Actor Jayaram feels he is fortunate to belong to a generation that could celebrate Onam in the most traditional of ways.
“I grew up in a village at a time when satellite television had not yet invaded Kerala, so I could take part in all the festivities of Onam,” he says. “Children used to collect flowers from across the village to make the floral carpet. Now, my children ask me at our Chennai home: don’t the flowers look better on the plants rather than on the floor?”
You cannot blame them, or any other child of today’s generation, when they come up with questions like that. To them, Onam does not mean much more than a sumptuous feast or the films or celebrity interviews on television.
'Several avenues of fun'
“For the children of my generation, one cinema in colour was the ultimate luxury,” says Jayaram. “But, we had several avenues of fun, such as the various competitions organised by the clubs and libraries in the region. Tug-of-war was a particularly popular event during Onam.”
Onam also meant it was time for the families to come together.
“Our relatives from different places would come without fail for Onam,” he says. “That also gave me the opportunity to showcase my skills in acting and mimicry; I would imitate my father, mother, uncles or anyone else I knew.”
After he became an actor he has celebrated just about every Onam on the location of a film.
“In 1992, I celebrated Onam on the day after I got married to Parvathi,” he recalls. “This time around, I will be celebrating Onam on the set of my son Kalidas’s first Malayalam film as an adult. So I have one more reason to look forward to this Onam.”
Onam for Gayatri
For playback singer Gayatri, she has to be at home in Thrissur for the Onam.
“I make sure that I do not have any shows on the day of Thiruvonam,” she says. She gets nostalgic about celebrating Onam as a little girl in Thrissur. “Onam would always be at the ancestral houses of my parents,” she says. “Being doctors, they would be busy always but we celebrated Onam together. And there would be my aunts and cousins as well.”
She says Onam has changed quite a lot since. “Onam has become synthetic,” she says. “We have these programmes on television featuring celebrities dressed in traditional clothes. Though I have also been part of such shows, I feel they have become passé.”
Gayatri misses the Onam of yore. “We celebrated Onam very traditionally,” she recalls.
“We would make the floral carpet on a surface made with cow dung. I don’t know how many people of this generation are aware of such a practice.”
Onam was also very musical those days. “Many in my family could sing well,” says Gayatri.
The hugely popular and melodious audio cassettes also heralded the festival season of Onam. “My mother used to get all those cassettes for me,” she says. “And though we no longer have such albums for Onam, I was delighted to sing a couple of songs for one recently, titled Ponnavani Pattukal .”
