Sunday run & a festival called Makar Sankranti

Did about 14kms today in a about 1hr 22mins. The weather was quite good even though I started at around 8.30 in the morning, as I wanted to catchup on some sleep and also get a first hand understanding of the weather I could expect next Sunday, as the marathon start quite late in the morning (7.30am to be precise). Based on today's run, I need to run hard the first two hours hard and complete 21kms in that time(before the Sun starts hitting hard), if I have any hope of doing a under 4hr 15min time. The weather was pleasant while running in the shade, but when I was directly under the Sun it was quite hot.

Today was a festive day - Makar Sankranti, its basically the harvest festival, celebrated under different names all over India (Bhiu in Assam, Pongal in Tamilnadu, Lohri in Punjab, and Makar Sankranti or just Sankranti in most other parts of India). I noticed two new aspects of this festival during my Sunday run, first one was very surprising, as I saw some families dressed in Black today while celebrating the festival (black is usually a mourning and inauspicious colour in India, a friend of mine has never worn anything completely black ever in his life as its considered inauspicious in his family). I did some homework and found out that this was one of the rare occasions when Maharashtrians wear black, as its suppose to make you warm on a cold winter day (Makar Sankaranti is a winter festival) & spread the cheer and warmth to people close to you, along with a special sweet made of til (white sesame seeds) & jaggery. Another surprising fact was that I did not see a single kite in the sky (this is also the kite flying festival which is very big in Gujarat), it was sad to see that now the kite flying was restricted to certain small pockets of South Bombay which had a strong Gujarati population. Its disappointing to see that the rest of Bombay has moved away from it.