Kerala erupted into a last-minute buying spree on Monday’s eve of Thiru Onam.
Holiday cheer marked the final day of the supersized Onam shopping season as citizens crowded markets, malls, flower shops, electronic gadget stores and textile showrooms scouting for closing-hour bargain buys.
Big brands and major retail chains used incessant television and social media advertising to transform Onam into a carnival of consumption. Onam greetings in the form of memes flooded social media sites.
Uthrada Pachil
The famed “Uthrada Pachil”, a flurry of pre-festival commercial activity, was perhaps most evident in the iconic Chalai market in Thiruvananthapuram.
The worries of inflation and scarcity took a back seat as Onam shoppers thronged the narrow shop-lined streets abuzz with street vendors hawking products ranging from flowers to vegetables and clothes and trinkets.
Upscale malls and retail stores turned their expansive premises into Onam wonderlands, complete with artists decked out as Mahabalis, the mythical king and festival’s mascot, and traditional art form performances, including Kathakali, Theyyam and Chanda Melam.
The palpable Onam cheer energised Thiruvananthapuram city, with residents and visitors turning the dazzlingly illuminated East Fort-Kawadiar stretch of the arterial M.G. Road into an eminently walkable festival stretch and an almost pedestrianised entertainment and shopping avenue. The capital also offered an abundance of stages for evening artistic performances.
Traditions and homecoming
Onam also saw a revival of agrarian traditions thought long lost. Several resident associations and youth clubs set up swings and organised neighbourhood-level tug-of-wars, pole-climbing, and other traditional games such as “Uri Adi and Kuttiyum Kolum”. Liquor outlets registered record sales.
It was also a season of homecoming, as thousands of Malayalees employed across the country and the world returned home to reunite with their families and savour the wistfulness for a pastoral past almost erased by rapid urbanisation.
Festival politics
Politics too, as it has in the past, crept into the Onam celebrations. Paddy farmers staged a fast in front of the Government secretariat to protest the administration’s alleged failure to pay procurement dues.
Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan announced that the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) legislators would forsake the free Onam kits offered by the government. He said the public distribution system had failed the people.
The government’s flopped market intervention strategies had failed to mitigate seller-fuelled inflation. Mr.Satheesan said the State’s “self-inflicted financial crisis” prevented the government from distributing free Onam provision kits to financially hard-pressed families.
