Onam 2023

Onam is a festival observed according to the Hindu calendar. Its date and customary practices can vary by region and local Panchang.

Onam is Kerala's great harvest-season festival, centred on the remembered return of the generous King Mahabali. In the traditional account Mahabali, although born in an asura lineage, is a capable ruler loved by his people. His expanding power alarms the gods, and Vishnu approaches him as Vamana, a young Brahmin mendicant. During a sacrifice Vamana asks only for land measured by three steps. Despite warnings, Mahabali insists on keeping his promise and grants the request.

Vamana then expands into a cosmic form, measuring earth and the heavens in two strides. With nothing remaining for the third, Mahabali offers his own head. Vishnu accepts his humility, and devotional tradition says Mahabali may return to visit his people every year. In Kerala's telling this return evokes the memory of an ideal kingdom without hunger, injustice or needless division. Puranic narrations of the Vamana episode and Kerala's popular homecoming image are related but not identical in emphasis.

Onam celebrations extend across approximately ten days, beginning at Atham and culminating in Thiruvonam. Families create pookalam flower carpets, prepare the vegetarian Onasadya feast, wear new clothes and enjoy music, games, dances and regional boat-racing events. People across religions participate in its cultural life. A single Thiruvonam star rule identifies a central day, not the entire ten-day festival.

Onam is valued for devotion, family tradition and the spiritual or seasonal meaning attached to the day.

Ten days, with a pookalam - a carpet of flower petals - laid at the door and grown larger each morning. The tenth day is Thiruvonam and the Onasadya: a vegetarian meal of two dozen or more items served on a banana leaf in a fixed order. Vallam kali, the snake-boat races, and Pulikali, men painted as tigers, belong to the same days.

Kerala and the Malayali diaspora, kept by Hindus, Christians and Muslims alike as the state's harvest festival rather than a religious one. Ten days from Atham to Thiruvonam; the boat races of the backwaters belong to this season.