Garrick Ravi’s Annaprashan

Well I kind of messed this one up. I knew there was a ceremony called Annaprashan sometime in a baby’s first year. But the time flew by and when I looked more closely at what it was, I found out that it is the ceremonial feeding of the first solid food. And Garrick Ravi has already started trying solid foods. We started trying them with him to get him to sleep better at night (which, for the record, did not work). He doesn’t eat much solid food yet, just bites here and there (and he prefers very strong flavors. He loves Indian food, appropriately enough).

So we kind of missed the point on this one…but I decided to do it anyway in an informal way.

Part of the ceremony that I really like is when you offer a number of different items and see which one the baby goes for first. It’s supposed to tell you something about his preferences in life and what his priorities will be.

The traditional first food is khichdi and my friend Anu made us some for Garrick to try. So I brought that and some items over to my friend’s house and we had our own little annaprashan. The objects are a book symbolizing learning, jewelry symbolizing wealth, a pen symbolizing wisdom, and a Lego brick symbolizing property (couldn’t find clay!)

Here is the video: