Happy Onam

Snippets about Onam celebrations in Mumbai.Happy Onam everyone! Onam is the biggest festival of the coastal state of Kerala. It falls during the Malayalee month of Chingam (between August and September) and marks the homecoming of the legendary King Mahabali. In Kerala, the 10-day harvest festival is a period of feasting, breath-taking snake boat races and exotic Kaikottikali dancing. Malayalee women dressed in crisp white saris with gold borders, and bedecked with jewellery, make elaborate rangoli patterns with coloured rice paste and pookkalam (with flowers) in front of their homes to welcome the king back to his kingdom. “We generally use flowers that have full petals along with a few tulsi (basil) leaves. A lotus sits in the middle of the pookkalam. The lotus should have 108 petals and is called Lakshmikamal, signifying wealth and Lord Vishnu’s wife,’’ explains Raphael.Belief expert Devdutt Pattanaik says Onam is like Diwali for Malayalees. “The festival is more than a thousand years old. Farmers believe that paddy signifies the regenerative powers of asuras. Thus, cutting the paddy is like beheading the asuras,’’ he explains.Jose Varghese, who took a day off from work, says that every year friends and guests gather at his Sion home for a sumptuous feast on the first day of Onam. “We have the same meal for lunch as well as dinner and vary the menu over the next three days,’’ he says, reeling off the items on a typical Onam feast—a vegetarian one of pickles, pappadam, plantain chips, thoran (bhaji), avial (mixed vegetables), curries such as olan and erissery, pachady (a kind of raita), rice, parippu (daal), sambar, rasam, pulissery (a kind of kadhi) and payasam served on a glistening banana leaf.Borivli housewife Nirmala Nair’s mind goes back to the grand celebrations held in her hometown of Palakkad in Kerala. “The scale of the festival is much bigger there, naturally. There are jhoolas and the rangolis are bigger. There are also many more coconut dishes that add a completely different vibe to the festival,’’ she says.As Ramachandran K, festival director of Keli which organises traditional Malayalam festivals in the city puts it, “It is a festival which spreads the message of equality.’’ He pauses and adds, “We can dream about having equality at least once in a year.’’