Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 25 (IANS) Onam may have changed with the times, but one ritual Kerala has refused to let go of is the grand Onam Sadhya, a 26-course feast served on a banana leaf.
From this day — the first Onam — kitchens across Kerala will be working overtime as families prepare for the most elaborate meal of the year.
The celebrations will gather momentum through Wednesday, the most important day of the festival, and continue through the third and fourth Onam. Through it all, the Sadhya remains the undisputed hero.
Onam itself is perhaps Kerala’s most genuinely secular festival, cutting across caste, religion and social boundaries.
It evokes memories of a mythical golden age of prosperity and equality, even though the Onam celebrated today is more a recreation of that past than a mirror image of it.
The old Kerala of sprawling joint families, however, has largely disappeared.
The ancestral home filled with brothers, sisters, cousins and children around one long dining row is now increasingly a memory.
Yet Onam has found a way to keep the family gathering alive. Siblings living in different places often return home, turning the Sadhya into an annual reunion, even if the gathering is smaller than it once was.
And what a feast it remains. Twenty-six preparations, each with its own place and purpose, arrive on the plantain leaf in a carefully established order.
Rice, parippu, ghee, sambar, avial, thoran, olan, kalan, erissery, pickles, pachadi, kichadi, papad, banana, chips and the succession of payasams make the meal less a lunch than a culinary celebration of Kerala itself.
But the Onam economy has changed too.
Today, some of the biggest beneficiaries are the small caterers, restaurants and hotels that have turned the traditional feast into a thriving seasonal business.
For those unable to cook the elaborate spread at home, the answer is often a parcel of Sadhya delivered to the doorstep.
Prices range from around Rs 300 at the lower end to well above Rs 1,000 at premium hotels, depending on the scale and setting.
Yet whether served on a banana leaf at an ancestral home, arranged in a modest apartment or packed neatly into a takeaway box, the essence remains unchanged.
For a few days each year, Kerala sits down together to eat.
And at the centre of that table, as it has been for generations, is the 26-course Sadhya, the feast that still holds Onam and Kerala together.
–IANS
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