Tapoutwe - Harvest festival (february)

Come Tapoutwe , the eleventh month of the Burmese calendar, the

Myanmar have the harvest festival. All the products of the farm and

garden are made into htamane, a formulation of glutinous rice, coconut

slices, sessamum seeds, peanuts and a generous amount of cooking oil.

Htamane feast is either celebrated communally or done in the private

circle of family and friends.

When our grandparents' days, they hired men gathered in our garden to
make Htamene. There were 5 or almost 10 strong guys arrived in the
early morning and they prepared for making the delicious food. Our
garden was full of coconuts, peanuts, glutinous rice and tools for
making htamene. We did not really understand what they were doing, but
we all were interested to watch their work very much. My grandmother
explained us everything for what we wanted to know.

Not only our family but also our friends and neighbors came and
watched their interesting work. They were happy and they looked expert
for what they were doing. An old man organized all the things. He
looked like in charge of the team.

When all the goods were well-prepared and ready for making htamene,
they started to kindle a fire for their giant concave iron pots. It
was the time our curiosity aroused most. What they threw into the
giant concave pot were coconut slices, peanuts and generous amount of
cooking oil, glutinous rice and water by the instruction of their
leader. The two strong men each with a long wooden ladle were non-stop
stirring whatever throwing into their giant pot. They had a lot of
sweat during their work. But they never rest nor stopped. And finally
sessamum seeds were added last, this time it does not need skill. But
they said it was an equal important as the former labor.

It was finished in the early evening. So, it was our time to execute.
We all were happy to taste it with hot plain-tea or coffee. After
5:00PM, there were guests coming to our house and enjoyed our htamene.
There were foreigners; friends of our grandparents were present at
this party. We all were happy together not only to meet our friends
but also enjoying with Burmese traditional food, htamene. It was a
seasoning food and we all believed that it was good for our health for
the coming year.

At night, there were dance, music and musical show held in our garden.
Most of the performers were writers. They sang and played music before
the audience. My grandparents also took part in the performance.
(Don't forget, they once played in Writers' theatre!) So, we loved and
were happy to watch their dance and the lovely songs.

At mid-night, we did not notice the time passed. When time's up, we
all ended our gathering and my grandfather gave small portion of
htamen packed with sheet of leaf to the guests. He did not satisfy
himself if he hadn't a chance to give htamene to all the visitors. He
said htamene festival was not complete without distributing his
htamene to all his visitors. So, all were happy to bring this precious
present to their house.

Epilogue

So, the memory of the scene in our htamene festival was now in
history. But we could watch and learnt about the htamene festival at
the pagodas or at the market places or at the townships in the season.
It was a seasonal food, so we still valued this custom and never-fail
to miss it in every February of the year.

(photo-(above)- the painting of the scene of making htamene by U Ba Kyi,
photo-(below-left)- in our garden, celebrate the htaneme festival, our
grandparents proudly standing with their friend(white dress) among the
guests,
photo-(below-middle)-playing violin, a famous critic writer and our
uncle- SeinKhinMaungYi,
photo-(below-right)- our grandfather sang with the performance team behind)

--
'J'

Here, Harvest Festival in our garden Updated Video 2023,