just a little bit about the onam celebrations held at both seremban centre last week, and bangsar centre yesterday. it was stupendous alright! the last time i celebrated onam was with some friends at the malayalee association’s onam celebration in seremban some 8 years back. my friend’s mum was the organising chairperson, so we lent our hand to help out with the performances, and i even modelled! hahahahaha! with shashi and balraj…sigh….those were the days. anyways, back to the recent ones, it was very nicely done at seremban and bangsar, with both having their own charms. at both venues we started off with bhajans, i sang vittala hari vittala, rather slower and a more mellowed down version than the usual scarefest of a bhajan, and in bangsar i sang sukhu’s favourite ganesha bhajan….gowri ganesh. well, sukhu was supposed to have joined us at bangsar, but he couldn’t. i guess, he was there in the song. then after bhajans, it was a time to explain to the audiences on the significance of onam. its a very spiritual celebration that trancends race and religion, just that its the celebrations for the keralites, but the festivities are truly felt beyond the language’s borders.

after arathi, it was time to savour the prasadam. goodness gracious me! sanku even made a vow, “i’m marrying a malayalee!”. although someone commented, that being catred food, it didn’t really have the keralite’s touch in it, well, who’s complaining? sukhu missed the one at bangsar, so, again, both me and sanku had his share.

there are some interesting facts that i would like to share after learning about onam and a little bit of kerala…

1) malayalam is an amalgamation of both tamizh and sankrit, mostly, and blended with the native tongue of the locals there.

2)coconut and paddy plays an inportant role in many of the malayalee’s festivals. guess why? go google kerala, and you’ll see why!

3)to be a complete indian cook, you will have to master kerala’s cooking. its simply superb!

4)the land of ayurveda, as kerala’s land is abundant with herbs and medicinal plants/trees/organisms.

5)literacy rate in kerala is the HIGHEST in india. its quite fun to be a communist after all

6)listen to the chanda mela (i hope i’ve spelt it correctly) when you want to go to war. mindblowing! you will kick @$$!

7)they make full use of flowers, again, thanks to the agricultural cultivation in the land.

8)if you’d listen to malayalam songs, its very righ in raagas and sounds like you’re listening to some carnatic song. indeed, very musically talented people. 

9)its very easy to get sarees/traditional indian outfits for a malayalee girl. its white/cream, with gold/red motifs. simple. that saves aLOT of time at the SAREE SHOP!

10)it was said that by the time of king mahabali, 3 of the major avatars have made their presence in kerala. that makes up, statistically, to about 30% something of the current avatar counts. so you do the math, either ethy need so much of help, or they’re just simply more blessed than the rest. (quoted from suresh anna’s talk yesterday)

cool ain’t it?  i’m going back to my injipuli now! cheers!