The Hindu community will welcome Pongal this week in the Tai month of the Tamil calendar which marks a new beginning. As a fresh start, brand new clay pots called pannai are the preferred traditional cooking tool to make the pongal dish of rice boiled in milk and raw sugar cane. 

In Kuala Selangor, a family enterprise making clay pots for over 60 years has been hard at work to meet the demand of Pongal pannai. Mahavisnoo Krishnan is the third generation to run Krishnan Pottery after his grandfather and father.

A perfect earthen pot takes five to six days to complete with hand-painted floral and Rangoli patterns added specially for Pongal. It takes six months of preparation to complete the booking of 30,000 pannai pots. 

Their products are marketed throughout Malaysia and exported to Singapore.