Rongali Bihu
Assam's spring new-year festival — husori singing, dhol and pepa, and a week of community gatherings.
Assam keeps three Bihus across the agricultural year. Rongali — or Bohag — Bihu is the spring one, marking the Assamese new year and the start of the sowing season, and it is the largest of the three. It falls in mid-April, with the Assamese calendar rather than the Gregorian one setting the day.
The festival opens with Goru Bihu, a day given to the cattle: they are washed in the river, rubbed with turmeric, and fed specially. The days that follow are for visiting. Husori groups move from house to house singing and drumming in the courtyard and are given food and blessings in return. The instruments are the dhol, the pepa — a horn made from buffalo horn — the gogona and the taal.
Bihu dance is performed by young men and women in Assam’s handwoven mekhela chador and gamosa, and in the towns the private, house-to-house side of the festival is joined by large public functions and competitive Bihu performances, several of which happen in and around Guwahati.
Because the date follows the Assamese calendar, it moves slightly year to year.