Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Onam unfolds a floral carpet for Maveli (From last year's Onam celebration in my school) Onam celebrations have already got underway in Kerala though the actual festival falls on 4 Sep this year.   But Onam is a season in the state, not just a day.   It is a mega event which brings together flowers and music, dances and boat races, and of course the legend of Maveli or Mahabali.   The legend is pregnant with the typical Malayali sarcasm.   Mahabali was an asura king, according to the legend.   Asuras are demons and are opposed to the devas or gods.   Mahabali (literally means ‘great sacrifice’) tilted the cosmic balance by refusing to be as evil as asuras are supposed to be.   He was too good, in fact.   He created a utopia in what now is Kerala.   He brought prosperity to his people who lived in perfect bliss.   There was no evil.   Onam celebrates the memory of that great king who made Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas a reality.   The most popular Onam folksong recou

  From the last Onam celebration in my school [2019] Maveli being escorted to the pavilion Five Onams ago, Amit Shah made a terrible mistake by wishing the people of Kerala on the occasion of Onam referring to the festival as Vamana Jayanti. Vamana Jayanti is the victory of Vamana. The victory of Vamana was the rout of Kerala’s most loved king, Maveli, whom Onam celebrates. Amit Shah’s greeting revealed his ignorance of Kerala’s version of Indian mythology. Otherwise, it revealed the arch politician’s quintessential villainy of surreptitiously trying to erase Kerala’s version which is diametrically opposed to the North Indian one when it comes to the Maveli-Vamana purana. For the uninitiated, Maveli is the Malayalam version of Bali who was an Asura king, an antigod (or a demon in the older translations). The Rig Veda, the Brahmanas, and the Ramayana all have slightly different versions of the Bali story. In the Rig Veda, Vishnu (whose incarnation is Vamana) takes three steps and

Festivals ceased to charm me once I grew out of childhood. Crowds are the souls of festivals and I detest crowds. A crowd doesn’t have a mind. It is a leviathan full of passion and energy. All brawn and no brain. All too often I am driven to the conclusion that festivals are so popular precisely because they don’t require anyone to think anything worthwhile and people don’t like to think. There is one festival, however, that I have always looked forward to with good cheer. Onam. Onam is a fairly long festival. The celebrations run over weeks. Flowers and music are the souls of this festival. No pollutions. Kerala and its people celebrated Onam just a month back with all its traditional art, music and cultural richness. Pookkalam (floral rangoli) is the first thing that will come to the mind of anyone who has seen Onam celebrations. It is an intricate floral design assumed to be a colourful and gentle carpet meant to welcome Mahabali, the hero of Onam. More about him later. Boa

Kerala has been celebrating Onam for years and years as a festival of equality, prosperity, and utopian dreams.  The legend is that the reign of Maveli (Maha Bali) was a utopia.  People were honest.  They respected one another.  Everyone was happy.  Life had a heavenly dignity.  The heavens were unhappy, however.  Gods conspired to put an end to the earthly utopia.  Vamana, an avatar of God Vishnu, encountered Maveli and sent him down to the netherworld (Patala) deceitfully.  Maveli Happy Onam to you  The right wing Hindu organisation, RSS, has come out in defence of the gods.  Onam was originally a celebration of the birthday of Vamana and had nothing to do with Maveli, argues K Unnikrishnan Namboothiri in his article published in the Onam special edition of Kesari , the RSS mouthpiece in Malayalam.   Namboothiri wants to exculpate the gods from their deceitfulness and other venality.  The Maveli legend “is an attempt by some vested interests to distort the mythical st

  Image Source: India.com Kerala is celebrating Onam, the grandest festival of the state. Onam is a festival of colours, flowers, music and abundance. In my childhood, Onam was projected as a harvest festival thus making it absolutely secular. The mythical legend of Mahabali (or Maveli as he was popularly and affectionately called by Malayalis) played relatively little role in the actual celebrations. The festive mood tended to supersede the legend though images of a pot-bellied Maveli made their presence felt ubiquitously. Perhaps people aren’t too keen to scrutinise the Maveli legend because the legend doesn’t put the gods in any good light. Maveli is an Asura (demon) king who turns out to be far better than the gods. The gods, therefore, become jealous of him and an avatar of Vishnu descends to decimate the beloved king of the humans. In her scholarly book, The Hindus – An Alternative History , Wendy Doniger says that the relationships between humans, gods, and asuras in the h

Kerala celebrates its state festival, Onam, today. The spirit of Onam is the sheer antithesis of contemporary politics which is governed by post-truth strategies. This morning’s national dailies brought us the news that the Income Tax raiders laid siege to more than 110 offices which were not kowtowing to the ruling party at the Centre. Raids and other forms of oppression have become the most common way of dealing with critics of the union government today. Every Indian today is expected to dumbly accept whatever the union government dishes out. This is just the opposite of what Onam teaches. Onam is about self-sacrifice and integrity. Fundamentally a harvest festival, it is sustained by the legend of King Mahabali during whose reign Kerala was a sort of utopia where the people were highly virtuous. Honesty, equality, justice and other principles guided the nation unfailingly. The king was the paragon of all such virtues. But he was an Asura king. Hence the gods in the heavens were

There has been no human society which did not have some myths and rituals.   Myths and rituals are a kind of psychological defence mechanisms.   Onam, Kerala’s most celebrated festival, revolves round the myth of a primitive king, Mahabali (more affectionately called ‘Maveli’), during whose reign there was no evil in the kingdom.   A kingdom without evil is a fascinating myth.   The associated rituals are meant to bring people closer to one another and to the environment.   Onam stresses on social functions and art performances as well as floral decorations.   But the traditional ways of celebrating the festival have been replaced with modern ways dominated by new rituals.   The high priests of the new rituals are traders of different shades, ranging from the unavoidable supermarket to the redundant jeweller, from the film industry to the television channels.   Onam is no more about equality and fraternity, goodness and generosity.   It is about shopping and entertain