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HAPPY ONAM!

Part-1
Image Courtesy: D .K
For the past fifteen to twenty years the people of Kerala, in celebrating Onam, have switched from their land and courtyard to their sofas and settees. I am no different.

By ‘land and courtyard’, I mean the way we used to occupy ourselves during this festival. Kinds running around in fields surrounding the household for flowers and spreading floral carpet on the courtyard are a few of those memories. It was great fun in the country than in the city back then. Onam was mostly an occasion for getting together with family and relatives, during my childhood.   

Image Courtesy: Google
Unlike the Wikipedia article on Onam, the celebration does not have much to do with a specific religious practice with the way things are in the above drawn memory picture. Or should I say the way things “were”? Onam has a pan religious appeal. In order to explicate that I would like to tell you what I have seen recently in a church. In a place named Mattannur, about 20 km away from Chalode, my place, we have a Catholic church. The previous week, they announced that they will make an Onam floral carpet as part of the celebrations. I went there the previous Tuesday evening and found a beautiful floral carpet on the church floor, close to the bottom of the pattern of cross that adores the holy ground. The peculiarity of this church is that it does not have fixed pews. The chairs are all movable.

The Wikipedia article I mentioned registers that Onam is a Hindu festival. Perhaps, Wikipedia has its own political views and agendas. However, if such a politics is palpable, it is not independent of what appears to exist in actuality. 
To be contd. 

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