Feature: Myanmar ushers in New Year after water festival

A large number of Yangon residents have been crowding around pagodas since Monday morning, especially the sacred Shwedagon Pagoda, and were paying their respects to the Buddhha there.

They bathed statues and sprinkled scented water on the images of Buddha as part of Myanmar's centuries-old heritage practiced on the traditional new year day, after the conclusion of the four-day water festival, which ran from Thursday to Sunday.

As the New Year was being ushered in on Monday, Myanmar people, who are mostly Buddhist, are busy with their annual rituals such as visiting monasteries, stupas, temples to take precepts, making donations and meditating.

On this day, young people normally pay their respects to their parents, grandparents, teachers and elderly people. Some of them give their elders baths, shampoo their hair or give manicures in old people's homes as a gesture to preserve Myanmar's age-old customs and traditions. Other youngsters offer their seniors naturally fragrant sticks of bark.

Also during the New Year, it is customary for people to free caged birds into the wilderness and fish in aquariums into the lakes, as a symbol of love for nature.

During the annual four-day traditional Thingyan water festival, people throw water on each another. By nature, water is cold and clean and, therefore, Thingyan water makes people feel cool, fresh and pleasant, and happy. It symbolizes the cleansing of sins from the previous year and making a fresh and auspicious start to the New Year.

Water is a symbol of not only cleanliness but also of auspiciousness. The people in Myanmar believe that through the celebration of the water festival, vices and evil deeds accumulated during the previous year can be washed away and replaced with happiness and hope for a better life in the incoming year.

In old days, Myanmar people were content to sprinkle water on each other using leaves, which was the traditional way of observing the water festival.

Nowadays, however, more people are soaking each other using water guns or plastic hoses usually accompanied by loud guffaws, reflecting the fun and enjoyment.

This year's water festival in Myanmar was celebrated joyfully by the people across the nation. Especially in Yangon and Manadalay, people introduced a "walking water festival" as a new form of celebration, with a huge wave of people in festive yet soggy clothes walking along the streets and roads, shouting and chanting, while having water thrown on them by spectators.

With heavy rain and cool weather providing nature's backdrop for the last two days of the festival due to the impact of cyclone Maarutha making landfall in west Myanmar's Rakhine coast, this year's Thingyan water festival ended on Sunday evening.

The festival was brought to a close with a ceremony at the Yangon City' Pandal, comprising a number of songs and dances.

Throughout the year, people look forward to the Myanmar water festival as an occasion to thank the deities for their good lives and to pray for peace and prosperity for their communities.

Among Myanmar's 12 seasonal festivals held every year, the Thingyan water festival is considered the grandest and the most anticipated event by the people of Myanmar. Endit