Onam again....

Onam is my favourite festival. I have written many times how the sights and scents of Onam made me joyous as a young girl and later on as I had my own family. It is a festival of sharing. I loved making the traditional sadhya for my family and other loved ones. I would go to great lengths to prepare everything perfectly from dry roasting the coconut for a variety of dishes to eschewing store-bought masalas in favour of hand ground ones. It was a tradition I wanted to create. The tastes you hand down to your kids serve as the most vivid memories of childhood. Years later when you are not around to be with them, a whiff of some childhood memory will bring them comfort. Every year a few of my friends would come over to spend Onam day with us. This past year being one of bereavement, I cannot in good conscience celebrate the festival tomorrow. My husband is away in Europe. The kids and I are going to design a lavish pookalam and then go over to a friend’s house for lunch - simple and low key celebration unlike my normal one. There is a time for different kinds of Onam during a lifetime. The spirit of the festival however is always the same for me.

The symbolic idea of Onam is to celebrate a good harvest. In this day and age when practically nothing is grown in Kerala to warrant the tag of self-sufficiency, it is not harvest so much as prosperity that is celebrated. We are grateful for the abundance received and in showing our gratitude with generous feasts, we hope to make the coming year prosperous as well. The traditional celebrations of old are stories I have heard from others. The plucking of flowers like the pure white thumbapoovu, bright blue krishnapoovu, the deeper vibrant blue kakkapoovu and indeed any flower the children could lay their hands on to make the beautiful pookalams. The food prepared from vegetables and grains grown in the fields around the houses. The graceful kaikottikali dance that all the women of the house would engage in after the feast. The playing of games that are no longer in vogue. All the borrowed memories tell a tale of a simpler time when there truly was abundance in the land. Now the flowers and vegetables come from Tamil Nadu. The rice comes from Andhra Pradesh. The fields have given way to houses and high rises. Most of the children think Onam is merely a holiday to feast and burp.

In the midst of remembering the times past, its yet fruitful to be grateful for whatever we have in the present. Onam changes over the years but its vibrancy will never change. In the month of Chingam when the entire land looks its gorgeous best, when the scents of water lilies fill the air, when women look lovely in their cream and gold mundu-veshtis, when people open up to each other again simply because no one can be unhappy at Onam time, you fall in love with the spirit of this beautiful festival all over again. Happy Onam everyone!