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@ Florence, Italy

@ Bologna, Italy

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!

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.

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

Onam this year (2009) is on the 2^nd 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!

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

Do you know that In the real world, seahorses mate for life and that it is the male seahorse which gets pregnant! The female lays its eggss in the brood pouch of the male, which is then internally fertilized and carried until the young ones emerge.

Watercolor painting reminiscent of our basketball games and a snapshot of the photograph from Riola.

At Riola, near Bologna, Italy.

The head, neck and breast of Indian Treepie are a deep slate-grey colour, sometimes slightly brownish. The underparts and lower back are a warm tawny-brown to orange-brown in colour with white wing coverts and black primaries. The tail is a light bluish-grey with a thick black band on the tip.

The Indian Treepie is extremely agile while searching for food, clinging and clambering through the branches. Its acrobatic dances on the coconut palm leaf (ola) has given it the name olenjali  in Malayalam.

Original photograph of the Indian Treepie, by rocksea, used for the painting :

Technology & happiness. Human civilization and technology has grown in a fast pace but are we happy? Some of the members said they feel life is more comfortable. Nobody said that life has become happier. We found that technology which has been developed to make life easier has in fact made life complicated and busier. One of the members said that unlike the past, now he can travel from place to place in few minutes/hours but life has become busier. Communication has improved, internet, mobile phones, have taken place in our lives but effective communication between people have decreased. We were all alarmed to face this fact that better technology doesn’t mean happiness. So is technology, instead of liberating us, holding us back?

Does it look like a painting? I like the overall tone. A bit far from earth, it doesn’t show much of human intervention other than the dam. but may be a dam is enough? Anyways the picture shows a lot of geographical features.. Took it on my flight from Delhi to Sapporo a few months before. So it must be somewhere close to the east coast of India.

Anyways, am happy about the warm hi-fi japanese toilets mentioned in the pervious post  More on it later!

Diwali is celebrated in memory of Ram’s homecoming after 14 years of exile in the forest (epic: Ramayana).

Wishes! Let your hearts be enlightened.