Devi Muralidharan is already drawing up her Onam flower list. There is going to be festive orange and yellow marigold, bright purple vaadamalli, green marugu and marikozhundhu, red, pink, yellow and white aralis, and multi-colour roses.
She’ll head out on Friday to the market and return with bags bulging with fragrant flowers. On Saturday night, she’ll draw an outline of her design and start filling it up with flowers, layer by layer, colour by colour. Her tapestry of flowers will be the cynosure of all eyes on Onam day.
Flower power
A pookalam Photo: Thulasi Kakkat
Like Devi, others in the city are also getting ready for a flowery Onam. Flower decorator P. ShanthakumarofThozhar Trust says this is the season for flowers, with many festivals and murhurtams. “Till September 15, Poo Market will bustle with activity,” he says.
This is also the season for udhiri poo, which the women and children will segregate at home to fill up their pookalams.
Popular varieties include colourful dahlias; pink, red and yellow roses; orange and yellow marigold, yellow and white javandhi, scarlet red cockscomb and arali. For green, the fragrant favourites are marugu and marikozhundhu, but trees in the neighbourhood will yield their leaves too. Many gulmohar branches will be shorn clean of leaves that day!
The flower season started from Vinayagar Chathurthi, but the rains in Kerala have left the flower merchants unhappy, says K.K. Ayyappan, treasurer of the Coimbatore District Flower Merchants Association. The vendors receive many orders from Kerala for Onam, but the rains have ensured the kolam can’t be drawn, he rues. Tuesday’s bandh was another blow with nearly 20 tonnes of flowers going waste in the Coimbatore market.
Arali. Photo: M. Srinath
The merchants source flowers for Onam from all over the State. Sevanthi, chendumalli and javandhi come from Sathyamangalam, Thalavadi, Udumalpet, Dharmapuri, Rayakottai and Hosur, while marikozhundhu comes from Dindigul.
There’s a Coimbatore connect to the flowers too — Vaadamalli comes from the belt stretching from Perur to the Siruvani foothills.
The spiky bright purple flowers on your front yard have been harvested from farms in Alanthurai and Thondamuthur.
