Final Onam Post- The Celebration #myfriendalexa #scrutiny

In the previous posts you saw what are the preparations we do on the penultimate day. Today is all about Tiruvonam. It is rightly done in extended families as the welcoming ceremony needs three women and a few men. Why? We’ll see. Apparently I was the representative of three women and the few men as we didn’t have anyone else to do these and my husband was traveling and reached back on the Tiruvonam morning. Needless to say I threw a fit on this. Lol

So we have arranged everything for the welcoming ceremony. Early morning by 4 everyone wakes up and takes shower. In older days people wear damp clothes while doing the ceremony. A woman would walk in the front holding a Kerala style pitcher named ‘Kindi‘ and pouring the water which symbolises washing the feet as well as path way for Mahabali. The second woman would do poojas on the Onathappan- applies sandalwood paste and puts Thumba flowers to make a pathway analogous to the red carpet we see these days.

Third woman would keep an Ada in the front and lights a lamp by keeping a lighted thread immersed in oil on top of it. This will accompanied with the cheering by the men – Aarpooooooo irrrrrro irrrrrro irrrrrro- which is analogous to Hip Hip Hurray.

Since I was alone I couldn’t take the video and also I had to skip the Kindi step and a few other steps in the Pooja like the sandalwood paste and lighting the lamp.

Pics were taken after we had daylight. Also I missed keeping the plantain leaf under Onathappan. A friend of mine pointed this out.

While doing all these, the rice batter will be poured on top of the Onathappan and finally your hands immersed in the rice batter would be placed on the door which symbolises opening the door for the Asura king.

Now the preparations for the Sadya starts. Onam is incomplete without the Sadya. Several varieties of Kerala style dishes would be there. In Central Kerala and Southern Kerala, sadya is purely vegetarian. But when we go to Northern Kerala non-vegetarian dishes are a must. The new generation Sadya has the instant one bought from the catering centres but for us we made th Sadya ourselves at home and hence the dishes were simple and less in number but we had the satisfaction of having the homemade food.

Before having Sadya we keep a plantain leave in front of a lighted lamp and keeps all the dishes including rice and the Payasam aka Kheer which is a sweet rice porridge in milk or melted jaggery. Some people make it using different ingredients like wheat, banana etc.

Our Sadya has pickles, chips, Aviyal, Thoran, Erisssery, Kaalan, Pachadi, Sambar, Parippu along with Rice, Payasam and Pappadam.

After the Sadya we usually have games, kaikottikali, pulikali etc but ours was comparatively a silent one. This marks the end of the Onam series. Thanks for following the series.