reminding me about the holidays, festive days and seasonal days. The temple, birds, the sun and the river takes the role of Walmart! As soon as the New Year break is over my calendar will tell me Valentine’s Day is next, but the Aluva Siva temple would tell me no, Mahasivaratri is next!
The first sign is a group of Khalasis from northern Malabar region of Kerala, who would arrive on the shores of Periyar with a bunch of poles and a small boat with their jugaad for a crane. Then it would be a race against time to complete the temporary bridge for hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to cross over the river to offer prayers for the lost souls from their family on Mahasivaratri night.
Some days during my morning walk, I would travel with pilgrims on the permanent boat managed by Kunjumuhammed to check out the progress of the temporary bridge.
As an engineer it's always inspiring for me to watch how they construct the long bridge with just hand tools. The khalasis would swim down to tighten the poles under water, swim up to take breath and go down again. But they would always complete the bridge just in time for Sivaratri. But my calendar would keep telling the biggest event ahead of me is Valentine’s Day! And over the years, I noticed Valentine’s Day is fixed but Sivaratri is not.
For this Sivaratri, the government constructed a permanent concrete bridge, big enough to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims for Sivaratri and strong enough to withstand the fury of the monsoon floods.
But I will permanently miss the temporary bridge, skilful engineering work of the Khalasis and the boatman Kunjumuhammed.
I hope my Bharat will continue to show me signs of the seasonal events and I won’t need to pop into a supermarket to find out my upcoming holiday!
(The author is the founder/brand ambassador at Jackfruit365. The views expressed in the article are strictly personal.)