My favorite festival

Onam, one of my favorite festivals just went by and this time I am guilty of doing nothing special. Vishu and Onam are the two most important festivals for malayalees. Yep, not Vinayaka Chaturti, Navratri, not even Diwali... in Kerala, Vishu and Onam take precedence over any other festival. I am especially fond of Onam because the festivities last for 10 days. Having lived in Kerala until I was about 9 years old, I was lucky that I got to spend quite a few Onams with extended family. I get so nostalgic when I think of all the Onam holidays that I've spent with my cousins at our family home. Usually the quarterly holidays at school coincided with the 10 days of Onam. I'd be so distracted during my last exam because all I'd be doing is counting down to when we leave. This habit hasn't changed much even now, if I am going somewhere my mental clock starts ticking a week before - "this time next week"... until it comes to "tomorrow this time... I'll be there".

My Onam holidays would begin with my dad picking me up at school... last day of exam I always got to ride home on my dad's bike. At home, I'd laze around enjoying the feeling that I don't have homework to do... or open my books for the next ten days. Invariably some friend from the neighborhood will knock on our door or I'll be at someone's door... my mom would warn me not to play outside and soil my clothes because "remember you'll be traveling in these clothes" she'd say. After few hours, I'll hear my mom call out my name... once, twice and third time I'd say bye to my friend and run home (On a complete tangent - Now I completely understand why my mom always felt edgy and irritated everytime we were going to my dad's house - She was going to her In-laws!) An auto would be waiting at the gate to drop us and our luggage at the bus stop. All the way to the bus stop I'd keep praying that I get a window seat. Sometimes we experienced the luxury of hiring a car (usually an ivory colored ambassador car) all the way to the village... I used to feel on top of the world if that happened. Anyway, after the bus journey and another auto ride, we'd get off on a dirt road and walk (I'd run) rest of the way to the house. The house is located in between acres of paddy fields. Usually thin strip of mud roads serve as walkways between the fields - people would have to fall in single file to walk comfortably without having to lose balance and falling in to a field. It's a nightmare if you have to maneuver these roads on a bicycle! Most of my cousins and second cousins would be there already and right from the gate I can hear the chatter.

How the next week or so passed by, I'd have no idea. Our mornings would start with picking flowers and making a pookalam (a rangoli equivalent in flowers). After the pookalam work will come a session of hide and seek, followed by running and catching, lock and key.... until some one tells us to stop making noise or one of us fall down and need adult supervision to tend to a cut. Then we'd spend time playing and soaking ourselves in the pond.

Onam is a harvest festival... which meant that the paddy outside was ripe and ready for harvest. Through out the day we'd have workers on the fields bent down with their sickles chopping the ready to be harvested paddy. They work through the morning, break for lunch and then get back to work again. Post lunch, a group us would follow them to the fields... I'd love to go watch them work so effortlessly with their tools. I'd plead with them to let me try... until they give in! Late afternoon, they'd bring in all the chopped long stalks with grains and dump it on the long verandah wrapping the front of the house. There'd be a separate set of people separating grains from the stalks by squishing it between their feet, another process that looked so darn easy.. until you try and fail miserably. Once the grains are out, the stalks are then taken and piled up in the yard to make hay... which will then be used to feed the cows. Our favorite pass time was to climb up this "vaykol" (hay) mountain... and slide down bringing most of it down with us... much to the agony of my poor grandmother. Dusk will see my cousins and I fresh out of shower and a whole bunch of us from the house will walk to a temple which is about a mile and half away... on the way stopping to talk to neighbors, relatives and million other people.

Another fun exercise is molding of Thrikkakarappan (a foot long tapering cubes of mud - they are almost conical in shape). I think tradition calls for having seven, however our house always had three. It was the men of the house who would sit bare chested and start working on the soil, they have to get the mixture of soil and water right to actually make it work. As kids, it used to be so cool to be officially allowed to play with mud and water. Although the real work includes a lot of beating this muddy mixture in to that long tapering shape. On Onam day these thrikkakaprappans will be arranged on a banana leaf surrounded by tulasi leaves with a bright red hibiscus inserted on top of it.

Onam is 10th and last day. Since pookalam is the highlight of the occasion in addition to the flowers we pick, we'll have more flowers from the market. It'll take us about two hours to finish the design (which would have been discussed and finalized the previous night). The older cousins get to guide and give instructions the younger ones have to hang in there and do the labor work. All the women folk will be busy in the kitchen making the 11 essential dishes to accompany the rice and ofcourse the payasam (kheer). The aroma from the kitchen which is a combination of many dishes being cooked at one time will make your mouth water... You'd see some of the men-folk walking by the kitchen volunteering to be payasam tasters... especially my grand father who was a chronic diabetic. He'll sneak it to the kitchen or send me to get him a glass of payasam before lunch was served... that way my grandma wouldn't know. Finally, it will be time for the grand finale - The big OnaSadhya (Sadhya = a grand lunch served on banana leaves). Once that's done... the house suddenly becomes calm. With a severe case of food coma and sugar overdose everyone will gather around in the verandah chewing beetle leaves to help us with digestion... That's when my mental clock would tick again, now it would say " tomorrow this time, i'll be back home".

After we moved to Coimbatore, I never had the luxury of spending the whole 10 days at Kerala ever again. We still managed an occasional trip to Kerala to spend the day before and the day of Onam... or sometimes when Onam fell over a weekend. No matter what, my mom made sure that we did the pookalam and the sadhya every year, wherever we were. I got to bunk school/college/work guilt free on Onam days. Over the years, I got to invite my friends from school/college/work for lunch and my mom would be more than thrilled to host all of them... But nothing beats the charm of being in Kerala and getting to spend a grand onam with a whole bunch of family, running around paddy fields, trying to mold shapeless tortoises and dinosaurs in the name of making thrikkakarappan and sliding down the hay mounds.... aahhh if only one could turn back time!