They say it takes a village to raise a child and I say, maybe we require two for his first Mundan ceremony. More so when it is for two kids together. It is an important ritual in India and the ceremony is performed during the first or third year of a child’s life (mostly odd years). It is said that this ceremony helps to free the person from the last birth and make a new beginning in this birth. And as per our family rituals, if the mother is pregnant than the elder child can’t have this ceremony. So, after I had my second delivery, we had to get this done for both my kids together.
We stay in Hyderabad and since most of our relatives are in Delhi, we had the ceremony in Delhi. It was around Diwali when the cold weather begins to set in. Though we wanted to keep it a simple affair but given the number of relatives we have in Delhi we could not bring down the list to below seventy. The day of ceremony arrived, and we were all set. The guests had come in.
A Panditji was called to perform the rituals and a barber was there too. Me and my husband were sitting with the kids in our lap. The first touch of blade on my elder son’s head and I felt the pain. My elder one had beautiful locks grown in the last three years, so it has heart wrenching to see him lose them in front of my eyes. My son, however, was very patient and cool during the entire process.
My younger one was just a year old and I thought he would feel the blade more because the area was sensitive. He started crying and soon I had tears rolling down my eyes too. This made everyone emotional too including my husband.
The experience might have been painful for the kids (may be only the younger one) and me at that moment, but today, they remember it as an important day in their life when they look back at the photographs.
Beyond Stories 