Onam - Significance Retold!!

Today for most of us, all the festivals are predominantly not much significant except for the fact that we get to take one day off and get to eat a good variety of food in the name of the festival. Here infact, such festivals when happen to fall during midweek, gets pushed to the following weekend for celebration. Matter of convenience than occasion. Onam also by default falls into that category. In our Hindu Mythology, predominantly all festivals are either "conceptualised birthdays" of certain Gods or days considered auspicious because certain God/ Goddess acceeded to a special request and killed some evil force, a demon (asura) there by giving joy to the suffering people. Glaring examples are Krishna Jayanthi, Vinayaka Chathurthi or Deepavali.

But Onam comes with a difference. The story goes like this. A king, Mahabali, once ruled Kerala the most righteous way. All his people were happy and contended. He ensured that none lacked anything. It is earmarked as a Golden Era in the history of the kingdom. He did things so well and correct that he was accumulating too many brownie points (punyam). It reached a point that the devas felt threatened. It seemed that soon he would easily qualify for the position held by Indra. They panicked and the think tank at devaloka put their heads together to handle the crisis situation. (I have always had a despise for Indra and his bunch of "yes sir" devas because they have been completely projected as an insecure lot. And they have just been suriviving because of a bias shown by the Gods). In this case, Indra clearly felt threatened by Mahabali. So as expected when the Devas Think Tank could not conjure up anything worthwhile and meaningful, they rushed to the only 911 available which is Mahavishnu himself and fell at his feet. "Do something to stop this King" was the plea. Mahavishnu, yet another terrible biased super power, agreed to "do something". But Mahabali being a good man at heart, he could not be challenged to a fight and killed as every other competitor is done. So they had to manipulate and play on his weakness rather than confronting him. He then identified the only weakness in Mahabali and that was his egoistic feeling of "I" whenever he did things for his people. Taking advantage of this, Mahavishnu, disguised (avatar) as a small brahmin boy (Vamana) and visited Mahabali's kingdom.

On seeing the bright brahmin boy, the King asked him "what do you need?".

Vamana asked whether his wish can be fulfilled.

This touched the ego of the king and he said, "I am a prosperous king. I have everything that I can think of. What is it that a small boy like you is going to ask. Please go ahead".

Vamana said,"All I need is three feet of land to meditate and pray" (3 adi bhoomi).

The king, laughed aloud and said, "Measure as you please and wherever you place your foot, the land is yours"

Thats when Vamana grew in size. The first foot was on Bhoomi, the second on "the other world" (this is little hazy to relate in real world terminology) and for the third, he asked the king, where shall he place because there was no more land available for the 3rd step. By now the king realised that it was Mahavishnu and understood the purpose too. He touched Vaman's feet with his forehead and said, "place it on my head". This was the sign of ultimate submission of a person's ego. Vamana placed his leg on the King's head and it seems he got salvation (moksha) for all his good deeds. But he had to leave his kingdom as it was no more his. But given his good nature, he was allowed to visit his dear people once in a year. That happens to be today. The people are more than happy to welcome the king as they all love him a lot. Hence they decorate the house with flower decorations (Pookalam or poo kolam), appear in their best of attire, cook the most yummy receipes and play all traditional dances to entertain the king. Surprisingly the menu remains vegetarian for Onam. :)

This festival has not poojas associated. It is definitely associated with Hindu Mythology but nothing to do with the gods. So rituals have no significance. But in course of time, the interesting aspect of what has evolved is, the fact that Onam became a flag of identity for a keralite cutting across religious affiliations. It has more or less become a sole identity for a Malayalee as no other state or language speaking community celebrates this or a similar occasion. Vishu (Malayalam New year) has replicas of "Tamizh Puthaandu", "Ugadi" etc in other states. But not Onam. So today, though not much in India, outside in most countries we will find that many people belonging to other religions also mark this as an occasion to identify themselves as a Keralite.

So thats all about Onam!!!