A breezy Basant Panchami in Kolkata

As a shivering winter fades away, a rejuvenating spring slowly comes in. With the onset of spring or popularly known as 'Basant', various religious festivals are celebrated across the country. Different religious communities have different ways of celebrating the arrival of this season, reflecting unity in diversity and ruling out any discrimination against one another. Punjabis celebrate some diverse and unique festivals every year. Each of these festivals has some or other religious legends associated with it. They people believe in celebrating any festive occasion to the hilt and as a result, every festival is marked with traditional songs, energetic dances, and delicious recipes. The Basant festival that falls on the fifth day of the season is celebrated mostly by Punjabis across the world. With exceptional extravagance and right degree of pomp, they make the most of this occasion.

'Punjabee Bradree', a social and charitable organisation based in Kolkata, has been celebrating this day since its inception in the seventies. It is considered to be the maiden social and cultural festival event of the Bradree amongst others. Celebrated on the 5th of February, it is famous for its vivacity and colour. People come out to celebrate Basant with zeal and fervour where they interact and spend the whole day rejoicing. They put on yellow costumes appropriate to the season looking like a huge mass of mustard blossom walking down to the event.

In the presence of 1500 members or more, the Punjabee Bradree celebrated their 50 glorious years of their Annual Basant function at Lion's Safari Park. With more than 30 food & game stalls, a designated Kids Corner, Sports Events and Treasure Island, Bhangra & Gidda performance by a renowned artist, the entire park was decorated with the colours of Basant. "This year we celebrated our 50th years of Basant Mela , so it's special. Every year people of our community make it a point to meet and enjoy on this day. The kid's along with their parents eat, dance and party," said Neeraj Kapoor, Joint Secretary of the 'Punjab Bradree'.

Over the years, this occasion has been drawing huge crowds revelling in the happiness and enjoyment in the lap of Mother Nature. Various fun-filled activities are held involving children and their parents. Kite-flying is a popular entertainment of the people on this occasion. On a breezy Basant Panchami day, one could see nothing but innumerable multi-coloured kites in the sky, swishing over in all directions. "I take this opportunity to profoundly thank our media partner 'Millennium Post' in helping us making this event a grand success and for felicitating our Ladies Wing Members at this Event," added Neeraj.

The journey of the Bradree over the last five decades have been studded with glorious achievements because of their unique way to expand the ambit of their Bradree by accommodating youngsters through various fun filled activities and unhesitatingly connecting and empathising with those in need. In addition, existing members of the organisation have committed themselves to make it even more successful through concrete planning and welfare activities.