Skip to main content

Bevu-Bella

Just a day before Ugadi, I remembered the conversation I had with my brother a few years ago. As you might know, we prepare Bevu-Bella on Ugadi day (Bevu means neem and Bella means jaggery) and its significance is that life is a mixture of joys and sorrows and we should accept both in the right spirit.

We had heard this explanation from childhood, so we thought of giving some new dimensions to this. Here are a few we came up with.
1) If you have eaten Bevu-Bella, you would know that jaggery gets dissolved instantly while the taste of neem lasts on your tongue for a long time. This denotes that joy is short lived and the bitterness or sorrow stays on with us for a long time.
2) Before eating Bevu-Bella, we get mentally prepared for the bitterness of the neem (and totally forget that there is also jaggery with it) This is how we look at life, don't we? Always scared of the bad things, apprehensive about the future, fear of losing - that we don't even realize that there were so many happy moments we let go by.
3) I wonder why it is named as Bevu-Bella and not Bella-Bevu. Is it the importance given to the sorrows? Or is it that we start with sorrows and end with joy? Don't know, but a good topic to think over!
4) Can your face be ever pleasing when you are eating Bevu-Bella? I have hardly seen any! That shows that we can hardly express our joys as strongly as we could express our griefs or bitterness. I failed to recollect any instance where I had expressed my joy with great intensity for a very long duration, but there have been many cases where I went on and on sulking, cribbing, complaining...

I am sure there must be many more explanations. Do you know any?
Labels:

Comments

krupa said…
The significance is thus (acc to me):
life is like an empty holder.You add either joys or sorrows by your actions.whatever it is..you have to reap the results of your actions.You put in things which make you happy (bella) or you add things which make you miserabe (beevu).So the trick is to add a little of bevu and more of bella.
But a little of bevu is needed as sorrow is needed to give depth to your understanding and also too much bella will make you puke :)
March 20, 2007 11:43 PM
Vedu Joshi said…
bevu-ella aagbaardu anta bella serisi bevu-Bella maaDidaare ansutte ;)

Another view of bevu can be that even though it tastes bad, it is good for your overall health. Similarly, your problems will lead to a better you :)

About your item 4, bevu bella tindu oLLe maataaDu antiddru. Andre, even though you taste sweet and bitter, you should be sweet to others.

Vedu
March 23, 2007 10:12 AM
rekha said…
that is true ,bevu remains longer than bella.man tastes somuch bitterness in the hope of getting a little bella!!!
March 31, 2007 12:00 AM
Anonymous said…
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
January 03, 2010 4:02 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Limitations Of Human Imagination

I watched the movie "The Abyss" yesterday. Unadulterated hollywood alien-sci-fi garbage. Pseudo-emotions mixed with american-arrogance, so much crap that it would have given Karan Johar some serious inferiority complex. But, this made me think why so many alien stories are so similar. Lets come to the assumptions in the alien movies: 1) Aliens always love to make contact with the humans (If I were an alien, I would try to make contact with crocodiles - much more interesting, right?) 2) Aliens are generally much more intelligent than humans (Its hard to beat the dumbness of humans - probably aliens don't watch Big Boss! Also, since 'they' contact us by reaching 'our' planet, they must be better than us!) 3) Aliens by default understand or learn English (by intercepting the cerebral signals and interpreting with the aural waves and decoding to hexadecimal system - you will be given some such nonsense by the story writers) If you tell the aliens "howdy...
4 comments
Read more

Ringtones

Why is it that most people don't keep their mobiles in silent mode, in general and particularly in meetings, movie halls, theaters and concerts? Why is it that people who hate silent mode, don't ever use "Increasing ring" feature? Why do such people use very loud ring tones? Why is it that most people use a very common ring tone and it takes them eternity to pick calls? (Yes, they don't even realize that its their mobile that is ringing!) Why is it that people with the most irritating ring tones are the ones who get calls very regularly? Why is it that most of the ring tones are monotonic? (Don't you think polyphonic ring tones are so less irritating on the ears?) Why is it that people so frequently use the default Nokia monotonic ring tone or a badly played version of Malgudi Days? Why have I never heard a nice polyphonic ring tone of Hotel California or Pulp Fiction theme or something? Why?
2 comments
Read more

What Exactly Bothered You?

I am amazed by the display of naivete by people, their naivete so deeply conditioned that it ceases to be artificial. These people are very well aware of the reality, but when you show them some proof to confirm that, they are aghast and shocked. What the hell am I ranting about? I am talking about "The curious case of N D Tiwari"! To be honest, when I heard about it, I laughed out loud. Not because there was something funny in his achievements, but the way people reacted to it. So I am trying to understand what exactly bothered them? A Governor was doing 'it' ? ('It' upsets more people than lets say, if he was taking a bribe of crores of rupees from those 3 women) A Governor was doing 'it'? (Come on seriously, are we not taught in schools that politicians work for people and poverty is dropping like Walmart prices?) A Governor was caught doing it? (What is revealed is always only the tip of the iceberg. Just imagine the uncaught! Is it the "env...
1 comment
Read more