What is Kanuma?

Kanuma (కనుమ) is day three of the four-day Sankranti festival, and it belongs entirely to farm animals. While Bhogi is about bonfires and Sankranti itself is about the harvest and new rice, Kanuma is when Telugu farming families turn their attention to the cattle, buffalo, and bulls that did the actual work of getting that rice out of the ground. The animals are washed, their horns painted in bright colors, sometimes wrapped in tinsel or fitted with bells, and led out in a small procession before being fed the best food of the year. There's an old saying that even a crow won't leave its spot on Kanuma, because the day is treated as one for staying put with family, not traveling. In some villages, women sing traditional harvest songs while decorating the animals, the same tunes their grandmothers sang for the same ritual decades earlier.

In rural Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Kanuma was also when cockfights and bullock cart races traditionally took place in some villages, alongside big communal meals built around meat, since the day historically marked a break from the vegetarian focus of the earlier Sankranti days. Some communities extend the celebration into a fourth day, Mukkanuma, set aside specifically for non-vegetarian families to feast further. In cities, the animal rituals have faded for families without direct farm ties, but the spirit holds on as a day of rest, gratitude, and one more shared meal before life returns to normal, even for households who have not owned an animal in two generations. It's the quiet, unglamorous bookend to Sankranti — no fireworks, no flying kites, just a thank-you to the animals nobody else remembers to thank.