Onam: A New Beginning
Onam arrives like the first sun after a long rain, gentle and generous. The air smells of jasmine and fresh banana leaves, and everywhere there is a feeling that life is beginning again. Families sweep their thresholds, wash the courtyard, and lay the first ring of flowers for the pookalam. Children scatter marigold and thumba petals with the same seriousness as a priest, and kitchens wake before dawn to the clatter of brass urulis and coconut graters. Even in a busy city, Onam slows the clock; it asks us to look up, breathe, and remember who we are together.
Behind the colour and the feast is a story that every Malayali child knows by heart. Long before calendars, a kind and just king named Mahabali ruled a land so fair that no one went hungry and no door needed a lock. The gods, uneasy with so much goodness, sent Vamana, an avatar of Vishnu, to test him. In three steps, the little Brahmin measured heaven and earth, and for the third step the king bowed his head. Mahabali was sent to the netherworld but granted a wish: to return once a year and see his people. Onam is that homecoming. It is why we clean our houses, light lamps, draw flower carpets, and set a place at the table that seems to be for a king but is really for kindness itself.
The season has its own music. In Kerala’s backwaters, snake boats slice through green rivers, oars flashing in perfect rhythm, crowds roaring at the crest of each wave. In towns, you might catch a flash of Pulikali- men painted like tigers dancing to a drum that you feel in your ribs. At home, the quieter rituals speak. Ten days of pookalam rings grow from a small circle on Atham to a full bloom on Thiruvonam, each day a new layer, each petal a promise. Women in kasavu sarees move in a slow circle for Kaikottikali, their hands clapping soft as rain. Someone strings mango leaves at the door, someone polishes brass until it holds the lamp’s reflection like a second flame.
Every festival has a feast, but Onam’s sadya is a lesson in abundance and balance. A banana leaf becomes a map of flavours- salt, sour, sweet, and heat- each placed with care. There is avial, thick with coconut and vegetables cut like little poems. There is olan, pale and quiet, a whisper of ash gourd and cowpea in coconut milk. Thoran sprinkles coconut and mustard like confetti, puli inji bites and soothes at once, and pickles glow ruby and gold. Rice arrives like a small hill, then sambar, rasam, and at the end, payasam that tastes of cardamom and memory. You eat with your hand because food is also touch, and you finish full in a way that is not just about the stomach.
Onam travels well. In Bengaluru, you can see it in apartment courtyards where pookalams bloom on granite floors, in offices where the dress code turns cream and gold for a day, in markets where banana leaves sell out by noon. Neighbours exchange bowls of payasam the way monsoon clouds exchange light. The festival belongs to one state by birth but to anyone by instinct; its language is welcome.
There is a quiet housekeeping to Onam that feels right for homes everywhere. We clear what we don’t need. We oil a squeaky hinge, mend a loose handle, wipe the dust from frames, and give rooms their corners back. We bring fresh flowers inside and let the house smell like a garden. We open windows to the rain-washed air and promise to eat together more often. In this way, tradition becomes design: light in the right places, natural materials, a table that gathers everyone, a threshold that feels like a blessing.
At Livin Interiors, we welcome this season each year with a simple pookalam on the studio floor, a lamp that burns all day, and a shared meal that reminds us why we build homes in the first place. The festival is not a project for us; it is a pause. We say Onashamsakal to one another, wish prosperity for our clients and craftspeople, and step into the next months with the steadiness that comes from gratitude.
Onam’s gift is not only beauty. It is the idea that goodness makes a place bright, that generosity marks a threshold more surely than any carving, and that a shared meal turns strangers into family. When the lamp is finally pinched out and the flower carpet begins to fade, the feeling stays: a soft certainty that the year has reset and that, in the ways that matter, the king is home.
Comments
Post a Comment