smr’s blog

Happy Lohri!

“bhirin”[bhee-rin] is a pahari thing we do on Lohri(Jan 13th). More specifically in Upper Shimla Area (Rohru etc) in Himachal.
The thing is, call someone, he answers it, and then say bhirin.
Example (How I win a bhirin on mom) -
Me : Mummiiii
Mom : Haan
Me : Bhirin

Its done early in the morning, and there is a competition on who does it first.
This is done on phone as well. Callee says hello, and caller says bhirin. It use to be more fun without caller id on phone. With caller id, the callee sometimes directly says bhirin.
Important rule - one has to take bath before he can do bhirin on others. So people take bath very early on this day.
On this day people greet each other with excitement and cheer, shouting bhirin. Very simple thing, but it rocks!

Within family its about catching up people on bed and doing bhirin on them, before they become conscious about it. I remember being woken up by mom/nanaji/mamaji etc at like 5am to do a bhirin on me. Then forced out of bed, to take bath, on a chilly morning. I rarely remember a Lohri at home without snow around. It used to be a fun filled day.

So today morning got calls from a few relatives, and called a few. Many didn’t accept my bhirin, guessing that I haven’t taken bath yet. true!
Searched net on bhirin and found nothing. Hence the post.

Hello reader,
bhirin!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 11:29 am and is filed under celebration, event, fun, home, life, relations, shimla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.