About Tusu Parab

About Tusu Parab

Tusu Parab is the winter harvest festival of the Jungle Mahal and Chhotanagpur region: Purulia, Bankura and Jhargram in West Bengal, the Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Dhanbad areas of Jharkhand, and parts of northern Odisha. It runs through the month of Poush and ends on Poush Sankranti, the same day as Makar Sankranti.

Tusu is a folk goddess, loved like a daughter of the house. When the paddy is cut, girls and young women set up her image or a clay pot with rice and flowers, and every evening they sing Tusu songs to her. The songs are sweet, funny and sometimes cheeky, about village life, love and the news of the day.

On the last night families make pitha, rice cakes stuffed with jaggery, coconut and sesame. At dawn on Sankranti, the girls carry tall, bright chaudals, frames of bamboo and coloured paper, to the river, sing their last songs and let Tusu go in the water.

Big Tusu fairs follow on the banks of the Subarnarekha, the Kangsabati and other rivers, with music, swings, food stalls and the sound of the dhamsa and madal drums.