Onam Fever
August 29 – Onam Festival of Kerala

S Balakrishnan *

Illuminated temples

Onam fever grips Kerala during Aug-Sept., every year. By the by, it is Keralam, not Kerala, henceforth. The State Assembly has passed a unanimous resolution to change the State’s name from Kerala to Keralam with a suffix of ‘m’.

You see, the language is Malayalam, and the capital city is Thiruvananthapuram – all ending with an ‘m’. It is typical of Malayalam and Tamil names to mostly end with a consonant. Well, let us attend to Onam fever.

Onam is the most important festival of Keralam State. It lasts for more than ten days. This year we landed in Keralam on the very first day of Onam which is the fourth day (chathurthi) since new moon day; hence the festival starts with obeisance to Ganapathi, the remover of all obstacles.

Temples were illuminated and loud speakers were loudly blaring devotional songs so that gods can hear the prayer songs! The State Government sees this festive occasion as a chance to draw tourists and, therefore, supports and sponsors various cultural events, pageantry, etc.

There was already traffic jam and I wondered what would be the scenario as the festival reached the crescendo on Aug. 29th! The streets were overflowing with sellers and buyers of clothes, jewellery, fruits & vegetables, groceries, and flowers for athapookalam, the flower rangoli of Keralam, because the people want to show King Mahabali that they are happy.

King Mahabali of the past was a generous and mighty king who thought he was mightier than the Gods. So, Lord Vishnu took the Vamana avatar, His fifth avatar, to subdue Mahabali. The short-statured Vamana sought just three foot of land from the mighty king. Shukracharya, the guru of asuras, suspected something wrong in this simple request.

He forbade the king to grant this simple boon to Vamana but the king ignored his guru. So Shukracharya transformed into a beetle and blocked the kamandal’s (water jug) nozzle to prevent flow of water to complete the process of granting the boon.

Vamana poked the nozzle with a grass which hurt Shukracharya’s eye, forcing the beetle to fly out. And the process of granting the boon by Mahabali started; at this point Vamana suddenly took His viswaroopam form and measured the earth with His one foot and the sky with the other foot; now there was no place to keep the third step.

Mahabali, true to his word, bent down and offered his head for Vamana to measure/place the third step. Placing His third step on Mahabali’s head, Lord Vishnu pressed Mahabali down and sent him to the underworld.

Before going down Mahabali requested Lord Vishnu that he may be allowed to visit his land and see his subjects once in a year. Hence this gala celebration by his subjects to show their king that they continue to live happily. Thus goes the legend of Onam festival.

Onam feast

This was our second visit to Keralam during Onam. Four years back, it was an exclusive invite by my friend, Hariharan, to witness the Onam celebrations. We met in Gangtok in 1983 and our friendship has survived four decades! But we did not stay for the entire 12-day-period of Onam celebrations.

As a Tamil saying goes, virundhum (feast) marundhum (medicine) mundru (three) naal (days) dhaan (only). This time it was a hurried two-day visit for his daughter’s wedding in Thiruvananthapuram which coincided with the beginning of Onam celebrations.

This coincidence made difficult the booking of travel tickets. The cost of flight ticket was sky high and only a/c class ticket was available in trains. Even this I would have missed but for my wife’s goading.

Talking of tickets, I must mention about Keralam Government-run lottery scheme which has a bumper Onam first prize of 25 crore rupees on tickets priced at Rs.500 each. Yes, 25 crore rupees! But after agent’s commission, this tax and that cess, what one will finally get is Rs.12.89 crores. 13 lakhs is ok but 13 crores? I thought this would be too much for me to handle and decided against buying a ticket.

OMG! Did I shoo away Lady Luck who was winking at me from the so many lottery shops? As if a Communist government running a lucky draw and not relying on the merit of labour was not enough, it got involved in another controversy recently by introducing a Green Grasshopper as the logo for the lottery scheme; green grasshopper is considered a symbol of fortune.

A rationalist party believing in lucky symbols! Well, politics and principles are way apart.

Keralam is magical during Onam fever! My goodness, it is again ‘m’ at the end of Onam!