Onam.

In middle school, we had our essays pre-prepared. Most of them were about describing a particular festival. They all invariably started with "India is a land of festivals (which is unarguably true) and the most important one is ___" The blank can then be filled according to the region and religion to which you belong. For apart from being a land of festivals, India also happens to be a land of diverse cultures, each having their own sense of identity and strangeness uniqueness and their own set of festivals.
Onam (wikipedia entry) is a harvest festival celebrated by the people of Kerala, the region of India where my parents are from. I'm proud of my culture and language and all, but the fact remains that I'm not even a trifle good at it. I speak my "mothertongue" with a heavy accent, that others find amusing. I tend to use it only when I really, really want something from my mother or when I'm in a scrape, diffuses the situation, you see.
Well, enough about me, on to Onam.
Like all Indian festivals, Onam also has an interesting epic behind it. To cut a long legend short...
Bali was a munificient, pious and ambitious king. So great was his fame that he was called Mahabali (or Bali the emperor). He was willing to give everything he had, to achieve everything he could. He set up a yagna (sacrifice) for which he announced that he would grant the wishes of any subject who came to him. He wanted to please the Gods so that he may achieve dominion over the entire world. (How naïve the people, who make these legends are, ... the entire world indeed; coming from a culture that forbade overseas travel during those times). Well anyway, the king was very near his goal. The gods were jealous and did not want to share something so important with a mortal. So one of them disguised as a beggar dwarf approached Mahabali.
The beggar asked the king for some land.
The king feeling totally benevolent told him that the beggar could have any amount of the choicest lands in any part of the kingdom.
The beggar then asked for three feet of land. (note: feet here is meant literally)
This was the most ridiculous wish ever. The king wondered not so softly what the beggar wanted to do with just three feet of land. And the king after some persuasion granted him the wish.
As soon as he'd done that, the dwarf began to grow. Within no time, one foot was enough to cover the whole land. The dwarf then raised his other leg and that covered the entire sky (the sheer physics of this antic escapes me too). Now the "dwarf" asked where he should go to claim his third and final foot of land.
The king was humbled and said that since he found no place else, the dwarf could place the foot on the king's head. The god was happy and agreed to grant the king one wish before he was going to crush him. The king asked that he be allowed to visit his kingdom every year just in time for spring. This the god granted. Then he crushed the king.
So now it is in time of Onam that this king re-visits the land.

Onam is quite like Thanksgiving, in that it involves a lot of eating. A-lot-of-eating.
Traditionally, it is said that the Onam lunch which is called sadya (it is a synonym of feast in our language- just to give you an idea of scale) is supposed to have as many as 16 different types of dishes, including fiery pickles, crispy pappadums and banana chips, earthy dals, yoghurt, lots of vegetable stews and most importantly a dessert called Payasam. All this is supposed to be eaten on banana leaves with ones fingers- asking for a fork and knife would be just considered impolite. And trust me, it tastes better with the fingers.
Now to go back to the topic of the utterly delectable payasam. It is generally made from sugar, jaggery, milk, rice, zillions of other things and butter... lots of butter. It is, in one word, heavenly.


We usually get new clothes and money to spend on Onam day. The whole family gets together and we all share the work and do our part in preparing the sadya. Onam is also an inter-faith festival- all religions in our region celebrate it. Most importantly, it is a time of joy, unity and abundance. Sigh, sheer abundance.