onam: black & white, a japanese perspective and the role of plywood

A few decades back, Onam, the Kerala festival was celebrated in memory of the mythical king Mahabali. In the present scenario, it has turned out that Onam is more of a celebration in memory of those bygone decades and onam celebrations of the past.

Here is a black and white photograph of young women in the traditional Onam attire, on the oonjal (swing), which appeared in a newspaper for the Onam of 1993. One of them is my cousin, on the right. I guess they were studying at the Alphonsa College in Pala (Kottayam, Kerala) at that time.

onam black and white

Now let us see how the japanese school girls, in an english seminar on India, picturized the onappookkalam. Look at the animated faces and the colorful pookkalam!

onam japanese painting

This is a glimpse from the English Seminar where I introduced India to the Japanese highschool students. The students were supposed to prepare articles/newspapers on different themes of the country. One of them worked on the “festivals of India” theme and they liked the flower carpet prepared during the onam fetival of Kerala, the pookkalam, and included it in their article.

japanese student drawing thiruvonam

Date: Oct 2005. Taken 4 years back, while I was at Sapporo, Japan.

Onam this year (2009) is on the 2nd of September. Happy Onam Wishes from Rocksea & Sarah!

Role of plywood in Kerala History

When I look back into time, one of the memories associated with onam are those when we had the school term examinations before onam. I was in class 6, but new to the school and getting settled. [Every other year I used to change schools, don’t know why!] I had given little attention to the onam exam but I wanted to score something for pass marks…

One of my new friends, I think his name was Nelson, told me that it is easy to pass the history exam. How? I just needed to fill the answer paper with whatever words flowing through my mind. The history teacher will give marks according to the number of pages I fill in. That is cool, I thought. BUT I didn’t know how to simply fill in the pages with some unassociated words?!

Nelson had an answer to that too! I just had to copy those words from his answer sheet! And so I wrote the exam. Onam holidays came and went, and I had forgotten everything about it. One day after the school had reopened, the history teacher called me to the staffroom. He had my history answer paper in his hands! He went straight to my answer on Mamankam. [Mamankam is a medieval festival of Kerala, which was mostly celebrated under the auspicious of the Samoothiris (Zamorins), by the banks of the Bharathapuzha river]. The teacher asked me what was the role of “plywood” in Mamankam? I was like 😮 I just stood their dumbfound. Later I got the answer sheet. I saw that among all the other dumb words… I had placed plywood as an integral part of Kerala history!

mamankam in kerala history

Onam / Thiru Onam: Festival of Kerala, celebrated in the month Chingam (Aug-Sep), of the Malayalam Calendar. In memory of a mythical King MahaBali (Maveli) who ruled Kerala eons back. Legend is that Kerala reached the zenith of its glory under his rule and he was so famous that gods became jealous and send God Vishnu to send him down to the netherworld. Anyways, before sending him down, Vishnu gave King Maha Bali a boon to visit his people once in a year. This day we celebrate as Onam, to welcome Mahabali. One of the most attractive aspects of thiruvonam is the pookkalam or the floral designs we make.

Check here for an earlier article on >> onam with nature and oru ettukaliyude onappookkalam

note: cartoon sketch of mamankam by sarah

23 Responses

  1. jiji says:

    Today Onam . 29-8-2012…..

    Thanks

  2. JANA says:

    A GREAT THANKS FROM KERALA,,
    INDIA

  3. jeff shawn says:

    hey…i jus luvd it….that was intrestin..
    even my friendzz have shared with me the same info..
    Is it the problem (or blessing?) of kerala history teacherzz or same in other partz of country..lolz

    • rocksea says:

      as some of the readers pointed out, such a trend exists in many other places too hehe. may be the students are better aware and make use of it in kerala 😉

  4. Kuruvila says:

    Hello RockSea, I liked yr posting on the evolution of christian names. I have been searching for the origin of my own name (Kuruvila) for some time and finally you gave me some clue!! Thanks a lot……keep writing!

  5. rocksea says:

    onam wishes, scorpio, joshi, and anoop 🙂

  6. Anoop Negi says:

    Happy Onam !

    I hope you have a great one

  7. cool and very interesting!

  8. Quite interesting.. Nice to see the pesrpective of Onam through the eyes of another culture; and the viewpoints of kids make it doubly interesting.

  9. sarah says:

    I am impressed by the perception of onam by the japanese student.
    It is nice to read some interesting memories that onam brings to you! haha. Looks like every onam you end up feeling like what a ‘fool’ you were. 😛 And now, those memories revive some nice ones in others too. 😀
    I remember how sometimes we tried similar tactics of filling pages with the same sentence written in different forms adn orders and even repeating the questions from the question papers just to get one more line filled. And the funniest of all, our small handwritings suddenly become so huge that a man with a bleak eyesight can see it from a 2 feet distance…well atleast it helped us to finish those big exam sheets! 😀

  10. Mridula says:

    And then when I get the students in the college they don’t believe that we read there papers! But things fall in place in a semester 😀

    Beautiful Art!

  11. Abhilash says:

    This was really interesting.
    You have a better history than me. My history teacher used to keep me outside her class as I was intrested making cartoons of the characters in her class. I use to make the kings and Queens and their battle.

    She made me do a daily exercise which she would start by saying ” chalo Abhilash murga bano “. ha ha….
    This was same for all my subjects the difference being, I was murga in one and giraffe in the other(standing on the bench)…

    Thanks for the post it helped me remember all the old stories…

    Try reading this.. you will have a funny story about my friends and our school life

    abhilifelapazzo.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-friend-mayank-prakash-patel-from.html

  12. birdy says:

    I liked the story and paintings. Surprisingly student all over the world think alike. What Nelson told you, is just what most of our students think. And being a teacher, I know that it’s true to a large extant in our country.

    • rocksea says:

      hehe. Birdy, Interesting to know from a teacher’s view point! I guess this teacher scruitinized my answer paper because my mom was also teaching in the same school!

  13. Purvi says:

    Awww…that is such cute and colorful drawing…. totally bringing out the ‘indian festival spirit’ 🙂
    Btw… your drawing is also cute.. (ignoring the ‘plywood’ banner :P)

  14. Gini says:

    We had a history teacher to whom we did the same thing. Fill out pages.

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