🌾When Peddamma’s Yard Taught Me Devotion - By MS | Bhuangan Blog

A Bhuangan Ritual Series

“Some mornings don’t need alarms.
They arrive with birdsong, fog,
cow dung water on the ground,
and jasmine in your sister’s hands.”

🌾 A Village That Woke as One

At my Peddamma’s(Pedda-Elder, Amma-mom-She is elder sister to my mom and so we call her that) home, no one needed a clock.
The entire village rose together —
at the same hour, under the same fog-soaked sky,
with the same quiet knowing:
the day had begun.

We weren’t used to it at first.
6 AM felt like 4.
But still, we got up —
wrapped in heavy blankets, eyes half-shut,
and stepped into the morning light like it was a story waiting to be told.

🪷 My Sister and the Jasmine

I’d see my sister first,
plucking malli puvvulu (jasmine flowers) from the bush,
her tiny fingers moving faster than her sleepy face.

No rush. No phone. Just fragrance.

She’d collect them for Peddamma —
for the gods inside,
for the braid that would soon hold them,
for the air itself.

“That’s how you fill a morning —
with flowers, not noise.”

🪔 The Sacred Art of Preparing the Front Yard

Peddamma’s ritual was the same, every single day.

• She swept the yard before the sun fully rose.

• Sprinkled cow dung water over the earth — sacred, purifying.

• Smoothed the surface with practiced hands.

• Took her white powder and began the day’s rangoli.

Simple. Clean. Centered.

The whole yard smelled of smoke, mud, cow dung, and love.
The kind of scent you can never bottle.
The kind that raises you — not just in body, but in being.

🎶 A Soundtrack of Birds and Subrabhatam

As she worked, the background music played itself:

• Birds in flocks, coming to check for leftover rice powder.

• Venkateswara Subrabhatam, echoing from the neighbor’s radio.

• The fog curling around the rangoli, like nature’s breath.

There was divinity in the air —
not the loud kind, but the kind you whisper to.

And we just stood there.
Watching. Breathing.
Becoming part of the ritual without even trying.

✨ Ritual Highlight: The Cow Dung Water

This may sound strange to some —
but in our homes, cow dung water wasn’t dirt. It was devotion.

Sprinkling it at dawn meant:

• Purifying the threshold

• Welcoming Lakshmi and health

• Honoring Bhoomi Devi — the Earth goddess

It wasn’t superstition.
It was love made visible.

“Cleanliness wasn’t just hygiene.
It was reverence.”

🌼 A Bhuangan Thought to Carry

“The front yard was our temple.
The morning was our prayer.
And devotion wasn’t a chant —
it was watching Peddamma bend to the earth with care.”

Even now, if I close my eyes,
I can see the fog, the rangoli, the jasmine,
feel the chill on my cheeks,
and hear the birds and gods sharing the same sky.

That memory?
It’s enough to anchor me through anything.